What specifically went wrong? To begin, the combat system is mastered far too easily. What begins as an engaging system of reflexes and move-sets sees the skill ceiling hit within a shockingly small amount of hours, leaving the majority of the combat encounters void for the requirement of attention and strategy. Battles felt like chores, going through the motions, repeating the same patterns, and slowly sweeping groups aside one after the next. I died three times in the entire 30 hours of gameplay, all within the first hour as I learned the system.

This is not to say there weren't some moments that got me thinking. When specific party members were removed from combat, limiting the play options available it would force a more considered approach, but ultimately the challenge issue persisted right until the final boss, which I tediously moon frisbee’d to pieces, with no real payoff to be found once it was all over.

Generous offerings of side content try to shake up the rhythm as you move through the game, but unfortunately, these are even more mentally insulting than the battles. The mini-game Wheels, for example, looked fantastic on paper but also hit mastery within a few rounds. The 'puzzles' were basic shuffling of things in fixed ways; there was no real item management; and fishing was a rudimentary and pointless affair. The night and day mechanic was cool (and made for some beautiful color dynamics), teasing the promise for proper puzzle building, but this also failed to translate into anything interesting from a gameplay perspective.

It’s such a shame. Despite the shortcomings with challenge, you could still feel the love and detail from the developers at every turn. The visuals are truly amazing, with smooth and delightful micro-animations when deep inside the palette-rich worlds and fantastic conceptual lands when zooming out into the macro perspective. The UI is also simple but beautifully done, and even the cooking illustrations (and their ASMR-esque sound effects) were just lovely.

This level of polish was found in each of the unique 25 map environments, all designed at an impressive scale and with great imagination. Sky Base, the Autumn Hills on Mesa Island, and the Skylands were some of my favorites, but again, there was complexity lacking in the level design, with very linear and well-spelled-out pathways that guide you at all times, limiting any true sense of exploration and robbing much of the meaning from collectibles that were placed in your path.

None of this is helped by the story, which in my view is more suited for children, with generic characters and dialog that moves between charming and cringeworthy (see Gnarl), with plenty of questionable plot motivations, adding to the growing tediousness as you tap tap tap X to move swiftly through dialog windows. The music brings some nostalgic atmosphere to the experience, but personally, I did not resonate too much with the OST this time.