Hey, I just finished the game and I have to say, I *loved* it. Really, truly, this game is going to be one of those top-5 games that I play over & over & over ... I loved it. Everything about it:
-How orderly & pretty everything is when you start the game, and how it goes from safe -> exciting & wild -> dangerous -> horror is just ... perfect.
-How "large" the world & enemies are
-How the game rewards you for exploring
-How every time you get a new item or ability and think, "oh now the game is going to be too easy..." the difficulty setting gets kicked up just the right amount
This game just has everything about it that makes it look and feel like the best of the old games, and the "worst" (secretly best):
-The fact that you can die, and it's not hard to do, makes the entire world, especially later levels, feel incredibly dangerous - the whole game just walked the tightrope between feeling so dangerous that the game is cheap and hard for the sake of being hard, and being too easy. Going through the Abyss for the first time, everything about it - seeing my first angler fish standing dead still in the water, feeling so clausterphobic in the dark because I have such a small radius of light and enemies can be so big, having this tiny beam of light - this is one of my favorite game memories of all time now. I remember coming through a narrow tunnel, and being precluded from having my light out, and emerging into a small room filled with perhaps a dozen crabs with their glowing eyes and just basically sh**ing my pants and thinking, this game is awesome.
-I know other players have gripes about it, and I do too, a little bit, I guess, but I don't want a thing to change - the fact that the game is so sparse with hints of any kind. There is a definite narrative, but it is patchwork, woven together through exploring, and it is easy to think, Where do I go now? This does two things: 1) gives the game a slightly unpolished feel, making the game feel INCREDIBLY immersive - that unpolished feel makes it feel unpolished like reality. The game can be unfair and punishing, which makes overcoming its challenges very rewarding and enjoyable. 2) Involves me in the narrative more than I would have expected. This isn't a, "Here is your quest, return to me and I will give you something else to do" - I have to find what to do, which makes plot and direction scarce resources, which makes me value them very much. This can go too far, obviously, and the game did it only once by my count, but at least it never went too far in the other direction - making me feel I was just running from bossfight-cutscene to bossfight-cutscene like so many games do. Bottom line, little communication made it feel like I was chasing it, like it was pulling me, and not it pushing me along a set of railroad tracks.
I remember seeing jumping puzzles and thinking to myself, "JUMPING PUZZLES?! What is this, 1995?" and then smiling, because this game made me feel like it was 1995 again, and I was just a kid with a video game.
You guys are clearly pros, and so you know you're good at what you do, and so I'm sure none of this is a surprise - but damn, what a fun time. Can't wait for the next, you have made yourselves another Aquaria fan, and I will now start doing my best to proseletyze this game to my friends. Thanks for such an awesome return to a $20 investment.
