Fun game! Felt like a looooot of potential that wasn't realised though.
The presentation is great throughout - love Sly's voice acting, the cel shading and animation, and the general vibes of everything. Music was cool (though the Vita version has really compressed audio for some reason?) and it was an okay length.
The platforming gameplay, especially when all of the upgrades and new moves are added, was really fun. Moving around mostly feels good, and hopping and swinging from point to point realises that fantasy of slinking around like a thief. The level design helps a lot with that too, with lots of pipes to shimmy along and points to perch on.
However.
There were many, many frustrations in this game. Movement was cool until you slip off the level, fall and lose half of your progress. Combat is fine until you realise you die in one hit and half of the enemies don't telegraph their attacks for shit. Honestly the health system, or lack thereof, was by far my biggest complaint. It just felt so fuckin annoying. It didn't even add to the difficulty of things, just made me dread making a mistake - if I did, I was losing soooooo much time.
My other big frustration was all of the non-Sly gameplay. I'm normally a sucker for a mini game but all of these were poor. Random, annoying vehicles, twin stick shooters, jetpacks, turrets, none of it was the Sly Cooper experience I wanted. All of them felt like sloppy padding that was added for the sake of adding it.
But gripes aside, glad I finally played this. I'm very excited to get to the next few games - hoping that all the potential gets realised with more time and budget.
The presentation is great throughout - love Sly's voice acting, the cel shading and animation, and the general vibes of everything. Music was cool (though the Vita version has really compressed audio for some reason?) and it was an okay length.
The platforming gameplay, especially when all of the upgrades and new moves are added, was really fun. Moving around mostly feels good, and hopping and swinging from point to point realises that fantasy of slinking around like a thief. The level design helps a lot with that too, with lots of pipes to shimmy along and points to perch on.
However.
There were many, many frustrations in this game. Movement was cool until you slip off the level, fall and lose half of your progress. Combat is fine until you realise you die in one hit and half of the enemies don't telegraph their attacks for shit. Honestly the health system, or lack thereof, was by far my biggest complaint. It just felt so fuckin annoying. It didn't even add to the difficulty of things, just made me dread making a mistake - if I did, I was losing soooooo much time.
My other big frustration was all of the non-Sly gameplay. I'm normally a sucker for a mini game but all of these were poor. Random, annoying vehicles, twin stick shooters, jetpacks, turrets, none of it was the Sly Cooper experience I wanted. All of them felt like sloppy padding that was added for the sake of adding it.
But gripes aside, glad I finally played this. I'm very excited to get to the next few games - hoping that all the potential gets realised with more time and budget.