the difficulty scaling was working fine for about 80% of the game and then it just seemed to completely unravel and i found myself in encounters with monsters i literally one shot at the start of the battle standing next to monsters that take 7-8 turns to kill.

in theory this is a solution for outpacing content in an open world pokemon, but in practice it needs more refinement. and while they provide the knobs for you tweak in menus, it isn't as granular as one would expect and ultimately feels like design oversight.

game is much more of a 3d-platformer than THPS (and i am okay with this), but i would like to see a future content update that adds more challenge and utility for its combo system. all of the score attacks and races during the main story are laughably easy, and the steam achievements are arbitrarily bloated leaving you tagging every curve, wall, and half-pipe for free score multipliers so that you can ultimately spam inputs on a circular rail for twenty minutes and climb your score into the multi-millions.

perhaps there will be a roadmap of updates leading into an Old City DLC feat. the Oldheads (you did fall into the pyramid island maze pit, didn't you)?

the game is front loaded with its worst moments, i.e. combat, story, stinker tracks (Hair Dun Nails Dun) and level design (the brain sequences are Yooka-Laylee unity platforming frustrations all over again). i can't help but think of Neon White at $25 and it's level of polish, and here is a game asking for $40 and already feeling middling within the first few chapters.

the saving grace of the game is it's movement as it genuinely fun of tricking around and tagging up new and hidden areas. and once you get over the sloppy start, the OST will continue to expand and embolden to the point i actively sought out collecting music to curate my experience and now i am just left looking for more excuses to take another spin around the sandbox.