This is the worst kind of game for me personally.
It gets so much stuff right, there's honestly cool shit and good ideas in here. Sadly this is the kind of game which is worth less than the sum of it's parts.
Let's get the most obvious and glaring stuff out of the way first.
Shadow of the Colossus is a game which came out in 2005 and is generally regarded as a classic. Laser focused design, no compromise whatsoever.
Praey for the Gods is a game that came out in 2021 and is born of conflicted priorities and also apeing Shadow of the Colossus.
I really hate to do this but if anyone would claim that the comparison is not invited I'd probably advise that person to visit a doctor of some kind.
This game, for better and for worse, mimics everything Shadow of the Colossus did. And I mean everything.
Open world, boss encounter focused gameplay, a deity which help you on your quest, the protags motivation, the climbing and sword stab mechanics to damage bosses and basically everything else.
Honestly there's nothing wrong with this in my opinion. The problem is that the developers took everything from Shadow whole cloth without contemplating if this is healthy for their game or not. This becomes painfully obvious once the mechanics of the other big inspiration for this game kick in. Zelda: Breath of the fucking wild. This game also has survival mechanics. Upgradeable gear, hunger management, temperature management, another meter which I didn't understand or care about (I beat this game lol), breakable weapons, stamina and health upgrades after collecting a certain number of something, crafting and of course a glider or a sailcloth in this instance.
These 2 sets of gameplay mechanics are at constant odds with each other, with the exception of the sailcloth. They basically don't even intertwine at all. The survival and crafting mechanics are only really relevant during the traversal to the next boss location. Once arrived the game switches into shadow mode and the kinda puzzle like boss fight begins, ignoring everything which came before. For example you do not need any form of weapon to beat these bosses. Every boss conveniently has boss kill switches etched into it's body. These switches work exactly like the stab mechanics in shadow by the way.
This is turning into a bit of a ramble but it's just so glaringly obvious that the game tried to do waaaay to much than was good for it. There are really well designed pretty looking normal enemies scattered throughout the open world. But killing these enemies is straight up useless. Killing these guys doesn't help you in any way shape or form. The ones I killed didn't even drop anything. No joke, after realising this I ran past every single enemy without any form of consequence whatsoever. Fighting them isn't fun either, they have too much health and drain your resources, mainly health, so why bother.
All of these problems are summed up before even starting the game. On the difficulty select screen you are able to just straight up disable most of the survival aspects of the game. I have never seen so little confidence in their own ideas and vision which this team of developers has displayed here. So scared to put their foot down and say: "This is not just a Shadow game, it's also a survival game.". No no you can disable it all and have your inferior little Shadow of the Colossus clone.
That's sad, almost depressing honestly. Especially if you consider that some of the bosses in this game are fucking awesome. The 4th boss is straight up better than some bosses in Shadow. The visuals are great, I really liked some of the animations and the sound design is commendable for an indie title. Really great art direction here too. I would say I love everything about the visuals but that's not quite true I'll get to that in a bit.
There is some jank throughout but considering the budget and experience of the team I'd say they did great here. Amazing work put in all the wrong places.
Okay last thing and this is a bit of a personal point. They setup this world right, a post apocalyptic frozen wasteland. Humanity is done basically. All hope is lost, yaddah yaddah yaddah. So for their main character model they go with a absolutley pristine looking person, which by all accounts could've just washed ashore from a cosplay convention. She's wearing makeup, doesn't have a single wound or scar, she has rosy cheeks, her clothes look fashionable and the model doesn't change throughout in anyway shape or form. Not even blue lips when she's about to freeze to death. The model honestly looks fresh out of the new SFM porn collection on pornhub. You set up this desolate world with almost no hope left and the model looks like it was made by Mattel. Why skimp out there? Just thinking about the Wander's model and how it changes to look sickly, almost undead like as the game goes on makes this look embarassing. Again Shadow came out in 2005. As of the time of writing that was 17 years ago.
This game could've been amazing and I honestly think the team working on it learned alot from this. I'm interested to see their next project.
