The thing with "Batora: Lost Haven" is that, albeit the gameplay is solid, the storyline, character development and overall plot is just too ridiculous to take seriously at any given point.

You take control of Avril, a girl who has lost her homeplanet of Earth because of a sundering and is sent in a grand quest throughout the galaxy by the elden protectors of Earth, Sun and Moon, to retrieve four cores from other planets that will revive Earth. With her friend Mila, and other friends from different species that she'll meet along the way, Avril must show a great deal of bravery to make choices that will inevitably either destroy what's left of Earth or the rest of the galaxy.

And that's basically it! The graphics are neat and the gameplay is really innovative. Avril can switch between two forms, Sun and Moon; while Sun form deals a ton of damage to Yellow enemies, Moon form is a spiritual form that destroys the Purple ones at range. Those two forms merge to give you an Ultimate Ability that you unlock later in the game, and for each form you'll learn specific skills to use in combo that are really fun to master. There are a lot of bosses that encompass both those affinities, with other enemies behaving as such called Hybrid enemies. In a very unorthodox manner, you level up by equipping runes that take up your runic knowledge slots; there are three kinds of improvements here, the Defender, Neutral and Conqueror sockets... You get more of each by taking the appropriate decisions that will affect the grand scheme of things... The only problem is that THIS grand scheme of things is actually uninteresting, lame and sometimes so boring that you'd be grinning through your teeth during a scene that's supposed to make you cry!

At world three, I found myself just skipping most of the nonsensical dialogue, as if this was my second playthrough! Hint: IT WAS NOT. Batora: Lost Haven is a 5/10 game with great fighting mechanics, but a horrible storyline with nothing interesting or even remotely redundent going on! There are four endings, but you'll be like "Meh" most of the time that you'll be satisifed with THE ONE you get first. Play it once and drop it, thank me later!

Nice action RPG-like action with following:

- fun but often easy combat
- interesting battle system with two damage types for each of two type of enemies
- good and unique puzzle levels

Cons:
Story is so so and only thing bad about this little game are cringe Forspoken-like dialogs which makes no sense in story situations. Even my 10 year old niece would write better dialogs than this. Voice acting feels forced.


I will still give positive review because devs at least added option to disable voice audio and subtitles which makes this game playble without cringing when listening stupid and nonsense dialogs.