I have completed 100% of the game. Story, collectibles, achievements, all of it. This review comes from a place of thought and experience.
I will be discussing the different factors influencing my review in this order:
Visuals, story, puzzles and gameplay, the collectathon that is the 100% achievement, then some miscellaneous points that don't really fit anywhere else.
Let's start of positive, the visuals are pretty great. Far from perfect, but they are consistently the highlight of the game. Environments are unique and interesting, with lots of visual storytelling. It is very hard to get lost in these environments, or at the very least hard to go the wrong way.
Unfortunately, it's downhill from there.
The story isn't that great. It's a standard duo where both characters have forgotten their memory, with the protagonist being the "This person is bad, but don't worry, they were completely justified, so they were actually the good guy!" trope. There are also 2-3 cutscenes per cutscene, so you have to hold the skip button multiple times. Very annoying.
Meanwhile, your companion turns out to be the only other character we get any dialogue from, who also happens to be the father, as well as the antagonist of the story, which is nothing but predictable. The only real twist was there were [i]two[/i] twists, but it doesn't really help the story.
The story also doesn't aid the environmental storytelling. So many interesting questions, like "Why is nobody from this civilization left?" are never answered.
On a positive note, you can mute the narrator.
Puzzles are stated better and more coherently in [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/shaman442/recommended/563840/]this review[/url], but to summarize, they're boring. I just thought they were worth mentioning.
The gameplay is horrendous. The sensitivity is garbage, making turning around a chore, all the animals are floaty and unresponsive, it's impossible to be precise, and the bindings are terrible. Many of the birds need to be corralled into flying low enough to obtain collectables, even though that's the only way to reach many of them. There are options where you can hold the spacebar for auto sprint, but that doesn't work with all the animals.
The game also has a fall protection that was implemented horribly. Most games will teleport the player back if they fall out of bounds, but this game teleports you back if you fall for too long, meaning jumps from most ledges will teleport you right back, or even worse, farther back than you originally were. This has been one of the worst implementations in fall protection I have ever seen. It is bafflingly horrible.
And finally, for all the ground animals, shift is run, and space is jump. But for all the fish and birds, the keybinds are reversed, so shift is jump/fly up, and space is the sprint key.
Why? There was no reason to overcomplicate this! It makes switching between flying/swimming and running a pain.
And finally, regarding keybinds, the game tells you twice that R is the ram keybind.
It is not. That would be the Ctrl key.
Again, why? How did this get past QA testing?
Next is the collectathon.
There are 77 relics, and 142 mushrooms to collect for the 100% achievement. Yes, I know it's optional, but I love achievements. This wouldn't be so bad if the controls were floaty
Remember how I mentioned the controls were terrible? Well there is a section where you control a mudfish and race down a hill. This sequence breaks a few times on its own, but even worse is there are 5 mushrooms to collect here. Thankfully you just need to get close enough to them, but if you miss them, the only way to go back is to reload. I had to reset at least 10 times to fully collect all of them.
Now to add salt to the wound, the game only has stats (mushrooms, memories, and relics) listed for every chapter. This is a problem, because there are multiple subchapters. Chapters four and five both have six subchapters each. Missing one mushroom in either of these chapters? You need to check every subchapter until you find it. Which I had to do multiple times. This, plus the dodgy controls, means collecting all the items is far more painful than it has any right to be.
Finally, miscellaneous bits.
The setting is unclear. It seems to be very obviously American, with inspirations from North and South American cultures, and animals like hummingbirds, bison, and armadillos, but then there are parrots, elephants, and bamboo? It doesn't make any sense.
The music is good, but it didn't stick out too much to me.
The sandstorm in chapter 5 was very loud, and the snowstorm near the final chapter slowed the already slow pace to a crawl.
There were things this game did well. But as it stands, it would have been better as an animated movie. Not a game.
