Highwater Review (SteVieh445)
" there’s still time to enjoy the view." That's why I bought this game.
Except for there is not much to see when you are traveling with your boat. The surroundings are very minimal, basic and often feel copy-pasted. There wasn't much to enjoy the view. The graphic art style is great though.
Long story short - would I recommend playing it - No. If you are interested in my why keep reading.
Camera controls:
Often I'm annoyed about the camera angle and camera controls in general. Depending on your last camera angle (before entering a cutscene) you might not be able to see half of the dialogue. Happened to me a few times. And in combat your view can be fully blocked because you can't control the camera anymore when its the enemie's turn. Suddenly you're not able to see what's happening in combat because the surroundings are blocking your view when the enemy moves.
Combat:
The fights are sometimes too often in a row in my opinion. Especially because I tend to struggle with them. Probably #Skillissue I know... But I feel like I was missing some information in combat a few times. Like it took me some attempts to understand that I can push trees diagonally as well. Or the indicator in which direction characters will be pushed (especially when pushing more than just one around with a single move). Either it wasn't there for each character or the indicator wasn't visible enough. And I still have no idea what green tiles in combat means.
Dialogue:
The further I progressed in the story I feel more annoyed about all the dialogues.
Also I hate that half of the dialogues is just a video and I have no control about it at all. I can't decide when to confirm the text. That's a mandatory accessibility feature for me. Not everybody reads text at the same speed. There's a high chance that people will either be bored because they read faster or not able to read half of it because their reading speed is too slow.
Map:
What's the purpose of a map when you can't see where you are? Maybe it's just me that has an other understanding of a map. I only used it to see my next objective. In my opinion the map is more confusing than really useful and funcioning as you would expect a map to be.
Overall this game doesn't feel polished. At least I haven't encountered any bugs; or I didn't notice any, so that's a plus I guess.