A lot of conflicting things here, often seemingly stemming from the indie nature of this game. It's actually quite clever: Using your character for the enemies as well, reusing palace assets heavily while changing them a bit between each area and limiting the plot to two talking personalities, and it does not feel like these hinder the game in any way and elevate it instead.
As so often, the description of this game as an 'adventure' promises more than it keeps. The story segments get sparser while the bickering dialogue never resolves any tension, using the pattern 'what you're doing is dumb' - 'no' throughout.
The enemies replicating your actions - what a great idea! They change their routes and abilities, you change your strategy. But it's not clear how to approach it - pure stealth? run'n'gun'? A mix? Nothing feels right, it's all very scrappy. It's made worse by the two main objectives you encounter multiple times - 'collect X out of Y orbs' and 'collect the key(s) and open the door'. Doing each once or twice would have been fine to some extent, while the best passages are the ones where you have to find your way through an area. Just halfway through, wandering through the drought of meaningful story sections, and then being invited to collect 35 orbs is actually terrible.
The monotony is intensified by the palace design, which is understandable - having a poor person make four variations for each environment (besides simpler material and color changes) wouldn't have been worth the effort. It certainly tries to create uncanny environments with heavily repeated parts trailing off into the distance, but for some reason it doesn't click, except maybe during the mirrored sections towards the end.
I normally don't write this much, but seeing all the little pieces, anticipating how great they'll turn out and then each one turning out disappointing is a frustrating experience.
As so often, the description of this game as an 'adventure' promises more than it keeps. The story segments get sparser while the bickering dialogue never resolves any tension, using the pattern 'what you're doing is dumb' - 'no' throughout.
The enemies replicating your actions - what a great idea! They change their routes and abilities, you change your strategy. But it's not clear how to approach it - pure stealth? run'n'gun'? A mix? Nothing feels right, it's all very scrappy. It's made worse by the two main objectives you encounter multiple times - 'collect X out of Y orbs' and 'collect the key(s) and open the door'. Doing each once or twice would have been fine to some extent, while the best passages are the ones where you have to find your way through an area. Just halfway through, wandering through the drought of meaningful story sections, and then being invited to collect 35 orbs is actually terrible.
The monotony is intensified by the palace design, which is understandable - having a poor person make four variations for each environment (besides simpler material and color changes) wouldn't have been worth the effort. It certainly tries to create uncanny environments with heavily repeated parts trailing off into the distance, but for some reason it doesn't click, except maybe during the mirrored sections towards the end.
I normally don't write this much, but seeing all the little pieces, anticipating how great they'll turn out and then each one turning out disappointing is a frustrating experience.