Completed with platinum trophy earned. While mechanically fairly simple, The Pathless is a beautiful open-world adventure from the creators of Journey and ABZÛ, casting the player as an archer seeking to lift the curse on an island. Largely the gameplay is based around puzzle-solving, making significant use of an eagle companion as part of the necessary interactions - and while these puzzles are never overly challenging, they still manage to evoke a wonderful feeling of satisfaction. These puzzle challenges are scattered around a series of five expansive areas - perhaps somewhat too expansive, as it can at times become difficult to find a few particularly well-hidden. I understand the intention behind the game not including a map or any HUD waypoints, as this does genuinely bring benefits to immersiveness, but it also makes navigation more difficult that I'd like - instead, you're forced to make use of an alternative vision mode that highlights points of interest, but this requires line-of-sight. Judicious use of a guide helps to offset this, thankfully.

Despite these navigational frustrations, between each puzzle area, traversal across the world comes with a fantastic fluidity of motion, especially later in the game as you earn upgraded abilities. Boss encounters that become accessible after reaching a minimum threshold of solved puzzles in each area are also a definite highlight in this regard, initially seeing you chasing after each creature, challenged to make use of your movement abilities to catch them.