i went into this game completely blind (no kickstarters or anything) and i left it incredibly satisfied and plan to return to finish up some of the achievements. if you, like me, played gbc games like link's awakening or oracle of ages/seasons and really enjoyed them, then this game is up your alley. you can think of it as those games, but with many modern twists to them that keep the gameplay fresh.

i've been seeing a lot of discussion around the game's difficulty and in my opinion, it's not nearly as difficult. in my experience, i found that the real difficulty is in the beginning while you are still getting acclimated to the controls. i found that the last few zones caused me next to no deaths at all, for a spoiler inclusive context: i lost a total of 6534 something bones in the entire game, all of which was early into the game and when i fought evra way too early. additionally, lionel's first phase only took me 2 attempts and his second phase only took 1 on my 100% completion playthrough . it can feel a little annoying at first but once you get the controls down, you really get them down. the fall damage is pretty high, but i never felt like it ever became an issue unless i was trying to rush through a platforming intensive zone.

because of how i feel about the difficulty, i believe that yacht club made the right call to disable earning achievements when you enable modifiers that make the game easier. i mean, what's really the point in earning an achievement if you didn't achieve it at the developers intended difficulty? i could see the argument for the weird/cosmetic modifiers, and the ones that make the game ever harder, as i think those don't take away from the challenge associated with the achievement and in the case of the harder modifiers, actually add to the challenge.