Can't recommend playing this one though.
It gets so much stuff right, there's honestly cool shit and good ideas in here. Sadly this is the kind of game which is worth less than the sum of it's parts.
Let's get the most obvious and glaring stuff out of the way first.
Shadow of the Colossus is a game which came out in 2005 and is generally regarded as a classic. Laser focused design, no compromise whatsoever.
Praey for the Gods is a game that came out in 2021 and is born of conflicted priorities and also apeing Shadow of the Colossus.
I really hate to do this but if anyone would claim that the comparison is not invited I'd probably advise that person to visit a doctor of some kind.
This game, for better and for worse, mimics everything Shadow of the Colossus did. And I mean everything.
Open world, boss encounter focused gameplay, a deity which help you on your quest, the protags motivation, the climbing and sword stab mechanics to damage bosses and basically everything else.
Honestly there's nothing wrong with this in my opinion. The problem is that the developers took everything from Shadow whole cloth without contemplating if this is healthy for their game or not. This becomes painfully obvious once the mechanics of the other big inspiration for this game kick in. Zelda: Breath of the fucking wild. This game also has survival mechanics. Upgradeable gear, hunger management, temperature management, another meter which I didn't understand or care about (I beat this game lol), breakable weapons, stamina and health upgrades after collecting a certain number of something, crafting and of course a glider or a sailcloth in this instance.
These 2 sets of gameplay mechanics are at constant odds with each other, with the exception of the sailcloth. They basically don't even intertwine at all. The survival and crafting mechanics are only really relevant during the traversal to the next boss location. Once arrived the game switches into shadow mode and the kinda puzzle like boss fight begins, ignoring everything which came before. For example you do not need any form of weapon to beat these bosses. Every boss conveniently has boss kill switches etched into it's body. These switches work exactly like the stab mechanics in shadow by the way.
This is turning into a bit of a ramble but it's just so glaringly obvious that the game tried to do waaaay to much than was good for it. There are really well designed pretty looking normal enemies scattered throughout the open world. But killing these enemies is straight up useless. Killing these guys doesn't help you in any way shape or form. The ones I killed didn't even drop anything. No joke, after realising this I ran past every single enemy without any form of consequence whatsoever. Fighting them isn't fun either, they have too much health and drain your resources, mainly health, so why bother.
All of these problems are summed up before even starting the game. On the difficulty select screen you are able to just straight up disable most of the survival aspects of the game. I have never seen so little confidence in their own ideas and vision which this team of developers has displayed here. So scared to put their foot down and say: "This is not just a Shadow game, it's also a survival game.". No no you can disable it all and have your inferior little Shadow of the Colossus clone.
That's sad, almost depressing honestly. Especially if you consider that some of the bosses in this game are fucking awesome. The 4th boss is straight up better than some bosses in Shadow. The visuals are great, I really liked some of the animations and the sound design is commendable for an indie title. Really great art direction here too. I would say I love everything about the visuals but that's not quite true I'll get to that in a bit.
There is some jank throughout but considering the budget and experience of the team I'd say they did great here. Amazing work put in all the wrong places.
Okay last thing and this is a bit of a personal point. They setup this world right, a post apocalyptic frozen wasteland. Humanity is done basically. All hope is lost, yaddah yaddah yaddah. So for their main character model they go with a absolutley pristine looking person, which by all accounts could've just washed ashore from a cosplay convention. She's wearing makeup, doesn't have a single wound or scar, she has rosy cheeks, her clothes look fashionable and the model doesn't change throughout in anyway shape or form. Not even blue lips when she's about to freeze to death. The model honestly looks fresh out of the new SFM porn collection on pornhub. You set up this desolate world with almost no hope left and the model looks like it was made by Mattel. Why skimp out there? Just thinking about the Wander's model and how it changes to look sickly, almost undead like as the game goes on makes this look embarassing. Again Shadow came out in 2005. As of the time of writing that was 17 years ago.
This game could've been amazing and I honestly think the team working on it learned alot from this. I'm interested to see their next project.
Can't recommend playing this one though.