Treasure Adventure World

Very good action and puzzle 2D metroidvania. Just beat it 100%, fun times.

Hidden gem... with some cracks in it. It's a great platformer with adventure elements in it. I wasn't expecting it to be this long and this well built. Problem is, there is a lot of backtracking to it, and there are some infuriatingly difficult points in the game that have no reason to be like that. The difficulty spikes out of nowhere and you are left with no options to do anything about it because despite the game making you go back and forth to continue the storyline, the progression is still linear. I mean suddently having hard to defeat bosses, hard platforming out of nowhere, sections where you need to do everything perfectly or you are thrown back all the way back to the beginning - despite most of the game being relatively easy. To add insult to injury, not sure if it's a problem only on my side, but the game keeps crashing in crucial points. *spoilers* I'm currently stuck at the aracnid boss at the top of the tree because not only he's horrible to defeat, but also because half the times when I'm finally advancing towards the secondary stage, the game crashes. Bosses are usually divided between "stages", and in my personal experience everytime there is a "stage" load there are chances of the game completely crashing. Hard crash, the game shuts down and display an error message. Which is a pitty because despite the kinda generic name, these difficulty spikes and the crashing bug, it really is a great game. A few fixes would tie it to some of the most addictive indie games I've ever played.

I'm beginning to wonder if I still like Metroidvania games. This is the third in a row of this style that I did not enjoy.

It is vaguely possible that I am a little too addicted to this game. I started with the free version and made the decision to switch to this one and I do not regret it. This is an absolute delight of a game.

Solid metroidvania-style game. Surprisingly dark near the end. The hardest part of the whole game was the part where you have to roll a barrel onto a small moving platform and then roll it onto another small moving platform. Final boss took me 3 tries, this took 30+ tries. I wish you could shoot your hook hand upward.

Very mixed feelings on this one, but I'll still lean towards Positive. Visually a marvellous redo of the old version of the game. Should you play it? Depends on your answer to these two questions - Do you like adventure? I mean adventure in a real sense, the game doesn't hold you by the hand by constantly telling you what to do and where to go. You have an indication for a treasure, but can't quite get there yet? Don't fret, and try another island. In the end, you'll be able to do everything, help everyone, and find all treasures. Some of it WILL be locked for a moment because you're missing some equipment. Think Metroid, but with less direction of where to go, and more "little interactions that lead to cool discoveries". A lot of people seem to be annoyed when they get stuck, but really, if something (like a jump) seems impossible to do, it probably is, but only for now. You just need to have a different mindset and go somewhere else for more exploring. It's easy to understate this point, the game REALLY is an exploration/adventure, it is its biggest quality by far. Few games of the modern era ever reached this feeling for me; while not being close to old RPGs like the first fallout, this is a much lighter version of that. Gotta explore, gotta try out stuff, gotta realize when to say "Okay, I think I should explore somewhere else." - How tolerant to jank are you? Unfortunately, it's very hard to not have your enjoyment of the game be hindered by the controls. The jump is floaty, the hook grabbing is feels like it's always either one pixel too far or attracting you like a magnet when you don't want to jump on it, the combat is needlessly complicated, and the bossfights are, while interesting, hard to understand. A small note on combat: There are items you can equip that influence your stats. If some enemies seem to take zero damage from your attacks, there's one item that seem to help with that. But why have charged attack damage, combat stats, and variable with items, for a game that's not focused on combat? It's as if the game was trying to do both "castlevania light" and pure platformer at the same time, and is janky on both front instead of being great at one of those, which feels like a missed opportunity imo. Note on bugs! No spoilers! The final bossfight bugged for me, like, hard. I couldn't hit the boss because the hitboxes were out of reach (clearly in a buggy way, as an entire part of the boss was cut from the screen). Check the discussion, there's a pinned message, and it tells you what to do to avoid bugs; considering it's the only true bug (unrelated to wonky controls), it's easy to dismiss, but don't be like me and try to fight an impossible battle because of bugs. Overall, I'd say this: This game feels old, mechanics wise. I mean this in a positive and a negative way; as mentionned previously, the controls are not the best, just like those old platformers of the SNES era that hadn't hit the jackpot yet. However, the game also brings something out of you, a childish joy at exploring a huge world, at discovering hidden chests, at getting a new item and being gitty at the opportunities you have to re explore some parts of the world you couldn't reach before. All that without taking you by the hand and telling explicitely what to do, something you don't find very often in modern games.

It's -just- good enough to give a recommendation. What's good: -music is nice, never gets stale -dialogues are interesting and funny -visuals are nice -after a certain point it's very open, so you don't have to search for the next thing to do What's bad: -bugs, quite a few actually. Some graphical bugs, some gameplay bugs. I couldn't even start new game + because of one. -the map system. There's a room inside one of the islands? Too bad, you can't see it on the map. -some weird game design decisions. For example there's an animal city at some point, it's in the trees so you have to climb up first. At the entrance you have to nail a jump, otherwise you fall down and have to do the ~30 seconds passage again. Not a major time loss, but an annoying one. -the bosses are interesting, though you don't get right away how to defeat them, I even had to look it up for 2 of them. Conclusion: If you don't mind a few bugs or dumb passages, get it, preferably in a sale. If it was a bit more polished I'd have enjoyed it a lot more though.

When adventure ends, sometimes you can feel unsatisifed. Be it because you hadn't accomplished what you as a player you set out to do, or because your expectations weren't met. Sometimes it's because you realize that the entire game has a message behind it and it sneaks up on you with an axe and chops you with a shocker. This adventure ended bittersweet, at least for me. It was worth playing, experiencing it. Great music, great visuals, Great story with twists and foreshadowing. Also slippery controls and instability, soft locks and crashes and lots of backtracking without a map. But I enjoyed it very much.

Followed this game back when it was freeware and love the amount of polish that was put into it.

8/10 Отличная игра!