any game that taps into my wanderlust so heavily that I'm freestyling my own shortcuts, discovering hidden areas, and (almost) getting out of bounds is just about guaranteed to get a hearty plus from me. as an enjoyer of 3D games with open environments - including open worlds when they aren't suffering from being excessively long and padded collectathons or their other usual trappings - there's this deep internal satisfaction I get from it that not many other gaming moments can exceed. in fact very few games have ever managed to evoke that same explorative feeling, an important distinction to make when some of them are among my favorite games of all time, like Shadow of the Colossus and Elden Ring.
it goes without saying that the emergent exploration in this game was intuitive and really really good. no guides or maps or anything, just me experimenting with the mechanics until I found a way to get to the highest point of the largest room in Castle Sansa. sadly I was blocked by invisible walls so I couldn't get out of bounds but at least I could admire the view.
the lack of a map (at the time of reviewing) never bothered me until late into the game when I mistook the library for the keep and decided to look up entrances to the keep without wasting more time, and again after that to reenter the underbelly. interconnection is a neat concept, but the execution here usually felt like a lot of my effort resulted in just looping back around to somewhere I'd been before without even unlocking a useful shortcut. it was more and more underwhelming every time it kept happening because the awe would turn into "wait I've already been here" way too often.
I do kinda wish there was something more to Pseudoregalia, like some kind of a plot to add some depth and narrative purpose to our protagonist's adventure in this dream(?) world, anything really. yet part of its appeal is the fact that it almost feels like an incomplete idea. even without a fully realized combat system, which wasn't a problem to me as I wasn't playing it for that, it still manages to feel like something special through exploration, music, sound design, visual style and more. if you have any level of appreciation for Super Mario 64 or really any 3D platformers of old, it's a must play.
it goes without saying that the emergent exploration in this game was intuitive and really really good. no guides or maps or anything, just me experimenting with the mechanics until I found a way to get to the highest point of the largest room in Castle Sansa. sadly I was blocked by invisible walls so I couldn't get out of bounds but at least I could admire the view.
the lack of a map (at the time of reviewing) never bothered me until late into the game when I mistook the library for the keep and decided to look up entrances to the keep without wasting more time, and again after that to reenter the underbelly. interconnection is a neat concept, but the execution here usually felt like a lot of my effort resulted in just looping back around to somewhere I'd been before without even unlocking a useful shortcut. it was more and more underwhelming every time it kept happening because the awe would turn into "wait I've already been here" way too often.
I do kinda wish there was something more to Pseudoregalia, like some kind of a plot to add some depth and narrative purpose to our protagonist's adventure in this dream(?) world, anything really. yet part of its appeal is the fact that it almost feels like an incomplete idea. even without a fully realized combat system, which wasn't a problem to me as I wasn't playing it for that, it still manages to feel like something special through exploration, music, sound design, visual style and more. if you have any level of appreciation for Super Mario 64 or really any 3D platformers of old, it's a must play.