Lorn's Lure

SPOILERS I was tempted to leave a negative review but overall I would say I enjoyed my time enough I would say that the good parts are still worth a play. I saw a lot of people mentioning this and was kind of hoping it wasn't true, but jesus christ the last three levels are absolutely terrible. Still, I think the game's other parts outweigh the negative and I would still reccomend to play it on a sale. There's been plenty of these Blame! influenced mega structure exploration type games in recent years. A similar vibe to Metal Garden, Naissance, and Babbdi. On the aesthetic front, the game holds up pretty well - plenty of stunning, huge environments to bask in with a good diversity in style and level design. This game captures something almost no other does, which is the feeling of traversing out of bounds of a game world. It feels like getting outside the level in a game like HL2 or something and having to somehow find a route forwards, which feels awesome when it works. Its usually not too hard to tell where to go but later on the game definitely suffers from being a bit too esoteric which I'll get to. I wish the universe could have been fleshed out more but the mystique is a fine alternative. Ironically, I think the game's best level is level 3, this insanely tight and eerie cave crawling level that would give nutty putty a run for its money. It's got none of the grand scale and is a more laid back kind of level where you can get into a flow traversing alternating segments of caves and industrial piping. The first five levels I think are pretty good in this aspect. Unfortunately, the game really loses grasp of this concept in the last three levels becoming incredibly punishing out of nowhere, and also extremely confusing. It is ok for a game to be hard, I'm not a baby! But when it comes out of nowhere in the last hours of the game, when I'm expecting to be able to get into a flow and want to see the ending? It is insanely frustrating. Level 6 is particularly egregious, starting with this extreme dropper segment, with almost no checkpoints and no pointers where the player is even supposed to go. The windy tower bit at the end also had me scratching my head as how to progress. Level 7 is fortunately a little better. Then the game gets to the final level, which is so bad I wanted to quit the game and just leave a negative review. Firstly, the level starts by introducing an entirely new mechanic, the grappling hook, which makes up the bulk of this level's gameplay. To me, this just feels so random and divorced from the rest of the game's progression? There have been plenty of other movement mechanics introduced, but to have one on the last level come out of nowhere and basically displace the rest of the gameplay you've been training on the whole time just feels very... uninspired and arbitrary. It's like they didn't think the game's mechanics were strong enough to suit the intense boss rush- oh yeah the game randomly ends with this insanely intense timed boss rush??? Again, it kind of comes out of left field and doesn't feel like a satisfying or logical conclusion to the atmospheric climbing odyssey that the last 7 hours have been about. And don't get me started on the lack of checkpoints and extreme difficulty. Still, despite all that the game has some good, and dare I say even great moments to be had. Usually I'm pretty skeptical of these trendy "vibey PS1 style megastructure games" but the passion and strength of this game really won me over and I would definitely reccomend you give this game a shot if its on sale.