The Pathless Review (Rikali)
The pathless, Honestly I don't know what I was expecting but I'm rather disappointed..
The main attraction of the game is obviously the movement which is great and feels very fun at times but its not deep enough nor does it get enough variety to support the entire length of the game. Which is roughly 6-12 hours depending on how much of the side content you do, Now what is the side content? Welp sadly its just genshin impact type of open world puzzles/chores such as.. match the two icons, carry box from point a to point b. there are some interesting puzzles here and there too but i would be lying if i said it doesn't get tiring.
Oh also main story progression are locked behind doing some of those side chores, You basically step into a new zone, do enough side content to unlock the boss, fight the boss and move onto the next zone. Welp Is there any other reason to do all the side content? well if you collect every ''fragment'' in each zone then you get an extra passive upgrade which only one of them was really worth imo. Other then that if you do enough of them every now and then you will get an extra flap which allows your bird ''glider'' to do an extra flap to carry you higher mid air.
As for the story.. honestly the selling point of this game isn't the story.. But in case someone cares about it ill spoiler it. I just have to bring it up in order to talk about the boss fight quality.
The story is basically, there is this great evil god slayer who slayed the old gods of this island we travel to, we as pathless have to go around and restore/rescue all of the spirits of the old corrupted gods and eventually kill the big big baddie the god slayer him self. Obviously don't expect a very indebth story telling here. everything is very surface level. the game in totality has like 10 cutscenes combined. None of the characters are anything that you will remember after a week nor do I think was the vision of the game in the first place. Now I did all of this yappery because of how these bosses function. Honestly these bosses which are 6 different bosses if you count the last boss as two seperate bosses at once are the highlight of the game. They were honestly the most fun part of my gameplay and especially the last 2 bosses (the god slayer) was the best one imo. Im not gonna go into all of the mechanics of the bosses but before you get to fight these bosses (corrupted old gods) there is a small chase event where you have to chase them down and weaken them in order to finally start the fight. Which is a great idea! and was really fun the first time around but... dude you only have 5 unique bosses, 6 if i count phase 2 of the final boss. how are you not able to make a different pre fight minigame for each of these bosses. like for example for the first one we have to chase him down i get it, but for the second one maybe we can like have another chase where we are falling from the sky lest say? because its not like they weren't able to do it. they did exaclty that with the last boss. last boss the god slayer is the only boss where the pre boss minigame isnt a chase but a different minigame. just kind of dissapointing if im being honest.
Other then that.. the movement is great.. with each boss you kill u get another upgrade too yeah movement is good. which is the only thing u do i suppose other then the things i listed up above for ur entire gameplay. Honestly the last few hours of the game with the last boss and stuff is the best part of the game. and if it wasnt for it id say the game is bad. But is it enough to say its good? No..
TLDR: This isn't like journey where its an hour long experience, the game takes 6-12 hours to complete and I don't think it has enough support for all of those hours. If you don't do any side content and only focus on the main stuff then id say the game is playable, so if you are planning to buy it Imo don't waste time on the side stuff as they aren't mostly worth it. In no way do I think its a bad game but I'm just disappointed with it sadly. the game is too long for what it offers and becomes monotone very quickly.
If you see it on sale then Id say give it a shot and probably worth the money but other then that Sadly I can't recommend this game for those reasons above.. ur better off buying another game as I think your time would be better spent.