I've found it to be a perfectly acceptable scaled down DP-style game, done on a more modestly sized budget and dev team, with overt Twin Peaks influences swapped for twee Englishness and storybook whimsy. (And with superfluous clunky TPS elements entirely eliminated) The main plot has only now just kicked off, but so far it's been a more laid back and low-key Swery experience, something that's probably at least partly attributable to the lower budget which means less bombastic cutscenes. We'll see what happens as the plot develops, but I'm expecting some weird fucking curveballs.
The gameplay might be a bit of a deal breaker for some, consisting largely of taking photos, fetch quests, reading dialogue boxes and farming (both the literal and the grindy video game kind). Movement and animation is clunky across the board. There's a ton of little inconveniences and annoyances too, like for example how the dog/cat transformations stop you in your tracks and how you can't go straight from cat to dog or vice versa without going back to human first. You get a fairly decent chuck of English countryside to explore, but outside of the main town of Rainy Woods, there's not much in the way of lore or characters to bump into as you'll mostly be finding crafting materials (And random animals to kill for said materials. Who knew there were so many turkeys living in middle England?)
It's still a Swery game, with tons of detail poured into the usual areas, like food (which you can snap pictures of and upload on Instagram Flamingo). Most realistic Scotch Egg model I've ever seen, 10/10
It's also on GamePass on both Xbox One/Series whatever the new one is and PC
It'd certainly be easier to recommend to a person that had a baseline Swery experience to calibrate their expectations. For a first Swery game, Deadly Premonition would the the natural choice (disregarding the problems with versions available on current platforms), but The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories would probably be a good choice too given its short length and concise platformer gameplay. (I'd LOVE to recommend you try out D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, the game was a fantastic bonkers adventure game with Swery firing on all cylinders and working with a decent budget, but sadly it got cancelled after 3 episodes :sadness-abysmal: )
I've found it to be a perfectly acceptable scaled down DP-style game, done on a more modestly sized budget and dev team, with overt Twin Peaks influences swapped for twee Englishness and storybook whimsy. (And with superfluous clunky TPS elements entirely eliminated) The main plot has only now just kicked off, but so far it's been a more laid back and low-key Swery experience, something that's probably at least partly attributable to the lower budget which means less bombastic cutscenes. We'll see what happens as the plot develops, but I'm expecting some weird fucking curveballs.
The gameplay might be a bit of a deal breaker for some, consisting largely of taking photos, fetch quests, reading dialogue boxes and farming (both the literal and the grindy video game kind). Movement and animation is clunky across the board. There's a ton of little inconveniences and annoyances too, like for example how the dog/cat transformations stop you in your tracks and how you can't go straight from cat to dog or vice versa without going back to human first. You get a fairly decent chuck of English countryside to explore, but outside of the main town of Rainy Woods, there's not much in the way of lore or characters to bump into as you'll mostly be finding crafting materials (And random animals to kill for said materials. Who knew there were so many turkeys living in middle England?)
It's still a Swery game, with tons of detail poured into the usual areas, like food (which you can snap pictures of and upload on
InstagramFlamingo). Most realistic Scotch Egg model I've ever seen, 10/10It's also on GamePass on both Xbox One/Series whatever the new one is and PC
It'd certainly be easier to recommend to a person that had a baseline Swery experience to calibrate their expectations. For a first Swery game, Deadly Premonition would the the natural choice (disregarding the problems with versions available on current platforms), but The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories would probably be a good choice too given its short length and concise platformer gameplay. (I'd LOVE to recommend you try out D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, the game was a fantastic bonkers adventure game with Swery firing on all cylinders and working with a decent budget, but sadly it got cancelled after 3 episodes :sadness-abysmal: )
spoiler
Everyone should still play D4, the soundtrack was great