Owlboy - Too fucking long

Fuck this game. I wanted to enjoy this game, I wanted to like it but every time I do something fucking stupid shows up and drags on way too long to be remotely enjoyable. I commend them for trying different things in the game but when it fucking sucks, it really fucking sucks. Alright what is Owlboy? Its an indie sidescrolling platformer that spent the last decade in development. Literally a decade to develop. The graphics are great, the characters are likable and the gameplay is decent in some parts. However, underneath its pretty exterior is a frustrating mess. I have never wanted to throw my controller at the screen harder than playing this game. Not even Persona 3 or Dark Souls or anything challenging. This game is frustrating because it feels like I'm either fighting with the controls or something boring just drags on way too long like the fucking stealth sections.

The unique part of Owlboy as a platformer is you have the ability to fly. Flying hides the terrible controls somewhat until you get to sections where you cannot fly. Most of the game is spent navigating through dungeons/ruins solving puzzles and killing monsters along the way. Pick up a rock, drop the rock here, grab a cloud and have it pour water here, then kill monster and use it as a bomb blah blah blah. This is fun, its a great game if it was just that. Then suddenly you'll get to a part where the screen goes dark and you "cannot fly because they have poor vision but can hear the sound of your wings flapping." Yet I can run around jumping on rocks or slamming onto the floor as hard as possible. You have to sneak past them and since the jump and fly button are both A, you will constantly accidentally fly and instant game over. Getting to close is a game over. This goes on and on and on. Luckily that part was short. Then you get to other parts where you accidentally set off a swarm of gnats in the darkness and you have to survive by lighting up torches and grabbing lantern monsters. As soon as you touch the darkness you instantly die. Then theres the pirate base where you have to stealth past pirates. If you get seen the door locks and they shoot bombs and you die. Then later in the game theres another pirate base where you have to stealth, then even later you have to stealth through a pirate ship. And so on and so on. LIKE IS THERE ENOUGH OF STEALTHING? Its not fun, its clunky and with the shitty controls makes it a huge core than anything challenging.

Then there are the gladiator rooms. I don't know what they're called but you will constantly enter a room both doors will close then waves upon waves of enemies will spawn and you have to survive. Getting hit in this game will send you flying across the room and stick onto a wall. If you get hit, its fairly easy to get chain hit and you can do nothing but die. So you're fighting swarms and swarms of enemies and then eventually you'll get hit somehow and then get swarmed and die. You need to be flying to summon your allies to shoot at them. Yes you don't actually get to fight you need the power of your allies to do it for you. That is interesting in a way but when you do get hit you are separated from your ally and have to grab him again. Imagine a game where you are hit and you drop your sword or gun and have to pick it up before you can fight again. Sometimes in regular exploration mode I get too lazy to fight monsters and just fly past them but they will keep following you to the next screen and soon I find myself being chased by 50 bees and then swarmed to death. You don't have that much health in the game and getting hit a couple of times usually means a game over so gladiator rooms are just a room of pure luck. Are you standing in the right spot when the monster spawns? Did it spawn on you? Well too bad try again.

Bosses are underwhelming. Theres usually a chase scene before or after bosses where you have to constantly run from a big bad thing or lava or water or whatever thats coming. Messing up once is death. I surprisingly haven't died once in these sections. Its hectic but it doesn't feel too annoying to do. Bosses all have a set pattern and once you learn it it is fairly easy to do. The thing is, for all the bosses, they are immune to all damage so you just have to sit there and take it until it suddenly stops shooting. Use the cannon from an enemy ship to shoot a rock to have it land on them, dodge swords until the guy charges a wall and gets stunned then shoot him, have the guy punch a wall to get his arm stuck then shoot him. Its unrewarding to spend 90% of the time just running until you can run up close to hit him once and after like 3 hits the boss is dead. Whats the point of giving me a gun and upgrades and all that shit if I'm not going to be using it? Look at something like Axiom Verge, you're running around with guns blazing shooting giant bosses. Those felt rewarding to fight when you finally win. This feels like you're a punching bag. You don't even get to kill the bosses as most of them end up being used by the pirates and are actually good people underneath it all. You never kill anyone because murder is wrong! Except the part where you go around murdering all those monsters, and monkeys and the monkey king probably died too after you flood the room with lava. You might be going, yeah but monsters and monkeys and prinnys aren't human. Neither are you, you're a fucking owl.

Then the worst part reveals itself near the end where you go into space and cannot fly anymore. This whole section has no monsters, no puzzles, just hours of platforming fun. OH JOY. This part you'll realize how bad the controls are. You are trying to do a jump when you'll accidentally flap and end up crashing to your death. Want to jump from the chandelier to the door? Oh we've made sure you have to stand at the very edge and leap and click fly at your highest point then glide towards the door. Any less will have you crashing into the ground below. Oh its an autoscroller now? We'll make the rocks spawn as slow as possible so you have to click fly and stay in the air as long as possible and one fuck up will end up costing you the entire thing. Even if it looks like you made it if you jump too early you'll eventually die a slow agonizing death. Which fucking masochist came up with this shit. This isn't fucking remotely enjoyable to do. I love sidescrolling platformers. Its my favorite genre of game but this is fucking infuriating to play. I cannot stress how bad the flying and jumping are in this game. You will constantly fuck up and randomly start flying when you are doing a long jump and crash to your death. If its just a few sections thats alright but this drags on too fucking long. In fact most of the game drags on for too fucking long. Too much instant death, too much stealth, too much platforming with bad controls, too much of shitty stuff.

The really sad part of this game was that its fun to play. Its an enjoyable game ridden with frustrating parts. The puzzle solving is fun, the exploration is enjoyable, and some of the bosses even put up a challenge and the storytelling is great. The characters are likable, they have their flaws, and they have growth to them. One thing I can't help but notice though is that everyone is male. Everyone you talk to, everyone you meet and fight are male. The only women you meet in this game are the two captured soldiers in the pirate base and the mad scientist. And those show up for a total of like 5 seconds. The game is very story driven and its really quite interesting to learn about the world. Its honestly a fun game. However all of that is just completely overshadowed by the horrible experiences in certain sections of the game. Was the game enjoyable for me? After that last platforming section, no. I can hardly remember the fun I was having with the game after that section. I would play it once for the story but I'll never in a million years want to touch it again. If I want a good platformer that I can go back and play over and over again then I'll just play something like Castlevania SOTN, Axiom Verge or even Valdis Story. I'll even reply Shantae: Half-Genie Hero over this.