"Where Water Glistened" completely killed my enjoyment of the game.

[Squirrel Lord]

Man, this went from one of my favorite games of the year to one of its biggest disappointments. Where Water Glistened was hard to navigate, filled with gimmick movement, way too long, and capped off with an awful slog of a boss fight. Maybe it gets better again, but right now I just don't want to find out.

Wheelies on the ropes are too finicky, and dropping down a level or two because you messed up an input is endlessly frustrating. Especially if that ends in a death, because now you have to backtrack even further to get your bag.

Using the shotgun for movement is a neat idea, but it got used too often in a short periods of time, making for awkward reloading.

Reloading in general is supremely annoying, but at least in most other areas I could maintain some speed and find good opportunities. There were too many hallways and flat areas here, and if I arrived without any ammo, I was just screwed.

Take this scenario.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3100241250
I had just cleaned out all the birds, but no ammo. Now what do I do? I could try to jump off of that spike on the left, but immediately on the other side is a rope over a pit that falls down quite a ways. Trying to flip from coming back from the right doesn't have a lot of speed, so it's likely to kill me. Not that it even mattered, since as I later found out, I couldn't shoot the dish from down here with the shotgun. Had to do it from ramping off of that rope bridge.

If we're able to sit quietly for a few seconds, we should be able to reload the gun. Flipping to reload is awesome and fun in an action scenario. It's frustrating and time wasting when all you want is to shoot a resource or such. I'm such Laika knows how to reload without centrifugal motion helping out.

And then the crab takes so long and is barely interactive. I've died on it due to accidentally tipping over more than any attack it does. The machine gun almost can't hurt us at all. And it feels like the best way to deal with the bubbles is to move slowly and carefully between them. 100 Hungry Beaks and the mole were fun because they fed into the motorcycle riding, this strip it away except for the most boring chase sequence I've ever played.

Top it all off by feeling trapped there, because fast travel is tied to a consumable I don't want to waste, and it's just a black hole of fun.

[LSK]

ahaha
I feel your pain bro
I just walked through that mess of an area for the 2nd time. why? because I was farming high speed cables to upgrade my machine gun

[Cruddy]

I thought it was alright, but maybe I lucked into going the right way, like many bosses it kinda sucked due to no checkpoints, but after I beat it the narrative really made all the pain worth it.

Originally posted by LSK:

ahaha
I feel your pain bro
I just walked through that mess of an area for the 2nd time. why? because I was farming high speed cables to upgrade my machine gun

Don't remind me, I have to go back a third time now to get some more.

[Corseth]

Yeah, I loathed this area. In particular the ropes are an awful, awful mechanic, they're insanely fiddly to traverse and its frankly just not at all interesting to have to spend that much care to simply move in a straight line left to right. The wheelie mechanic just flat out doesn't seem to behave consistently between many types of controllers. The penalty for falling off tends to be amazingly harsh as often they're several layers deep, you can't seem to land on a rope after falling through another, and you're often getting dropped all the way back to the start of a ship.

And the whole design reduces what elsewhere is a movement and stunt-based combat to a slow, crawling slog - which the game isn't designed for and leads to lots of frustrations like being unable to reload because there's nowhere to flip. Like, what's with some of the verticals (some of which are right before that screenshot) that aren't traversable smoothly, but instead slow grind-up-hill? I don't know why the game wants to be a slow methodical platformer for this one level, when it's simply not built for that.

I really like this game but this one level almost made me walk away from it.

[Gorilla]

Maybe you should get good at the game try harder.

[Regular Pink Cat]

The game be so fine, then BAM
Water level

[Sonork]

I feel like the game has lots of interesting ideas, but some fall flat or just aren't fun. The grappling hook is the perfect example of a mechanic that could have been really fun but is a huge let down. Could have used it to move around, grabbing enemeies, swinging your bike, skill shots or whatever. but it's just a barrier removing thing...

I'd prefer having health points than 1 hit deaths, some more interactive enemies (moving), non-tedious reloading and no grinding currency for upgrades. Feels like it would just be more fun with something like this. I'm gonna finish it for the story, but it's true some areas just aren't fun to play.

[rsingersoll]

If you face a wall you can flip to reload. It works for vertical alignment or near vertical. Just go right next to wall and accelerate, you won't go over it but you'll backflip in place and reload

[Furaxis]

wasnt really hard (btw u can also use the shot gun to reload if shoot it directly under you)

[NIKENIT]

If you hated that level, you will HATE the next boss fight. Its probably the worst videogame boss of 2024, and the worst boss in the game (the Pope).

Basically the game had 2 good bosses - the first one and the second one. After that they completely ran out of ideas and just went "you know that out fast paced motocrycle game needs? BUBBLES! And slow autoscroll bosses with rng!"

[Gottfried]

Originally posted by NIKENIT:

If you hated that level, you will HATE the next boss fight. Its probably the worst videogame boss of 2024, and the worst boss in the game (the Pope).

Basically the game had 2 good bosses - the first one and the second one. After that they completely ran out of ideas and just went "you know that out fast paced motocrycle game needs? BUBBLES! And slow autoscroll bosses with rng!"

The first three (bulldozer, mole, snake bird thing) are good, the crab was very annoying, but not in a good way, the pope is so easy I wouldn't even consider it a boss, and the last one is fine I guess, but is also quite easy with a fully upgraded rocket launcher.

[Yolomancer]

Yeah, this is the level that made me consider leaving a negative/mixed review. After kiling the crab boss, I went back to the village and a bunch of new side quests appear. And guess what, most of them are backing tracking to areas to get veggies that I couldn't pick up before.

It's so, so frustrating to go past all these veggies that are very clearly intractable, but then I can't pick them up until someone specifically tells me I need them? Huh? Laika doesn't mind picking up any other veggies, just those ones!!!

Going from a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ level, to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss,. to having objectively pointless fetch quests dumped on me was REALLY trying to my patience to say the least.

[wordwaster]

I am uninstalling it. The water level started with a painfully long and unskippable pseudo cut scene and after that the traversal was just irritating and slow. I recommended this game to a friend right before getting to this area and took that recommendation back shortly after getting the boat's rope hook.