An easy game to love, but also a surprisingly easy game to dislike.

The islands look so cosy, the protagonist is cutesy-cool, the animals you can become are lovely (not to mention that the ability to poop as any bird was a great success with the kids), there are many fun little touches (like being able to pick up animals above your head and deposit them in your bag for later use, or how you can dance on your boat while it speeds into a sunrise), and seeing Tchia kiss another girl made my queer-loving heart jump with joy.

And yet when I had taken photographs of a factory for a mission and the game then asked me to take pictures of three more factories, I couldn't help but feel my finger twitching for the “skip gameplay segment” button.

Because the problem is that the game doesn't have much to offer. The story tidbits can be cute, but most of the game is threadbare and just filler, sending you running across the island back and forth on boring fetch quests while filling the map with icons to gather like you’re in an Ubisoft game (and it's just as exciting as you can imagine). The possession mechanic isn't even as fun as I had expected - you can only possess a handful of things and creatures (no possessing a chair that somebody is sitting on), your stamina for possession is limited per day, requiring you to sleep and eat (boring things) to use the most fun mechanic of the game, and even then possessing items is nearly useless, as none of them have any actions that remain fun beyond the first introduction.

But the clearest sign that the game didn't respect my time wasn't even the factory quest, but when I had to talk to another girl to progress the story, so the game sent me to the other side of the island from her home village where I got the quest, and then gave a short cutscene when I arrived which ended with the girl standing up and walking up a path, calling me to follow. The cutscene ended and I didn't see her anywhere so I checked the map to see where she was and she was back at the village where they had just told me to find her here! A backtrack followed, because I was not ready to quit yet; unfortunately that didn't last.

There are things that are legitimately impressive about Tchia, but unfortunately I couldn't love it, and as it left PSN before I could finish it, hence the grade.

And what's worse - I had plenty of time to return to the game before it left PSN; but remembering the factories I still had left to photograph, I just didn't want to.

First of all, YES to more unique stories repping the creative teams' cultures and not compromising the details in order to fit a tidy commercial box. 'Tchia' is an absolute success in that regard - the music, the environments, the mythology, the food, all a celebration of New Caledonian culture. That said, this had pacing issues for me that sometimes got in the way of its abundant charms. Lots of trophies, treasures and side quests to clean up, but feels very superfluous to the completed main story.

I really love what Tchia is doing, but I don’t really think the game itself is very good. There are certainly cool parts to it, but as a whole, I do not think it is particularly fun.

The heavy cultural roots of the game are so incredibly cool and a big draw. Admittedly, I had not really heard of New Caledonia prior to playing Tchia, but I love how the game pays tribute to the country and cultures there in ways that can be appreciated by someone like me who knows nothing of it. Gameplay-wise, soul-jumping into animals and random shit is dope. Jumping to a deer to sprint around the world and ragdoll into walls, or fly around as a bird to cover big distances quickly is rad. Don’t have an animal? Jump into a rock and then slingshot yourself into the air by chaining soul-jumps. It’s extremely cool! And I wish the game was just that, but it’s not. It has a boring story, long cutscenes, bad minigames, poor pacing, and a pretty empty world.

As described above, the best part of Tchia is the soul-jumping, but you have to play through a painfully boring 90 minute intro before getting the ability. And the opportunities to use the ability are entirely dependent on the objects around you. At one point I had to traverse through a large swampy area to find an item and the only thing I could possess within the area was a crab. While funny, after 3 seconds as a crab, I realized that my only real option to get where I needed to go was to just run slowly as this small child. And, man, that sucks. When I can be a cool bird or a fast-moving deer, any time spent as the kid just feels that much worse.

I played Tchia for 2 hours. In those two hours, I was introduced to about a dozen new minigames, 5 of which were not good rhythm sections. I love love love that the game used artists from the region to record original music. I do not need to play a bad rhythm game to experience said music. There was also a rock-stacking minigame with shoddy physics, a totem-carving minigame which requires a full restart if you make a mistake, a shooting range, and more. None of it really was worth doing

I wanted to love Tchia so badly. I wanted to experience this culture I was unfamiliar with in a new way, but man I just was not having enough fun to keep playing. I respect the heck out of the dev team for making this game and I’m so glad they did, but I think Tchia could’ve been a better game if the scope was reigned in just a bit.

+ Beautiful cultural representation for a country that never really appears in video games or media in general
+ Soul-jumping is rad as heck
+ Music is lovely
+ Ability to skip any segments you don’t want to play

- Intro is way too long
- Too many minigames
- Bad rhythm sections
- Not enough opportunities to soul-jump resulting in frequent, boring instances of running around as a slow child
- Feels a bit too ambitious for the small team they had