There's something about playing Hauntii that's just incredibly irritating to me. I notice annoyance rising in my body when I play this game longer than 30 minutes. The game tries to copy Super Mario Odyssey's task-based reward structure and adapt it to its twin-stick shooter format - which just does not work for me. None of the tasks you do are especially rewarding or complex, they're mostly senseless busywork, of which the game asks you to do a lot of. The twin-stick shooting is decent enough, if it weren't for the really random shooting cooldown and the weird dash - both bearable on their own, but exhausting when put together. Both get improved while playing the game, though I'd argue that having to choose whether you want to improve your dismal health (where you always start off with two hearts even if you unlocked more heart containers) or your weird dash or your annoying shooting cooldown is not a case of fun player choice but moreso allowing them to toggle in which way they want to suffer.

And all of this is such a shame, because Hauntii is an incredibly beautiful game. Like, immensely so. It's gorgeous. From top to bottom. I adore this game's visual style and I went in expecting to love it, but well, I've now dropped it halfway through. I wish its gameplay core was strong enough to be able to see more of its beautiful world. For me, it sadly wasn't.

Incredibly charming and beautiful but the gameplay becomes repetitive and the overall pacing is far too slow. BUT.. its on gamepass so GO TRY IT ANYWAY!

Probably the best art direction of the year, this game is gorgeous. The game itself is sadly a bit drawn out, there are a lot of fun/cute little gimmicks and puzzles but the game consistently overuses the same ones to the point of tedium. Each area overstays its welcome by just enough to become tiring, its a shame. The game also has a pretty useless map, often I'd be missing one star in an area and a local map would have been so helpful but nah, you just get a world map to show how areas connect.

This game needed to be tightened up, if it were half the length and a bit more condensed it would be fantastic.

What's great: The art style and music are wonderful. Just listen to the soundtrack on streaming (Spotify and Apple Music). It's phenomenal. The little animated cutscenes after unlocking each new constellation. Some affecting vignettes. You can sort of extrapolate what sort of person Hauntii was before their death. It's all very evocative and makes one reflect on their own life. I also love some of the world design. Especially the amusement park entrance.

The gameplay is this strange mix of twin-stick shooter combat combined with the puzzle design of Super Mario Odyssey/BOTW. So there's a lot of trial and error as you make your way around these surprisingly big levels and mess around with different npc's, items, and enemies. Using your haunt power to embody a wide number of npc's and inanimate objects. Finding hidden stars along the way. Some of the puzzle designs were really cool, but unfortunately, too much of it is repeated.

What's bad: The upgrade system doesn't give out upgrades enough to feel a frequent enough sense of progression. It's made worse by the upgrade station not being easily accessible on a lot of levels in the world. So I had stars I could have used to upgrade but I had to wait for another station or backtrack back to one, which would take forever.

The story of your relationship and attraction with an Eternian, another type of being, goes completely unexplained. The main baddie in the game seems half-baked. Some Eternian-hating lady with a bunch of Minion-like characters as her goons. Also some levels are dead zones for health points. That led to some extremely frustrating moments where I couldn't get health unless I backtracked.

There are quite a few visual bugs. Nothing major. All the bad aspects of Hauntii added up. The backtracking, health dead zones, bad antagonist, the lack of upgrades, and the story issues. I wish I could have seen the story to its conclusion, but I had to call it. I will be listening to the soundtrack for a while though. It's that good.

Given this is an indie title, I was expecting a short linear title with melancholic visuals and atmosphere; instead, it was a collectathon with a twin-stick shooting mechanics. If content or busywork was a key metric, this would be value for money; however, I felt it was more repetitive and monotonous without much variety and memorability in its tasks where it outstayed its welcome. Progression is blocked until a certain amount is collected incentivizing task clearing before moving on each room since the next checkpoint amount is unknown. As a completionist, this means that I quickly got tired with the gameplay loop since the game does not add more mechanics or depth such as powerups or skills. Not to mention some tasks and puzzle are downright annoying or levels long to traverse. Why there is a level with long flat space without strong traversal is beyond me. Also, I always had too many collectibles to spend for upgrades at any given time so the balance already feels off. I understand this loop was to let players engage in its world and mechanics but it felt artificial as the activities are rarely worth it.

Being a twin-stick shooter aficionado, the execution feels bad with its camera and hurtboxes. Firstly, gauging if a bullet will hit is ambiguous with the isometric camera and tall sprite models. While it may be a skill issue, I have called out several hits that should have not which is my barometer. On the offensive side, the range and damage of the basic fire is just short and weak that I would rather have melee combat instead. Aside from haunting objects, majority of the shooting is plain and uninteresting. Completing the combat trio, the enemies themselves are barely engaging or either annoying specially with how they spawn for unfair damage. The set pieces themselves are okay but was not thrilled and one of them had a bug that kept damaging me after every cycle. If the static tracking camera is kept, having perhaps a lock-on or homing attacks would have at least smoothened out the issues but would still feel underwhelming as a whole.

As for the experience, the story and world is vague that its emotional moments barely land. With its collectathon structure, the player is barely given motivation or intrigue with interconnecting moments hanging by a thread of curiosity. I would like to see the main protagonist be more conflicted with what is going instead of going thru the motions. I do like what it is going for but I feel other games have tackled something similar to greater effect and meaning. Simply having interactive options like a hug or be pet button would have at least made this all more believable as the cutscenes already do that.

Taking it as a whole, I feel this can be a good beginner or entry point game. While not completely devoid of value, I do not recommend this.