I cannot recommend this.
First of all, this game was a nightmare to make it run properly on my system. At first the game was tough to even boot as it would usually crash on menu. Interestingly, the crashes which happened during the first level, after I "fixed it", returned anyway in the very last level of the game...
The worst thing is the controls. the controller works but the default controls are from hell. You have to hold a lock button to be able to move sideways, and one analogue stick was for looking up and down, and the other was for looking left and right. Also, vertical sensibility was way higher than the horizontal one. Controls so bad, I could argue it's unplayable. Luckily, Steam is very advanced nowadays and you can modify your controls any way you like, even temper with the sensitive of the analogues, and for each direction individually too. So, I managed to make controls bearable. But they still were terrible as moving sideways while locking was super uncomfortable and I would have to let go of the other analogue stick every time. Dodging was difficult as you need to press 3 buttons at the same time.
Anyway, enough with controls. Combat in this game is pretty abysmal. There is an option to grab an enemy, but you can only do it at very specific times. There is a red ring indicator when to attack or grab, but for most enemies it is broken or something. Also, enemies get knocked out all the time and most enemies you cannot attack while they are down. There is no advantage of it and it just makes the battles longer. You can only kick the enmies when they are on their dying animation, so they would die anyway... Enemies can block way too well. And for some reason your rage meter only fills when you block. It is so stupid. So you can either try to spam attack till you kill the enemy, or just block all the time without attacking till you fill the meter for special attack which would kill the enemy. You also get numerous superpowers, and they handicapped it so much that you cannot use half of your magic spells on enemies. You can only use them on puzzles or scripted bosses. So, the combat is heavily limited, it's super repetitive and bad.
There is also stealth. I enjoyed it the most; however, you can only use it in the fog, so its presence it limited. Also, there are enemies that cannot be killed with stealthy take-downs and they always know you are around, so even in section where you're supposed to avoid them and just sneak around, you would have to get out of the fog and be spotted instantly, cause the fog is not everywhere, but only in spots. It's so stupid. Bad design all around.
Boss battles range from fun ones to terrible ones. In any case, they have way too much health and are too repetitive.
Now the cutscenes. They are unskippable. What I hated is that bosses often have 3 phases and sometimes there would be long cutscenes in between phases. And when you die you have to repeat all phases and cutscenes. PAINFUL! Ironically, the final boss has long, maybe 3 minute cutscenes in between phases, but after you kill you there is a skippable cutscene... And yes, I was still attacking him, so I pressed attack button just once and I skipped the final cutscene...
Another major issue with the game is that it has invisible walls EVERYWHERE! Seriously, you cannot even walk stairs half the time, you have to jump. A single step or tiny bumb in the environment will make you stuck and you will have to jump.
Now for some positive. There are A LOT of puzzles in this game. I loved them. But most of them are slow and long.
I loved the variety in locations. Almost every level was set in a completely different environment.
I greatly enjoyed the progression system for the most part. Usually, I hate checkpoint system, but this one I liked. Except, that often there would be an enemy encounter, then a long and slow puzzle and then another deadly enemy encounter... And every time I'd do that slow and long puzzle and die on the following enemy encounter... This was so anger-infuelling. Couldn't they just place a checkpoint after every puzzle? There is no fun in repeating the slow and long puzzles you have already solved. This is a massive problem which had a very easy solution... And they did not need to increase the amount of checkpoints, just switch their locations a bit.
Overall, there is a lot to be appreciated here, especially the puzzles, progression, and level structure. But the flaws are unforgivable in my opinion and I would say that it is not good enough for thumbs up.
6/10
