There’s a dungeon where everything is dark and you only have a very small radius of light. This sort of one-off mechanic that doesn’t quite feel right or is straight up bad is very common throughout the game. This causes you to countlessly restart what should be an fairly straightforward platforming section not because of your own inability, but due to unexpected control issues. However, in that last section, if you start flying when you don’t expect to you’ll likely fall into an instant death trap. It feels expected, especially when using the analog stick. By simply tapping up or jump again while in the air you’ll start flying.
This would be fine if flying wasn’t so easy to trigger accidentally. Doing so will cancel all vertical momentum and slow you considerable. There you can only fly for a little bit during it. There’s an early stealth section that’s pretty bad but the worst offender is the last area. It’s the other times that are extremely questionable. You can’t attack other than the little spin attack that does no damage, but combat is usually avoidable or nonexistent in those sections. The jump is super floaty unlike most other games and takes while to get used to, but those sections are usually very short. However there are multiple points in this game where they take away the one unique thing about it and the results vary. Games like Aquaria, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, and others have done similar things, but it’s still uncommon enough to be novel. The main gimmick of this game is that the player can fly. There are at least 3 of these throughout the game with the last one being essentially a whole dungeon. These are often poor with sensible checkpoints and any small screw up results in near instant failure. There are stealth sections that are either tedious or outright terrible. Sometimes you’ll need to roll to avoid an attack while aiming, but can’t remove your thumb from the right stick fast enough.
Example: You roll with the B (Circle), but aim with the Right Stick. You cannot remap the buttons for either gamepad or keyboard/mouse (I highly recommend you never attempt to play this game using keyboard/mouse as those controls are inexcusably awful.) The level design often demands a level of precision that the controls do not allow for. This game is riddled with a lack of polish that prevents it from having a good feel to it. Unfortunately the gameplay is the weakest part of this game. The character’s motivation towards the end of the game are forced and it, excuse the pun, it doesn’t land on its feet.
However the ending feels like a non-ending that essentially amounts to generic time-travel related trope that we’ve seen done better in games. There are some genuinely touching moments and a decent little plot twist. The writing aka the plot, dialogue, flavor text, is all serviceable and generally inoffensive. It’s pretty typical video game-y adventure music, but it’s well orchestrated and there wasn’t a single track that felt was overly repetitive or annoying. Background are beautiful and have a real sense of depth.
#Owlboy lava boss full#
Characters are detailed and full of expression. Save for some questionable art direction (ie the red flash from the shotgun attack, lack of some button UI), the art is some of the best modern pixel art you’ll ever see. (Note: this review does contain slight spoilers) Owlboy is a game with wonderful visuals and music that took a long time to make that is utterly mediocre and not really worth your time.