Overall, I enjoyed the game quite a bit. Quite interesting combination of old fairy tales' interpretations, metroidvania gameplay, including exploration and backtracking. But I do have some criticism to share.
- Jumping had a very inconsistent feel to it, especially when double jumping was introduced: sometimes the second jump just would not trigger for no apparent reason. Jumping up the wall was even more inconsistent.
- Often it was difficult to determine what objects are platforms on which you can land, and which are not. Light reflection at the top of most of them can be used as a hint, but it's still not always the case. Considering that dashing also gets you through those objects, as if they are not platforms, navigation becomes problematic at times, even when it's not related to some secret room.
- Sometimes shooting stopped working (at least with boomerang), until I used melee attack. In a fight that could cause some unnecessary damage.
- The audio and video during cutscenes was significantly desynced most of the times, and Pinocchio froze completely a couple of times during his fight.
- The volume of the voices and their overall audio quality was very inconsistent through-out the game. Bear and Lighty sounded good most of the time, but quite a few lines for other characters sounded muffled.
- Voice acting for the "narrator" is not good. She was rushing a lot, overplaying and underplaying at the same time, even though I have no idea how that can happen.
- There are definitely achievements missing. At least for finishing the game and also for discovering 100% of stuff on levels.
But my biggest gripe is with... The story. Not surprising, if you saw my other reviews.
The concept itself is great, and it works really well with the art, too. General story flow is also, good, but there is practically no lore. There is nothing to learn about the world of the game through out the entire playthrough. Like, we are fighting dream demons, right? But what are they really? Or rather "what is the concept of these demons"? There is also the fact, that we are technically in a girl's subconscious, but there is absolutely nothing that links this world to that fact, let alone to the real world. Shady Part of Me did this way better, even though you needed to find things. This could have been explained by "hey, we're playing as a toy, that was kind of asleep, and then focused on a single mission and nothing else", but it's a weak explanation.
What I did not like more is how the story's twist was presented. Twist itself was totally fine, especially for a fairy tale like story, but it was just a very long cutscene, where we were told things, that we just needed to accept. And that's exactly where the problem of no proper lore shows itself at its worse. If there were hints, that would make us (and Bear) doubt what he is doing, second-guess himself, and then we got the same explanation (probably shorter), it would have worked better. It would have been like "Ah... I see. It now all makes total sense". It would have way more of an impact, even if the very end of the game would have remained the same (which was relatively weak).
Despite all that, I still enjoyed the game. I wish the studio had more budget to make it of a higher quality - it could have become a good alternative to Ori series.
