Broken Age has fantastic characters and art direction, but once act 2 starts the gameplay quickly becomes convoluted and frustrating to the point that it takes away from the beauty of the rest of the game.
I've never had a puzzle game experience where I correctly did part B of a puzzle but it just acted like it was wrong because I had not done part A yet. This led to a ton of just wandering around and exhaustively clicking on things because why would I go back and try a solution the game explicitly told me was wrong an hour ago?
Then there's the solutions that just go against basic game design. The solution to the snake puzzle was doing nothing because I just had to guess I wouldn't actually get choked out? This is especially ludicrous because Shay remarks something along the lines of "Yeah this is going nowhere..." after which I left the second time I went there (first time I blew the horn to get the snake off, which further cements the idea you need something to deal with the snake). I figured you'd have to put on the clothing that the sad girl in the trees makes for you or something along those lines but NOPE!
Just stand still for an unnessecarily long time, with the game actively telling you to not do that. It's maddening!
The story also goes kind of off the rails once part 2 starts with the whole ethnic cleansing and hidden civilisation thing. They didn't feel like satisfying pay-offs to the mysteries set up in the first act, and a lot of the explanations attempting to glue together the increasingly wonky story feel a bit flimsy.
Don't get me wrong though, I do not hate Broken Age. There really is a lot to love here. Vella is one of my favourite protagonists in video game history, and Shay has a lot of great moments too. The side characters are genuinely wonderful and help make the world feel more realized and fun to explore. Vella's Act 1 does a great job at hooking the audience in, and Shay's first act creates some interesting plotlines too with his whole obsessed robotic parents thing.
I suppose I'm just kind of in the same boat as I was with Oxenfree, where you can just see the potential of the product in front of you and have to painfully watch your enjoyment degrade over time as the gameplay devolves into frustration or boredom and the story starts to frantically overexplain itself.
I would give Act 1 around a 4/5 stars, but I cannot in good conscience give Act 2 and the rest much higher than a 2 or 2.5/5 stars. So I'll settle on 3 stars. Glad I played it for all the great jokes and characters, but ultimately I'll remember my growing dissapointment with it the most I think.
I've never had a puzzle game experience where I correctly did part B of a puzzle but it just acted like it was wrong because I had not done part A yet. This led to a ton of just wandering around and exhaustively clicking on things because why would I go back and try a solution the game explicitly told me was wrong an hour ago?
Then there's the solutions that just go against basic game design. The solution to the snake puzzle was doing nothing because I just had to guess I wouldn't actually get choked out? This is especially ludicrous because Shay remarks something along the lines of "Yeah this is going nowhere..." after which I left the second time I went there (first time I blew the horn to get the snake off, which further cements the idea you need something to deal with the snake). I figured you'd have to put on the clothing that the sad girl in the trees makes for you or something along those lines but NOPE!
Just stand still for an unnessecarily long time, with the game actively telling you to not do that. It's maddening!
The story also goes kind of off the rails once part 2 starts with the whole ethnic cleansing and hidden civilisation thing. They didn't feel like satisfying pay-offs to the mysteries set up in the first act, and a lot of the explanations attempting to glue together the increasingly wonky story feel a bit flimsy.
Don't get me wrong though, I do not hate Broken Age. There really is a lot to love here. Vella is one of my favourite protagonists in video game history, and Shay has a lot of great moments too. The side characters are genuinely wonderful and help make the world feel more realized and fun to explore. Vella's Act 1 does a great job at hooking the audience in, and Shay's first act creates some interesting plotlines too with his whole obsessed robotic parents thing.
I suppose I'm just kind of in the same boat as I was with Oxenfree, where you can just see the potential of the product in front of you and have to painfully watch your enjoyment degrade over time as the gameplay devolves into frustration or boredom and the story starts to frantically overexplain itself.
I would give Act 1 around a 4/5 stars, but I cannot in good conscience give Act 2 and the rest much higher than a 2 or 2.5/5 stars. So I'll settle on 3 stars. Glad I played it for all the great jokes and characters, but ultimately I'll remember my growing dissapointment with it the most I think.