I played through the game together with my girlfriend and so I can't really say anything about the singleplayer experience. But the game suffers from some performance issues so severe that I doubt the game runs much smoother in singleplayer. If you're not ok with playing a game that rarely manages to put out a stable 30fps, then maybe this peticular game is not for you.

Performance issues aside tho, it's a somewhat solid game that tries to walk in the same footsteps as it's predecessor, but doesn't fill the shoes all that well. The first Hyrule Warriors was better paced and the maps were better designed than in Age pf Calamity. In the first Hyrule Warriors the maps where designed with connectivity in mind where each road and outpost led to other roads and outposts. This brought a nice flow to how you moved around the maps. In Age of Calamity a lot of outposts are situated at dead ends with narrow passageways which disrupts the general flow of movement in the game and makes to maps unclear and difficult to navigate.

Overall it's a slightly lukewarm successor to the superior Hyrule Warriors that starts to drag quite a bit in the later half of the game, especially towards the end. To be honest, if it weren't for my girlfriends companionship I probably wouldn't have gotten through the entirety of it. Good company really does make any situation bearable, huh.

Completed with all achievements except for "All In" unlocked (950G). In a departure from their excellent SteamWorld series, Image & Form take their first steps into 3D with The Gunk, an exploration and light platforming game set on an alien planet. Perhaps the key mechanic features in the title, as our protagonist Rani finds the world plagued by a gloopy substance that she dubs simply "the gunk", which she quickly takes as a goal to clean from the planet using her vacuum cleaner-esque handheld gadget. Exploring the planet and seeing nature bloom into life as Rani sucks up this gunk is undoubtedly satisfying and remains so throughout the game's fairly short (typically sub-ten hour) length, though a sense of excessive repetition does start to creep in towards the end of the game.

Ultimately there's not a huge amount to the gameplay beyond the interaction with the gunk - navigating the world is fairly linear and while there's some puzzle-solving and platforming gameplay, and a few combat encounters, it's rarely much of a challenge, serving more to offer some greater variety. Away from the mechanics, there's a serviceable underlying narrative to drive forward the gameplay and the dialogue between Rani and her travelling companion is fun to follow - and overall The Gunk is a perfectly solid game, just not reaching the highs that we've come to expect from the SteamWorld games.