izigame.me

Ok, let's start with the good stuff.
The game is gorgeous. Both the 2d and 3d phases are really immersive, you really get the feeling that you're in a book version of The Legend of Zelda ambient-wise, and Sam's desk really holds so much soul it's impressive. Big shoutout to the artists, their work on this is amazing. The concept of going from 2D to 3D is really well exploited on this side, and the visuals live up to the expectations.
I found the mage quite funny as well ; he looks like he's out of this world, his contrast with the world he lives in is well done and expressed (shoutout to his music taste!)
Now with that being said, I have a lot of problems with this game. I had been expecting it for quite some time. I had been sold a mind blowing adventure playing between different mediums and supports, with a large variety of gameplay, some kind of It Takes Two experience.
First off, the gameplay isn't very new ; as we say in French, it doesn't break the 3 legs of a duck. What I mean is for the approximately 2 hours I played, I didn't experience anything different from any other top-down adventure game. The infiltration during the 3D phase was clunky in my opinion ; I restarted 10 times the sequence where you have to walk over a bridge above the beetles, just because I couldn't see where I would land at the end of it ; in the worst case scenario the challenges aren't difficult, just annoying. The bug boss for instance wasn't hard ; the bow gameplay is the same as in the sequence from 5 minutes ago, it's as boring as before, to the exception that the whole body of the bug isn't where you must aim : you have to reach SPECIFICALLY for the eyes. I might have missed the memo ; but I had to die once with the frustration of aiming on the boss and not touching him or dealing any damage, before I understood that I had to go for the eyes. The mosquitoes that he throws are too fast and too close to each other for you to snipe them when the boss throws them ; your target has to go back and forth from the boss to your character, to try and get them before they get you (which they often did). You are encouraged to aim for the longest possible time so that you deal optimal damage, but nothing actually tells you that hey, you don't need to do that for the trash mob, any 0.1 second charged arrow will do.
It's not the case for all of the challenges, thanks god, but when they aren't annoying they are just very easy.
The puzzles as well are not very challenging ; the only time I got stuck was when there was a whole mechanic I did not know existed ("oooooooh so I can do that ??? but how would've I known ?"). The game is awfully linear, and it's a shame in my opinion the 2D-to-3D twist wasn't exploited for more than "go get this 2 pages ago and get it 2 pages forward"; there is no room for any type of creativity for the puzzles. I almost always immediately understood what the game wanted from me, and all I had left to do was the execution (the only exception being the broken bridge with the frogs sleeping at night ; this one got me stuck for 2 minutes. It was quite good, but imo it should be the low/standard challenge for the puzzles, instead of being the hardest one I encountered). The use of words to impact gameplay could've left so much room for creativity as well ; you could have a dozen of different words, each of which impact the game in some way, and up to you to figure out how to solve the puzzle ; but most of the time there are 2 to 3 words you can move, the solution is to intervert them, and tadaaaaa - moving on to the next page ; the average use of the words being "switch a door from Closed to Open".
The narrative rythm is quite slow, which isn't in itself an issue, it's nice sometimes to take your time and enjoy a story being delivered slowly instead of just skipping through every dialogue ; but I perceived every interaction with any NPC as a waste of time. Here it's not "Show don't tell", it's Show AND Tell. "Oh you need a long range weapon" *the camera moves to show a playing card with an archer on it* > ok, I get it, I must reach the archer. I understood : it's a pretty common structure, I'm being shown the point I must reach, so obviously I'll go there. But just to be sure, let's have the worm interrupt me to tell me "Hey, you should get that bow and arrow over there, shouldn't you ?" I didn't find the dialogues to be very well written as well ; they state a lot of obvious things that were already implied (like the example just before), and use the same cliché lines you've already heard thousands of times. I found the two sidekicks to be useless as hell, they don't help, I didn't find them funny ; they just follow you around, interrupt you from times to times and desperately try to catch a smile from you.

To conclude : I'd say the game is overall more of an aesthetic experience. Play it for the immersion, for the -once again- STUNNING visuals, but don't play it for the gameplay as such ; it's really been disappointing for me. In the end I think there was a lot of passion and hard work behind this project nevertheless ; making videogames is hard, especially today, and nothing comes easy ; it's also always easier to criticize than to make, and I would be far from achieving anything as impressive as this (even gameplay-wise). *I also figured out that I probably wasn't the target audience* ; I really wanted to love this game, but I think it's just not a game for me. If you have kids and want to play a relaxing, fun, immersive experience with them - go for it ! This is in any case and regardless of what I've been saying above better than a lot of kids-targeted games.

I won't put a thumbs down, because I want to acknowledge the work of the devs and artists, and a lot of people seem to love the game ; good for them, good for the team !
I just want to warn potential players, so that you don't get caught by marketing and overhype as I've been : this isn't the game of the decade, don't play it for some revolutionary gameplay ; but it's an above average fun little story.