Flow state the Game

Beautiful, extremely fluid, and made me cry at least five times. The puzzles and stuff are chill to play, and the bosses are invigorating.

Note: this review has light gameplay spoilers for Journey. If you haven't played it, I'd recommend you don't read this because it will spoil the ending. Go buy Journey and play it instead - it's one of the best game experiences ever made.

The Pathless has a lot of overlap with Journey, but if someone had forced the devs to put in more of the usual videogame tropes. There are boss fights, in-your-face lore, and grindy collectibles, etc. But the flip-side of this is that this game can kinda stretch out and relax a bit. There's a bit of roughness in many of Annapurna Interactive's published titles, and it's definitely in The Pathless - but it adds something I can only describe as the "Indie/AA cozy factor." You've probably come across it before if you're considering buying this game. It's not that the gameplay is the same, but the world feels - despite the very different tone of the story - like it's got traces of things like A Short Hike or Sable in it. The vibes and the simple story are great.

The two most successful gameplay-centric additions are the freedom of exploration and the thrill of movement. Journey has glimpses of speed, but - compared to this game - they're rare, not tied to exploration, and you don't get much sense of freedom or power out of it due to the game's linearity and how tightly choreographed the gameplay and narrative progression are in Journey. In The Pathless, you either walk (which feels horrible) or sprint - which drains your energy bar. However, as you move you can autotarget these floating icons in the world with your bow. Shooting them refills your energy (solving the problem of Journey, which in many areas was very stingy with the energy that let you fly) and adding a small element of skill, as you have to release when your bow is fully drawn or the (auto-aimed) shot will miss. In this way, The Pathless is more like The Valley, in that it wants to make you feel - especially as you progress - fast and powerful. Unlike The Valley or Journey, however, this game is effectively open world, and it's a fantastic combination.

The puzzles are short and satisfying to complete. For the most part, you won't find yourself having to look up how to do anything (or having to leave a puzzle and come back to it), which is good because this would have really hurt the game's flow. I only remember two puzzles I disliked - one because it was simple but added an element of tight timing that felt really out of place (no other puzzles do this), and another that was basically a "find the hidden switch" - again, there had been no precedent for this being what the puzzles were doing, so it just felt disappointing when I gave up and looked this one up and that was the answer. (Both of these were in the final stage, which is by far the weakest in the puzzle department.) For me, the puzzles were still short enough and simple enough to be satisfying up until about the 75% mark, and I went for 100% completion. The problem is that within each major area of the world, there's no reason to go for any completion of extra content unless you complete 100% of it, which is a major issue because it creates a high incentive to commit to the least fun part of the game (grinding puzzle completion for extra powers). But even then, if it had just been like 20% less grind, I wouldn't be making this criticism.

Finally: bosses. I was worried going in that I wouldn't like this part of the game, and that's pretty much true. I am just not into mechanical challenge (fast reactions, learning when to press a button in response to a telegraphed attack, etc.) in games (see above re: fast puzzle). Because the game is effectively auto-aimed (this is necessary because the majority of the game you are moving far too fast to manually aim at the targets that propel you), boss battles are basically "quick time events" in the exact sense that most players hate - the difference is that you have to hit the mouse button in the context of jumping and/or gliding. I think for players like me, the boss battles aren't fun because what to do is very poorly telegraphed, and the twitch reaction gameplay doesn't fit well with the rest of the game. Conversely, for players who LIKE a mechanical challenge, these will almost certainly feel too easy to be satisfying to beat.

What makes up for all these quibbles I have with the game is something that many people wouldn't care about, so I can understand the reviews which give all the caveats above and then rate it negatively. But the art direction and sound design of this game are unbelievably good. The environment design is amazing. The eagle is very cute. I love the look of all the temples and the armor of the fallen soldiers. On the sound side: The voice acting is perfect. The sound of the bosses is the only thing I liked about them other than their look. The ambient sounds of the environment and the rush of movement are incredible. The final battle has the best sound design of anything I can remember in a videogame.