Judgement: Not Recommended
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At start this game is really good and you can see that positive reviews are mostly from people who played only for a few hours so world 1 and maybe start of world 2 only. This game has an original gameplay and nice art style and music. The game is challenging but fair at the start. The good thing is also that there are upgrades for your chariot and some gadgets for you that you can also find and upgrade. The game does not hide from you that by playing it in coop it will be easier and you will get more loot and that you really really really should play it using a controller not the keyboard.
Level design is bad. Some sections are just tedious and long and many times you don’t know if you should explore the level or not. Some levels you can move in circles and get back to the start while in others you can’t ever go back and you have to play each level 3-4 times to see everything in it. First world is fine and looks like the game will be simple fun platformer with some straight-forward nice mechanics. But world 2 and I guess rest of the worlds just change everything as difficulty curve climbs up fast. I felt that many times the game was unfair and it was more important to have luck than to have skills as you can try to do something 50 times and each time fail at a different moment just because of the game physics and mechanics and how precise you have to be.
Other things that also frustrated me were: slippery slopes, timed switches, needless enemies, and bounce pads. When you start you don’t know the map and because of slippery slopes you have to replay most maps 3-4 times to get all the skulls and chariot upgrades and gadgets as you can’t go back up to the place you were seconds ago. Timed switches open doors but at start these doors were close by but later on you don’t even know what or where got opened and the game does not tell you in any way so you don’t know if you should run up or down or left or right and you have to do everything by trial and error way. Needless enemies because they don’t really attack you they only go for the chariot and try to steal gold from it and they show up only when chariot bumps into thing loudly near their nests or when you collect treasure near their nests. Why are they needless? Because all you have to do is stand on the chariot and spam one button to chase them away and lose nothing. They are in the game only to make you stop for a while to spam one button before you can continue on your way. Bounce pads are stupid as the rest of the game require you to be precise but bounce pads are all about luck and luck only. If you are away for more than 5 seconds from your chariot you get teleported back to check point and it is pure luck for your character and the chariot to make it to the ledge at the same time when using bounce pads. That means lots of trial and error before you will get lucky.
Physics in this game felt strange many times and too precise for me as it was very important to mix the speed of the moving chariot with the length of the rope and the right moment to jump and use the rope to pull chariot to myself before it falls down. I played it on gamepad and was mashing buttons like crazy and I can’t imagine anyone to try to play it on keyboard as sometimes you need to press 3-5 buttons at the exact same time in order to succeed. For me the game changes from enjoyable to unbearable and frustrating very quickly.
Buy this game only if you are going to play it in coop mode and only if both of you can’t get angry fast when you fail the same thing over and over again.
Overall score 3.5/10
Good things:
At start this game is really good and you can see that positive reviews are mostly from people who played only for a few hours so world 1 and maybe start of world 2 only. This game has an original gameplay and nice art style and music. The game is challenging but fair at the start. The good thing is also that there are upgrades for your chariot and some gadgets for you that you can also find and upgrade. The game does not hide from you that by playing it in coop it will be easier and you will get more loot and that you really really really should play it using a controller not the keyboard.
Bad things:
Level design is bad. Some sections are just tedious and long and many times you don’t know if you should explore the level or not. Some levels you can move in circles and get back to the start while in others you can’t ever go back and you have to play each level 3-4 times to see everything in it. First world is fine and looks like the game will be simple fun platformer with some straight-forward nice mechanics. But world 2 and I guess rest of the worlds just change everything as difficulty curve climbs up fast. I felt that many times the game was unfair and it was more important to have luck than to have skills as you can try to do something 50 times and each time fail at a different moment just because of the game physics and mechanics and how precise you have to be.
Other things that also frustrated me were: slippery slopes, timed switches, needless enemies, and bounce pads. When you start you don’t know the map and because of slippery slopes you have to replay most maps 3-4 times to get all the skulls and chariot upgrades and gadgets as you can’t go back up to the place you were seconds ago. Timed switches open doors but at start these doors were close by but later on you don’t even know what or where got opened and the game does not tell you in any way so you don’t know if you should run up or down or left or right and you have to do everything by trial and error way. Needless enemies because they don’t really attack you they only go for the chariot and try to steal gold from it and they show up only when chariot bumps into thing loudly near their nests or when you collect treasure near their nests. Why are they needless? Because all you have to do is stand on the chariot and spam one button to chase them away and lose nothing. They are in the game only to make you stop for a while to spam one button before you can continue on your way. Bounce pads are stupid as the rest of the game require you to be precise but bounce pads are all about luck and luck only. If you are away for more than 5 seconds from your chariot you get teleported back to check point and it is pure luck for your character and the chariot to make it to the ledge at the same time when using bounce pads. That means lots of trial and error before you will get lucky.
Physics in this game felt strange many times and too precise for me as it was very important to mix the speed of the moving chariot with the length of the rope and the right moment to jump and use the rope to pull chariot to myself before it falls down. I played it on gamepad and was mashing buttons like crazy and I can’t imagine anyone to try to play it on keyboard as sometimes you need to press 3-5 buttons at the exact same time in order to succeed. For me the game changes from enjoyable to unbearable and frustrating very quickly.
Conclusion
Buy this game only if you are going to play it in coop mode and only if both of you can’t get angry fast when you fail the same thing over and over again.
Overall score 3.5/10
Review posted on 02/12/2020, 06:48:00.