i really wish i enjoyed this game as much as everyone else does (or people said i would).

for a game described to me as "metroidvania with precision platforming meets Dark Souls," it really comes out feeling like less than a sum of those parts. in terms of the world design and exploration, the game is great at matching the joy of breaking into every tiny crevasse to find secrets and lore that Dark Souls does. the characters and lightly revealed lore that's steeped in mystery is great. the platforming is serviceable, but whenever the game decides to flip the switch to try and turn into Super Meat Boy (sometimes quite literally with buzzsaws) it feels very disjointed and out of place.

the combat (mainly by way of the bosses) by comparison feels like a chore. even by the end of the game when i had gotten a lot better at maneuvering in fights, most of the boss fights were not engaging or challenging beyond "hope you get the good pattern that allows you to heal". in addition to this, why not be more generous with benches in regards to boss placements?

it's small decisions like this that continued to baffle me as time went on. you get more movement options as the game unfolds, but trekking between areas connected by stags still feels arduous enough to dissuade me from wanting to explore more. i enjoy the lore of the stags, but would fast travelling between benches break the game so much to prevent it from being included?

it's things like this that makes me feel like the game is bloated. this may be a problem of playing the game now that there's 4 extra content patches (give players a way to play the launch version pleaseeeee), but there's just so much in the game that feels like Content For Content's Sake. the game like a love letter to the old metroidvanias the developers loved that has been weighed down by AAA games' addiction to More. i can see the mechanics (literally) taken 1-to-1 from Super Metroid, but i don't see the tightly crafted world, simplicity, or elegance of it. i see a checklist of things to waste time doing rather than a curated experience.

Ultimately dropped for the simple fact that combat becomes basically impossible to read.

Plus, the story kinda goes all over the place and the characters kinda fail to keep my interest up.

It's a good game, but not my game.

Amazing masterpiece, the kind of game I'd love everyone to play, from my pupils at school to my mother who does not question the reality of the stuff she hears.
In this mini game you have to decide the relevance that each news has in the main page of the NYTimes, being careful (or just trying to piss off) the main sponsors of the newspaper: the police, Israel and the rich people. Changing the title of news is so effective in the game that makes you wonder how many times did you get trapped in this mind game? Are your ideas yours or are you affected by a particular wording?

(I won the game and I had the worst ending possibile, the one in which press is a servant of people of power)

Trivia Time!

The real reason we greenlit this game was that we just thought it was funny to have Treasure develop a game all about treasure

Stay tuned for more Trivia Time segments in the near future!

I think I finished it? idk lol.

Solid level design, great amount of power ups and good variety in level gimmicks. I like the Koopalings even if they are piss easy to beat.

It's one of the better ones but I don't think it's my favorite.