TL:DR
This review is marked positive but truly it is a mixed opinion. This game is very cute, and has a nice little story with amazing art and soundtrack. Despite no dialogue and little text it has some great storytelling with some of the spirits and areas IMO. However it is full of FOMO, overpriced cosmetics, and little to no respect to your time if you want to buy any cosmetics, emotes, etc. from spirits. ♥♥♥♥♥♥ control schemes with forced camera control, forced cutscenes that you have to watch every time even with a skip CS setting on will burn you out eventually.
Ultimately. I think most people who are interested should play this game 1 time through at least, its great if you can just bring a external friend into rather than try to actually find someone in game to do it with.
Full Review
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I've been playing this game on and off for the past 5 years or so roughly, and its a mixed bag. I really enjoy this game at times and really hate it to be honest. This game is very beautiful and visually stunning, the soundtrack is great and if you liked Journey it has a equally matching great story to discover. It truly is a spiritual successor to it.
However there are a lot of problems... There's so much customization for your character! Which is great in most games however getting these items is a giant problem. Every item in this game is a massive grind. The real money items in this game are insanely overpriced, I don't know if these are scaled for where you are locally as well but sometimes $15 to $25 USD for some hair, capes, etc. it's insane. I'm sorry, but its outrageous and this is coming from someone who has spent their money on some of it. A majority of items can and should be like over 30% discounted.
Besides the real money items, there are plenty of F2P cosmetics anyone can get, the only issue is that it takes a long ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time to get them. The amount of candles it costs when roughly the average person who is willing to login everyday will only get like 5-6 a day maybe from doing passive dailies, and maybe some of the timed wax drop events bump it up to 10-13. Unless you are joining some AFK candle farm run with people you will not be earning the average 15+ from doing a grey CR without spending quite a bit of time on the game every day. This is notoriously the major reason i have stopped playing this game when it dreads me that i need to login and do dailies, do timed events, and do even more CR after all of that if i don't want to miss anything.
Then there is the heart currency. Currently, the ways to obtain hearts which are ALWAYS used in mass amounts for spirit trees is:
1. The single heart on most spirit trees that can only be bought once.
2. The handful of past seasonal quests that still offer hearts as rewards.
3. Friending a lot of people that will light your candle each day for a tiny % of a full heart.
4. Haggling people on your friends list to send you a full heart for 3 candles day. (Unless you just make a alt and do it yourself! Hooray! Who doesn't love having to have a second account for a game like this)
There are some spirit trees that are included in the base game that ask you to trade over 50+ hearts for one single item. I get that this is suppose to be a like save up and get there eventually but majority of people i imagine have not and will never unlock every single item to 100% these trees before they burn out and stop playing.
If they added in a permanent NPC shop for candles to hearts at like a higher price than what players can send each other it would fix so much of this. IDC, I will pay like 10 candles to get 1 heart if it means i can just reliably get them without making a alt or begging strangers for a trade.
Now onto the social aspect of this game, from what i have noticed a majority of the player base of this game tend to be young for the English speaking side. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, it being F2P game on every platform pretty much it makes sense that a lot of kids will download this game and play it. However because of it, the chat box is severely restricted, it interferes a lot with basic communication at times and wanting to genuinely meet people in this game to befriend. Its incredibly counterintuitive for a game that is largely based on meeting people and forming connections. There is not much they can do to fix this in anyway, as there are people out there who will use this game and many others that have younger players for awful things but it is unfortunate.
Onto controls, I love that this game is just flying. I remember seeing this game and thought it would be perfect for me as i just wanted a game like this with fully free controllable flying. And most of the time it feels great, until it doesn't. This game likes to rip its controls out of your hand for every little thing here and there and it is the most obnoxious thing ever. When you enter a area for the first time its annoying but ultimately whatever. When you are just trying to do dailies and it rips the controls away to make you look at the same thing you have seen over a 100 times it is awful. There is a option to skip previously seen cutscenes but a majority are still forced onto you every damn time.
The camera is also awful at times, and with how characters sometimes will not want to jump off a edge but then you tap to jump once and they will freak the ♥♥♥♥ out is some of the worst stuff in this game. All of this is left from the fact this game was originally built for mobile phones and there is no option to opt out of movement and camera assist when on PC or consoles pretty much. There needs to be a overhaul for console and PC players specifically honestly.
