I bought this 75% off and I don't feel happy with my purchase.
Using the controller and on normal difficulty, I found this to be a slog. The main problems are the movement and being a one-hit wonder.
Your movement seems very inspired by Mario Odyssey, which is good. You can jump, throw your axe, zoom to it, double jump, then dive. Good! We have movement tech! A couple problems though:
1: These all must be done in order. You can not, for instance, jump, double jump, then dive. In fact, the double jump ONLY appears after zooming to your axe, resulting in me not even knowing you could do that until over halfway through the game. The closest you can get to a mix up is a jump-dive, which is awful because-
2: You jump sucks and your dive sucks worse. Most ledges, anything larger than waist-high, is insurmountable to the jump. This means that 99% of the jumps in the game, no matter how short, require the axe throw. The dive is much worse however. Once a dive is initiated, you are stuck in a fixed arc until you land. This will kill you 100% of the time. Unlike in Mario Odyssey, where you are diving to large flat expanses in a 3d environment, this game expects you to either dive onto short, moving platforms near enemies or to not dive at all.
3: By the way, the axe throw also sucks: You can zoom to it, which is fun and all, until you are expected to go straight up. I mean, going at an angle is a little finicky sometimes, but at least you can see where you are going. When going straight up the move will launch you into unknown territory, and there WILL be enemies and hazards you need to dodge. Just cross your fingers and remember, you die in one hit.
4: Oh, don't worry, there is also some of the worst swimming I've had the pleasure of playing in tight corridors with quick hazards.
And if the movement makes the one-hit death rough, the bosses make it intolerable. Some of them are tolerable, but none of them are fun. One has required swimming, one has homing projectiles filling up the screen while you dodge them with your freakin' axe jump, and the final boss is a snooze until his last phase where he decides you don't get to see the ground for three seconds and you should really just get good dodging rain.
One hp, remember.
There is little redeeming the game, unfortunately. The game has no plot. It pretends for about half of a tutorial level, then gives up. Maybe this is to facilitate a multiplayer focus? I don't know. But I know it's better than the music. If I have to hear that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss music one more time I'm going to wipe my hard drive. And yes, there are even a couple bugs. Mostly harmless, but the occasions where the platform moved and I didn't were less than ideal.
The level design was... enough to engage me? But it's a collectathon game where half of the collectibles are out in the open, and the other half are at the end of gauntlets, it feels odd.
I guess, to end the game on as much positive as I can, this game isn't a time-waster. There are no stupid 100% achievements aside from the clown (of all the things to take from Odyssey, the volleyball minigame? really?) and you don't need anywhere near all of the collectables to move on with the game. And it does look pretty. But it's such a struggle to come up with things to like that I feel like compared to what I feel is at best passable.
So I give the downvote. Please, spend your time on something else.
