Finished it a few days ago. I think I'm going to land on an 8.5/10. Absolutely loved the game, but it does play it a bit too safe on the platforming for too long. Combat actually works really well, but segmenting it into separate areas makes it feel more predictable and repetitive than it needs to. If they managed to mix in enemies along the way more organically, I think the combat they have actually works very well.
If anyone wonders why MS bought these guys, it's because of this game. It's so, so much better than anything they've done previously. The graphics and art style blew me away honestly. I might make a few more gifs, but the game is stunning. For me, it's easily in the top 10 best visuals in a game this entire generation. Just looking at the plants and trees around the mansion was impressive; so many unique varieties of tree all covering the garden. The swamp was possibly the coolest looking level in the game, with that riverboat. Loved the final levels as well which I won't spoil, and some of the earlier levels have a lot of nice looking water elements.
I thought Hazel was actually a great character. She goes on through the classic hero's journey instead of being some perfect Mary Sue the entire time. She misreads people, doesn't understand the full context around things, and grows through the game like any normal hero would. I liked how they toss in that subtle reference to her being a track athlete at the very end with the bottle. I thought her character design was fantastic, and all of her costumes are great. Roux is one of the coolest looking characters I've seen this year.
The lore and story was great as well. Each story element was really surprisingly dark. They keep it pretty light throughout so it's almost easy to overlook how brutal some of it actually is, like an old style fairy tale. A murdered brother, a starved and abused animal, a kid watching his mom die with no health care or a runaway slave. I really liked how they treat animals as equals throughout the game, with the story of Two-Toed Tom being held up right next to the other ones. Each story is amplified by the phenomenal music as well. As mentioned already, the Benji song is probably the most brutal one and it's great, but they're all great. It's easily my OST of the year so far not only because of how well done it is, but how original it is. Not once have I heard an OST like this in a game.
It's clear they purposefully made this a very casual game in terms of the platforming. When you get to the clocktower they cut loose just a tiny bit, so you know they're clearly capable of it if they wanted. I actually hated how brutal the combat difficulty got in Kena, and I thought the combat difficulty was just about right here. By the end I had enough to do to keep it entertaining between dashing around, possessing stronger enemies, doing parries with the force push or pushing the projectiles back, pulling in enemies for the kill that instantly recharges it, etc. Bosses were all pretty breezy, but it's appropriate for this genre and again much better than something like Kena where the difficulty doesn't really match the game or genre at all.
I think it stands next to other art platformers like Psychonauts and highly recommend it. The games are about celebrating the art design and the setting and mostly breezy gameplay, and they accomplish that masterfully for the most part. A sequel could be even better and easily clear a 90 for me with more complex level design. For some reason these games are always overlooked when they come out and only years later do people act like they miss it; Psychonauts, Puppeteer, Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, breezy art platformers that always seem to bomb because of the same criticism, but then people act like they want more. This is more polished and better made than most of its peers.
