Despite everything, it's still ubisoft. And as a thumb of rule; fuck Ubisoft.

It's a good game without a doubt. I feel like we've been spoiled with bunch of Metroidvanias in recent years. I've had the opportunity to play quite a bunch of them. I don't think it really lives up to S/A tier metroidvanias like Bloodstained, Hollow Knight, Ori etc., and I'd personally replay cute indies like Momodora or Haiku the Robot over this.

I cursed a lot during my initial hours within the game, had a love and hate relationship. Endgame stuff was good although you get overpowered up to a point where combat would not matter anymore but it's still some sort of power fantasy. Combat, to me, never reached to its full potential but it ended up fun goofing around. Platforming, especially when precision required, was nuts at times but I loved it.

Pretty much all the metroidvanias due to their inherent nature limit you when you going through initial phases but I'd believe there is a small pacing issue with Lost Crown. First few hours felt like a real chore unlike other metroidvanias whereas the last few hours really flew by.

Story is uninspring, mc is a real dudebro and all the other cast is forgottable so tldr it checks all the boxes story-wise for being a Ubi game. The unfortunate part is the whole track is forgettable too. Knowing the former Ubi games this is a noticeable lack of. The game doesn't want to pump you up for its bosses at all.

And the bosses were... bleh. I don't really know if they know how to make a proper boss fight. There were a few solid but the rest were laughable. Menolias is bound to be cheesed. All you have to do is to sit on the fucking edge of the stage, dodge his attacks and then attack ranged for a while if you can afford while he inevitably would jump onto your lap. Rinse and repeat. This is not a strat for a tough boss either, it came as natural before I knew it was a thing. I just happened to did it and then lol'd at how terrible its design was. Many people had a problem beating him (compared to all other bosses) solely because his gimmick where you only need to break the boss and that's quite easy to do so. I already had a massive health bar going into the final boss so I won't even speak about that. I smacked the shit out of the bitch. This is a balancing issue my dear.

The game is polished decently but there had been times where game literally got broke and I lost my progress over 20 mins. I do not really like the fact that you need to utilize Wak-Wak trees to save your game. Autosaves should have been more common when you pick up items and make a recognizable progress. And as a QOL I'd prefer tree fast travels although it would make traversal trivial. Speaking of traversal, it's often fast and fluid but I observed a bunch of animation bugs there too.

The game length is fine (to 100% or obtain plat, rushing through the story is already quite short) but it still feels bloated for some reason. Looking back at the map though, I am proud to uncover it fully. Stages and different areas connected wisely and you are able to utilize clever solutions for your traversal issues. Puzzles are serviceable, some of them felt a bit cryptic, ngl. Although not a plat killer, there were certain quest bugs that I needed to find a workaround, even after patch 1.04. Before 1.03, many people locked out of their trophies and had to go new game. For once, I don't want to be annoyed when playing a fucking Ubisoft game. Pretty please. I'd give it a 4 if it was not for all these issues. It's hard to turn a blind eye on these stuff.

In short: Lower budget really shows itself here. I think the team did a solid job with what they had in their hands but I couldn't necessarily say Ubisoft gave a single fuck about this game other than using it to test the waters in an attempt to revitalize the franchise. It can be something great in a potential sequel though. But due to lack of marketing it barely sells. Well, well, well... The dilemma.