Mai: Child of Ages

I don't even know where to begin. I finished the game 100% back in April, but after that, I just wanted to rest. I forced myself to finish the game, and it left a bad aftertaste that made me just not want to touch it again. Although at first I really enjoyed the game for its free price. The gameplay is built around Mai's ability to travel through time. Young Mai focuses on parkour and puzzles, while the adult Mai can't jump, but she can fight. Combat for the adult Mai is incredibly boring - sword-shield-sword-shield - and it quickly becomes boring and monotonous. The beginning of the game drew me in - a colorful world, almost like on consoles, with interesting visuals, albeit using pre-made assets. I want to explore it, but there's one catch: the game is something of a Metroidvania (but no one will tell you this). That is, at the beginning, there's a lot of loot scattered about that's impossible to obtain without skills acquired through the story. And one of them is the double jump, which you get almost at the endgame, and it gave me a second wind to loot all the secrets and progress further when I was close to leaving this game out of boredom. Another bad game design is "misleading". At the very beginning, you have a "double jump," meaning every second jump you make is higher than the first. I thought that in all the guides people were talking about it, and through all sorts of crutches, choosing comfortable positions, I tried to jump to where, in theory, you should jump with a REAL double jump. Just keep that in mind when you will play. And after these colors... begins the industrial island, where I first wanted to quit the game. A very murky, black-and-purple palette that hurts my eyes. A LOT of backtracking to a time-altering plant, and then running to the desired point through respawning enemies (remember the unbearable combat). In little Mai, we'll mostly be running through the same dark and murky caves with monotonous puzzles. For me, the game is too drawn out. If they cut out a couple of these industrial islands, NOTHING would have changed. As well as backtracking, which is a very big flaw in the game. PLOT. Very, very strange. I thought it would be something metaphorical and philosophical, like in thatgamecompany games (Sky, Journey, etc.). No, the plot here is simply unwritten, lacking any kind of conclusion or moral. What follows is a retelling of what I remember, spoiler alert. [spoiler] Once upon a time, in 2054, during the Great War, all cities on Earth were wiped out. Only scientist Jacob survived, who began creating robots to survive. During an expedition, he discovers a plant that transcends time and space. By researching it, he attempts to return to the past to correct humanity's mistakes, thereby saving it. Meanwhile, on an island, a grandfather who lived there finds Mai in the forest and raises her. One day, he falls fatally ill, saying he's always wondered what lies beyond the sea. We sail there and encounter Jacob's robot factories. It turns out the robots have become so advanced that they've escaped Jacob's control. We destroy three factories and sail to the fourth, where we're met by old Jacob. It turns out he'd been tracking us and waiting for us to arrive. After studying the plant, he realized that you can only travel to the future. But you can also travel to the past, though only by sacrificing the plant's fruit - Mai. The higher powers (yes, they give Mai her various hints and abilities) don't like this arrangement, so Jacob locks Mai away. Mai escapes, but Jacob blows up the base, revealing what human civilization once looked like before dying. In the end, the higher powers declare that humanity was a "failed" experiment, and now the Earth will be populated by a new race, born from nature, that will care for it and prosper, and Mai will be their queen. In the post-credits scene, we see new children emerging from plants, and also the fact that there are multiple "higher powers." So, playing as Mai, we literally finished off humanity, and they present it as a victory to us - that's a 10/10 plot! (sarcasm) [/spoiler] The game needs some serious polishing, I wouldn't recommend it in its current state.