Isles of Sea and Sky Review (almuva1510)
Totally recommended if you like puzzle games. I got hooked almost instantly after start playing, and even though there were some ups and downs I had lots of fun with it.
Some pros and cons:
+ Very imaginative and varied puzzles.
+ Difficulty progression was totally fine to me. It depends on where you decide to go, but if you're able to leave that damned puzzle you're just not able to solve (if it's actually solvable; let's talk about that in the cons) and come back later, then you're good to go.
+ Lots of stuff to collect, and some secrets to uncover.
- As lots of players say in their reviews, the game could do a better work letting the player know what puzzles are unsolvable until you unlock the upgrade to do them. In this game those upgrades aren't obvious at all, so when you're struggling to beat a puzzle, and then you add the possibility that MAYBE it's actually unsolvable until you get some upgrade that could be in this OR OTHER island, then things start to get grey.
--> Counterpart: The game gives enough freedom to move on to other puzzles and leave that one you can't solve for later, so I just did that if I had too much trouble and things got better (mind that I'm not the type of guy who does that, and it required some real-live character progression to achieve it xD ).
- There are some very specific interactions between puzzle parts that require some experimentation, just to figure out how they work. It doesn't help that some of them feel pretty arbitrary, so it's easy to spend time on something that you think will solve the puzzle, for then seeing that an earth golem doesn't go rolling after receiving a hit from a fire golem's shot, but rather move one tile away.
- Very personal, but I stopped playing after getting 102 of 109 stars. I like to complete games, but in this case if felt like too much effort, for 2 reasons:
--> The late puzzle mechanic of moving the mirrored dark clones really wears my mind off. Those puzzles are just exhausting to pull off for me.
--> In the Ice Island, I was totally unable to find half of the music notes. After doing some research I found out that they were on ice tiles , which I already imagined, but they're so hidden that I didn't even see one of them after going through all the island sections... twice.
+/- If somehow you're the type of player who likes to get all the achievements but also struggles to get those last few stars, you can actually get all the achievements, as I did.