If I had known this was a port of a mobile game, I would've avoided it. While it's not a [i]bad[/i] game exactly... It's like an attempt to make a game [i]like[/i] Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, but for iOS devices circa 2012. This game is extremely simplistic. Unlike Zelda games, you don't really get any items or gadgets that give you new ways to interact with the world. You get one: a pair of boots that let you hop over small gaps and dodge roll... at the cost of stamina. You [i]do[/i] get magic, but aside from killing certain specific monsters and solving some puzzles, it's not particularly useful. Your magic meter is so short when you get your first spell that you can only ever cast twice before needing to refill, which is endlessly frustrating, considering enemies constantly respawn.
Anyway, back to the stamina meter, as it's something of a throughline for many of my problems with this game. This bar is so completely unnecessary. It's used to sprint, roll, jump, block, and swim.
Sprint - You're going to want to sprint as often as possible because your walking speed is stiff and slow. It feels like there's inertial when you start walking from a dead stop, so it takes a moment to start going... but at the same time, the nanosecond you release the control stick to stop, you HALT on a dime. Even when you do start going at your full walking speed, you're going to feel like you're slogging through mud. However, you can only sprint for one long burst (in a straight line) or two short bursts (if you got interrupted or had to turn) before completely running out of stamina and having to wait like 15 seconds to be able to sprint again. It's agonizingly slow to refill. And because your stamina is used for so many other things and recharges so slowly, you're usually best off not sprinting, lest you get stuck waiting to recharge anyway or accidentally drowning... we'll get to that.
Roll - Unlike Wind Waker, your roll uses stamina. You can roll maybe five times before needing to completely refill. Why does it use stamina? Probably because it helps you move faster and, well, we can't have that, can we?
Jump - WHY this game uses stamina to jump I cannot possibly fathom. God forbid you try to solve a jumping puzzle to quickly. Bear in mind, jumping is context sensitive. YOU CANNOT JUMP ANY OLD PLACE. You can ONLY jump on elevated ledges to other elevated ledges one block apart. So please... somebody... tell me why your jumps are tied to stamina use. It makes no sense.
Block - Finally, a stamina use that makes the slightest amount of sense. It's to keep you from turtling up in fights... except 99% of the fights you'll have in this game are so laughably easy, you won't even need to block. And when you [i]do[/i] reach the points where you need to block, the stamina meter runs out so quickly that it renders blocking annoying. Like the LoZ games, you will get a kind of mirror shield in this game. You will need to use it to solve puzzles. UNLIKE the LoZ games, you're basically on a timer whenever you're trying to use the shield to solve said puzzles because of the stamina meter. Awful.
Swim - Bizarrely, you don't always use stamina when swimming. You only use stamina when swimming in open ocean water (like on a coast or similar). If you're in a body of water disconnected from the shore, you can swim indefinitely. Again, I get why this was done - to prevent the player from possibly sequence breaking by swimming around the coast or getting too far away from the islands - but the implementation just sucks. Going back to Wind Waker again: you also couldn't swim in open water very long in that without drowning... except in Wind Waker, you're never expected to swim between any two points. Anytime you're swimming in WW, it's because you couldn't get your boat close enough to the shore, or you fell out. In [i]this[/i] game, there are at least two places where you are required to swim and, as expected, your stamina meter is so limited, you'll probably end up drowning in either or both occasions.
There's just no reason for any of this. All of these problems would be solved by either giving the player more stamina, increasing the walking speed, and / or outright removing the stamina mechanic because it serves no purpose... yet, there it is.
The puzzles in this game are so comically easy that they barely qualify as puzzles.
I have a decent PC built for gaming. It's not even a year old. Yet this mobile game from 2014 (or whenever) runs very poorly. By default, the framerate was set to 30 fps, which made everything look choppy and terrible. You can raise the rate, thankfully, but even then, there are stutters and frame drops, especially when fishing.
Fishing... utterly pointless in this game. You cannot sell what you catch... not that there's anything worth buying. There's no crafting, cooking, or alchemy systems that would utilize fish. All it is is a waste of time. The only time fishing is even required by the game is on an optional, late game island that was added after the game released (i.e. it's not part of the storyline islands in any way).
The only audience I feel would appreciate this game for what it is would be very, very young children who haven't played video games before. It's slow enough, easy enough, and not particularly punishing, so that if it's your first or second game ever, you'd probably be into it. Everyone else? Well, how many kid's games do you normally play? That's what I thought. Avoid it. You will be underwhelmed.
As a side note, Steam really should have warning labels if games are ports from mobile. Sometimes it's obvious. It wasn't here... until after I started playing. It'd also be nice if there were age recommendations... not like a strictly-enforced ESRB thing, but just a heads up like, "Best for an audience between 4 and 10" or whatever.
