Noita is hands down an incredible game. That said, it's not a game for everybody... and I came very close to leaving it a bad review in my first twenty hours or so of playing. I'll do my best to review the game fairly so you can see whether the game is for you:
Above all, Noita is a game about creativity and leveraging knowledge to succeed. You can't expect to win a run on the first attempt, nor the second, nor the third (yes, it has been done, but that's beside the point). As effectively none of the game's systems are spelled out to you - short of the controls - the only way to learn is through experimentation.
That gives rise to one of the biggest points of contention for the game. If you don't know that the spell to cast an explosion will hurt you, the way you'll learn is invariably that you'll get hit by yourself casting it. Given the small starting health pool and admirable output on some spells, it often will result in death and a new run. The speed at which a good run can be taken away from you after hours of labour can feel brutal. If you learn to enjoy the absurd ways in which you end up dying, and be willing to accept the inevitable deaths, Noita can in these early stages feel very fun.
Once you get you first victory, it will feel earnt over the ridiculous odds the game seems to throw at you. But more than that, when you play more you'll realise just how easy winning can become when you learn the ways to exploit every opportunity.
Difficulty and progression aside, I can only call Noita an incredible game because of its phenomenal depth. Being able to drag and drop spells of all sorts (projectiles and modifiers, through to logic gates (which I've honestly never used)) allows you to feel as if you are genuinely creating your own magic, rather than the mage classes in many other games which prescribe you very specific options, even if varied. Wands act as vessels, constraining your choice of spells so you have to be situationally opportunistic, whilst holding onto resources to build with better wands later in a run. Editing is restricted, meaning that you have to be decisive about what choices you make between segments of a game, and choosing between your well-crafted wands and those in the wild which may boast better spells/stats, but sacrifices something important you're holding.
I could go on about wandcrafting, but it is (in my opinion at least) one of the best systems in a game, for both being creative and allowing the user to be just as creative. And Noita offers many more complex systems, from alchemy to a world where every pixel is simulated.
It's also pretty funny when a creature with the world's longest Finnish name appears in your death messages.
**SPOILERS**
More on this - a brief but very significant set of spoilers:
[spoiler]This is a game where you can legitimately own an infinite health pool, and yet without the proper protection you could lose a run in a matter of seconds. It's a game where you need exponents to represent some enemy health, where you can at the end of a massive run struggle to find ways to find the firepower to die when the rest of the world has failed.[/spoiler]
There's so much more I could offer with draws to the game, but the main point is that it's easy to become annoyed if you're expecting to win. The fun of Noita - for me - is learning, and being able to exploit the knowledge you gain to get yet more knowledge, and slowly bend the world to your will.
I'll just finish by quoting the game - "The sacrifice of oneself to the pursuit of knowledge is the highest tribute to the gods."
P.S. love to From Grotto for composing the soundtrack
