A lot of the fight scenes has excellent custom music too.
Many bold, varied music choices.
Story
Writing is often artificial and clumsy
The acting is often good enough to make up for the weak writing, especially in the aftermath of Gustave’s death.
Solve a puzzle to turn a page pacing makes it hard to stay engaged with the story
The macguffin heavy story is formulaic
The overworld is bad
The collectibles are boring. This uncritical usage of genre tropes lessens the game at multiple points.
Has nothing to say about the human condition.
It does nothing with the existentialism of the Paintress looming over everything
The cutscene death of Gustave was very poorly done
Nevrons are boring
One note characters - especially Gustave. Their dominant trait is hero and not much more.
The maze nevron and Renoir is Verso’s father reveal were terribly written. Terrible acting for Lune here too.
I hate the bald mechanics of spending time to improve relationships and the writing is consistently terrible in those parts
How did the grapple point team get inside the monolith? This worldbuilding feels too much like just-in-time justifications.
Audio logs largely make no sense to me. Stay in radio contact with Lumiere. Also, put useful information in your logs.
I continue to find “Would You Kindly” boring. The big reveal after killing the Paintress did nothing for me. This could have been much better integrated into the game story before this.
I don’t really understand why the conflict behind the conflict is so indirect.
Telling me how powerful the Axons are was an eyeroll and a waste of time.
The idea of one unexplained world behind a world with holes in it is frustrating for me. It’s not a satisfying payoff. It doesn’t resolve the holes. It’s arbitrary.
“Actually I prefer Maelle” is the “Rey Who? Rey Skywalker” of video games
Surely if she can resurrect Lune and Sciel, she can resurrect Gustave.
Thank goodness for Esquie
Ending the game by choosing to fight as Verso or Maelle is excellent
Verso’s acceptance of his own death is strong character work
Level Design
Level design is miserable and overlarge
Invisible walls, unintuitive geometry, lots of pointless backtracking, lack of landmarks, overlarge
The focus on hidden rewards exacerbates this
Miserable platforming
If the game allows me to run in the graveyard, then that is part of the game’s imagination.
Combat
The combat is tuned poorly - I don’t have the time for the interesting combos
Interesting theoretical combos
I appreciate the varied combat styles of the different characters.
Adding the real time element of parrying is a fun starting point even if the implementation is weak
The parry system is overly dominant and rewards rote learning
I’ll dissect the parry system in a different piece.