VideoGame A Mediocre Zelda Wannabe
It's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild without weapon breakage, so yeah, it's fun. It's not great, though.
The game is a buggy mess, where physics sometimes don't work how they should and it crashes a lot. There's a workaround for the physics, at least, and the constant autosaves mean that crashes never cost you much, but still.
The worst part, though, is the writing, as you may have heard, and there's two things I want to mention here.
First, the humor... is actually my style of humor. I like the witty observations, and the Straight Man and Wise Guy dynamic between Zeus and Prometheus too. That said, it's still... not great. The writers felt like they had to have these two have something to say about everything. Some of it, especially the loading screen tips, comes off as idiotic non-sequiturs instead of real jokes. Also, it gets old fast. And I liked the humor! If you don't even like the humor to begin with, then I imagine you'll loathe every second of this game.
And then... the story. The biggest problem is that we're supposed to side with the gods against Typhon, but the game never gives a compelling reason why. Even if you've never heard the original myths and how depraved they are, the game will tell you what sort of people these are, and expects you to side with them anyway. Sure, they agree to change their ways by the end... but it never gives a compelling reason why I should support that either. I'd rather just see Kratos wipe them all out.
Final Rating: 6/10
VideoGame Bad title, worse story, excellent gameplay.
Every once in a while some minds within the Grey Goo that is Ubisoft break free and deliver a game that feels truly fresh, despite being a semi-spinoff to Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and an obvious-riff on some other big game I haven't played.
STRENGTHS:
- Your moveset is slick and fun whether you are traversing the environment, solving a puzzle, or fighting gorgons. This is not an immersive, breathing world but a giant playground. It's The Witness for kids, but without those terrible bird-call riddles.
- The sandbox is free to explore. There's no level-gating though harder challenges will be marked as such. You can upgrade your abilities to outright negate the harder puzzles. Sequence-breaking is very much welcome.
- They cut a lot of fat off the usual progression-systems. You can mix and match equipment looks and perks. You can alter the difficulty of puzzle-types. There's no inventory management. You can play a female character. Eat crap, Zelda.
- It takes 50 hours to platinum instead of 100. The map is varied, dense, and no bigger than it needs to be.
WEAKNESSES:
- The story tries to be a Saturday Morning Cartoon version of the Greek Myth, but can't help reconcile it's futile attempts at humour with the depravity of the source-material. It also kills the replay-value when your exploration is overlaid with the constant snarky narration. I skipped through all the damn dialogue.
- It's pretty annoying trying to track stuff on the map. I don't know why Ubisoft stopped providing checklists. You'll never find all the Mounts or Legendary Monsters without a guide.
CONCLUSION:
Fenyx is a five-star experience provided you skip through the plot. No level of cringe can hide what a joy this to play from beginning to end. Anyone from age twelve upwards will love this.
VideoGame An Underappreciated Masterpiece
Too often I see that people don't bother finishing this game, and others bashing on it for what? Being made by Ubisoft? Taking inspiration from Breath of the Wild?
The game is a super fun time, and left me wanting more. The world is simply vibrant and beautiful, with a new landmark everywhere you look. And exploring said landmarks rewards you with something to upgrade your amazingly customizable gear. The combat is fluid and fun, and encourages experimentation and improvising. The puzzles are creative, and I love that it recommends "cheating." Can't reach that high ledge? Use Ares' Wrath to triple, quadruple, or even quintuple jump. Need more weight on that pressure plate, but don't want to backtrack? Make a statue of yourself and plop it down.
Love that the team clearly did its research, bringing to light some of the more obscure parts of the myths. Its take on the Greek pantheon as a simple dysfunctional family instead of completely homicidal is a refreshing take after so many edgy darker versions that we've gotten over the last decade, and it's nice to see they even go through their own character arcs. Freaking Zeus decides to become a better father, who'da thought?
My only complaint? It feels too short! Weird right? I know we get some in the Lost Gods dlc, but I would have loved to see full blown regions for Poseidon, Artemis, and other gods.
9/10, totally recommend.