I was primed to love this as the Anodyne games are two of my absolute favorites, but I found it incredibly disappointing.

The premise is brilliant. Three scientists land on a planet they're assigned to study, only to become trapped with a sentient planet and the virus threatening its ecosystems. You "link" with various species on the planet (via a fun Tetris-like minigame) in order to strengthen your connection with it and nullify the virus. As the characters learn more about the planet, Sephonie, the more Sephonie learns about the characters. Great. I love this! Supermario 64 but it's Solaris. I'm incredibly onboard.

I played this on my Steam Deck because I've never gotten the hang of keyboard controls. I can't imagine the controls being any easier on a keyboard, though. I found them very unintuitive and frustrating. It was on the third or fourth level before I got the hang of wall running. Some of the mechanics that are introduced in each level are fun and interesting, such as the birds that toss you through the air. Others, like the invisible walkways that become visible as pixelly blue paths, are uninspired. Then there's the ball and chain "key" that circles your waist and you have to somehow infer that the goal is to get the key to the lock without letting the ball touch anything.

Then there's the story, which I really thought would save this game, as I love the Anodyne games' scripts. The characters' backstories are treated as the main lore. You get far more information about them than you do about Sephonie, and they're hardly interesting. The focus is on the Asian immigrant experience, but cultures are boiled down to stereotypes about seafood and gacha games.

I think the attempted theme was that these characters living in the far future are just as alienated from their cultures as they are from this alien planet. This is communicated with some abstract internal dialogue (one of the characters thinks something like "Do I care about China correctly?") and the aforementioned ball-and-chain type imagery that's squeezed into the final level.

It just didn't really come together for me, which is a shame, because I love all this conceptually.

this has kind of the narrative richness and complexity that I'm most used to getting out of a book or comics, but definitely not a 3D platformer video game

I guess not unlike a natural ecosystem itself, sephonie is sprawling, complicated, lush, sticky, contradictory, and beautiful. for almost all of my playtime I had a loose grasp of what was going on, and towards the end I began to get nervous that it was almost too loose, too scattered, but upon destination arrival I was ultimately very impressed

one of my looming concerns was that it would end too tidily. some recurring criticism I had for the script was a tendency towards show over tell, and a particular habit towards didacticism. if a random npc shared a problematic opinion, one of the protagonists would immediately mutter under their breath the correct, progressive take. the writing often did not trust the player to come to their own conclusions, it had to scream it with a megaphone. this had me worried the ending would be similarly too...easy.

it was not! the ending was bittersweet, complicated, thorny, and at times sad. it was exactly what a story like this needed, and it delivered. very impressed.

though, as mentioned, I felt that during the game a lot of its themes and ideas were delivered in a relatively ham-fisted manner, I do very much love what they are. the complicated nature of borders and labels and delineating lines was thought-provoking, and I appreciate how often the game forced me to grapple with when these things can be harmful or helpful

I wish we had gotten more interactions between the characters outside of their varying inner monologue exposition dumps. every character was also written with the tone of voice of a too-online millennial, no matter their age or background. it weakened their identities as individual characters, making them less character and more Lesson Delivery Vehicles. I like what they were intended to be, but the script doesn't always get them there

the platforming element is fun when it is but it's infuriating when it's not. I imagine much of this is the Switch's fault—the game requires extremely high levels of precision for optional exploring, and Nintendo's console and its beleaguered joycons just cannot make that precision happen most of the time

all in all, though, I really value the experience of this game—despite some flaws in execution here and there, it's heart is very much in the right place, and it has the panache and whimsy and perspective to make for something really singular. excited to connect with the studio's back catalogue

i liked this a lot!! spaces representing past and present, connections and barriers.... hooouggh....
despite generally not being a fan of 3d platformers or "movement games" i ended up highly enjoying the gameplay of Sephonie; there's a sense of "fluidity through rigidity" i tend to value in game movement, one i typically only find from games like super metroid or bionic commando, that i was delighted to find here. the puzzles are also really fun, i wish they were a bit harder though!!! early on i kept clearing them without any clue what i was doing....
the story is really great, the themes hit very hard and i found myself lost in the naturalistic writing. the character focused sections felt like such a novel concept and they really endeared me to the main trio. i played as ing-wen for most of the game because i thought she was cute, but after playing through riyou's section i was so moved i ended up using him for the rest of the game (a rarity - if i have the choice, i usually do not like to play as a boy, regardless of character...)
i had conflicted feelings towards the end but the final section really pulls everything together in a way i thought was overwhelmingly beautiful.