Nikoderiko: The Magical World Review (Shira)
Been really waiting for this release and the game is every bit as beautiful and charming as I'd hoped. I honestly did not expect this level of artistic detail and style, but this game definitely delivers on that and then some! Fell in love with the game pretty quickly, and didn't stop until the 100% completion mark. And I must say, with the number of nods and references to all our beloved platformers of the past decades, I can definitely feel and share the developer's love for these games.
Gameplay
Most importantly, the gameplay is very smooth and feels polished, there is a lot of variety in terms of level themes and mechanics, the boss fights were all creative too, I enjoyed them. Lots of shiny collectibles for those going for 100% completion, but actually reaching that number seems to involve a lot of replaying levels and grinding for collectibles for those last few percentages. I personally like this sort of replayability stuff, but it might not be for everyone.
Visuals & Style
Already said it above, I'll try to not repeat it too much - this game is gorgeous. It brings me that beloved "Toys For Bob style" from their recent Spyro and Crash Bandicoot games, almost every area is a treat for the eyes. The only issue with the game's visuals I came across was the player characters getting lost in or behind visual effects at times, such as being obscured by defeated enemies remaining on screen briefly, or when lots of collectibles are collected at once. The fact that this was my biggest issue says a lot, everything looks great!
Music & Sound
The soundtrack has some great standout pieces for me, some even unexpected for the game's style, but in a good way. I had some instant favorites. Sound effects are generally great, however some feel very subtle or "tame", making some actions a bit less satisfying or feel underwhelming, such as attack hit sounds. Also, not sure what kind of sound Luna makes when she's hit, but it has to be among the 3 most adorable sounds I've ever heard. Or it would be if I ever heard it, if I ever got hit, which of course I never do, so I wouldn't know.
Story & Writing
The story is simple but charming, I think the characters and voices are great. The writing is rather tame as expected from a game like this, and at times, can be quite drawn out in some dialogues. It is perfectly enough to drive the story forward and build some characters though, and I'd lie if I said it wasn't endearing in places.
Technical
I didn't run into any technical or performance issues in my 20+ hours of play, and support for framerates above 60 is hugely appreciated! I will note that the forced anti-aliasing (TAA) made the image very blurry, so I did go into the config files and forced TAA to be disabled. This is a personal preference thing, but made a huge improvement for me in terms of image sharpness and readability.
In Summary
All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend this game for a great 5-10 hours of casual fun. For the more hardcore, to those used to pinpoint accurate and snappy controls, movement can be a little imprecise at times, but this being a much more laid-back game and less of a precision platformer, it is nothing that takes away from all the positives this game has going for it.
Feedback & Suggestions
As feedback from a fellow platformer-enjoyer, I think the game could make a huge jump in terms of responsiveness and game feel if a few remaining "bumps" were smoothed out (since most things are already really solid, which is why these stick out):
There is little air friction, so letting go of all movement inputs mid-air drifts the characters forward, which made landing on some precise spots or enemies very difficult. Trying to counter-steer to stop doesn't work too well, as this is very sensitive on the other hand, and very easily causes over-corrections. Higher air friction at neutral directional inputs would help a lot when landing tricky jumps.
The slide has a short cooldown which can leave the player characters vulnerable at unfortunate times. This also holds back the pace of movement for me. Being able to instantly start a new slide at any time would really resolve a lot of movement "clunkiness" and greatly improve the feel and responsiveness of moving around. (Being able to stop a slide at any point was very useful and hugely appreciated though!)
An option to remap controller buttons would be greatly appreciated as there are some unused buttons, while some other common movement options are competing for the same fingers on a gamepad / controller.
A prompt around objects which can be grabbed and thrown would be really handy. I totally missed that some objects can be picked up, and learned much later how much knowing that would have helped earlier.
And for one of the achievements (might be a spoiler to some so beware): the Steam achievement for beating the entire game without dying is kind of a shocker, I don't think the game's level of precision, consistency, length, and the number of instant-kill hazards warrant something like that. Got all the other achievements, but this one I definitely had to skip for my sanity, so I will forever be missing one. Not saying it's impossible, buuut I would tune it back for sure. Of course this is just one person's opinion :P
PS: Much love and huge thanks to the team making this game. Might be a strange sentiment in a Steam review, but this game is an absolute gem and a big inspiration for me personally, so I did want to leave that here too. Can't wait to see what the team makes next!