I had an ok time playing through Unsighted, but there wasn't a lot that really stuck with me. It has moments of excellent execution, but most of the game didn't really deliver for me.
Visually, Unsighted has an extreme amount of variance. Some of the pixel art is very well done. The main character is super high quality and most of the sprites you see in combat are well animated and detailed. Most of the other characters look like they are a different style or artist though... honestly pretty rough. The environment art is also hit or miss -- a lot of the time it is difficult to determine height or position of platforms in the world.
The narrative is too heavy handed for me. It is extremely self-serious and sentimental, though that is definitely the vibe they are going for. The content is fine, but I just wasn't that invested.
This extends to the music which is basically a dirge throughout. The game is too long for this to be effective though, and it was just boring and tiresome by the end.
The serious, sad vibes come through in gameplay which is cool, even if it doesn't work super well. Every character in the game has a timer (though many have timers so high they are irrelevant), when the timer ends that character dies permanently (turned into an Unsighted... basically a rogue machine). This is a cool idea, but the constant timer just made me feel like I didn't have time to get to know any of them, so I didn't actually care that they died (other than my fairy companion, who is the only one I used timer extension dust on). The main characters also have special items they give you "if only they had enough time," which really means "give me 3 dust for this item." It feels very transactional and I wasn't really compelled to do it.
Unsighted has a fairly strong gameplay loop of top-down, parry-based combat and exploration with light metroidvania elements.
I enjoyed getting new abilities and unlocking new areas. There are a couple of cool abilities you get that work really well and feel good to use and I like that they are tied to weapons you equip. It feels like you have an arsenal of gadgets by the end. The level design feels very arbitrary and I never had a super clear idea of where I was going or how to get there. I spent a lot of time wandering around looking for the one chest that had the item I needed to progress.
Combat in Unsighted indexes hard on the parry, with many of the fights all but requiring you to master it. The parry works well enough and feels pretty good to land -- enough to carry me through the game, despite much of the rest of the combat feeling pretty loose. There are some arbitrary-seeming rules about when you can be damaged. Jumping dodges some abilities and using a potion makes you temporarily invincible, but not for the whole duration, so you often get hit immediately. Ability buffering can be unresponsive too -- certain states prevent you from healing, but I never had a clear idea what caused this, so the potion just felt unresponsive most of the time unless I stopped everything to use it, leading to the aforementioned post-healing damage.
In addition to these input issues, a lot of the attacks and movements are heavily animation driven and big, so Alma feels very wild and out of control.
Unsighted definitely feels like the team tried to tackle slightly too much. I would have liked this game a lot more if it was about half the length with slightly more polished combat. A shorter length may have helped the over-serious story from overstaying its welcome as well.
Visually, Unsighted has an extreme amount of variance. Some of the pixel art is very well done. The main character is super high quality and most of the sprites you see in combat are well animated and detailed. Most of the other characters look like they are a different style or artist though... honestly pretty rough. The environment art is also hit or miss -- a lot of the time it is difficult to determine height or position of platforms in the world.
The narrative is too heavy handed for me. It is extremely self-serious and sentimental, though that is definitely the vibe they are going for. The content is fine, but I just wasn't that invested.
This extends to the music which is basically a dirge throughout. The game is too long for this to be effective though, and it was just boring and tiresome by the end.
The serious, sad vibes come through in gameplay which is cool, even if it doesn't work super well. Every character in the game has a timer (though many have timers so high they are irrelevant), when the timer ends that character dies permanently (turned into an Unsighted... basically a rogue machine). This is a cool idea, but the constant timer just made me feel like I didn't have time to get to know any of them, so I didn't actually care that they died (other than my fairy companion, who is the only one I used timer extension dust on). The main characters also have special items they give you "if only they had enough time," which really means "give me 3 dust for this item." It feels very transactional and I wasn't really compelled to do it.
Unsighted has a fairly strong gameplay loop of top-down, parry-based combat and exploration with light metroidvania elements.
I enjoyed getting new abilities and unlocking new areas. There are a couple of cool abilities you get that work really well and feel good to use and I like that they are tied to weapons you equip. It feels like you have an arsenal of gadgets by the end. The level design feels very arbitrary and I never had a super clear idea of where I was going or how to get there. I spent a lot of time wandering around looking for the one chest that had the item I needed to progress.
Combat in Unsighted indexes hard on the parry, with many of the fights all but requiring you to master it. The parry works well enough and feels pretty good to land -- enough to carry me through the game, despite much of the rest of the combat feeling pretty loose. There are some arbitrary-seeming rules about when you can be damaged. Jumping dodges some abilities and using a potion makes you temporarily invincible, but not for the whole duration, so you often get hit immediately. Ability buffering can be unresponsive too -- certain states prevent you from healing, but I never had a clear idea what caused this, so the potion just felt unresponsive most of the time unless I stopped everything to use it, leading to the aforementioned post-healing damage.
In addition to these input issues, a lot of the attacks and movements are heavily animation driven and big, so Alma feels very wild and out of control.
Unsighted definitely feels like the team tried to tackle slightly too much. I would have liked this game a lot more if it was about half the length with slightly more polished combat. A shorter length may have helped the over-serious story from overstaying its welcome as well.
Reviewed on Oct 04, 2022