The speedruns are fun af matey. :^)

It's not a flop. There are some flaws, but that was to be expected. The game tries to tell a story with limited means, that was a bit too much for a very unexperienced team. Several areas of the game are lacking and reek of semi-professionalism, like the models, animations, and so on. So people compare it to full-blown multi-million productions, and then of course "Son of Nor" looks very bad.

But I think that the combat and controls are spot on and can be compared with the best titles of the genre out there, like "The Force Unleashed". It was perfect for me. I played "The Witcher 1" shortly afterwards, and sometimes I cought myself thinking: "I wish this had perfect controls like 'Son of Nor'". That tells a lot about it! Look at "The Witcher 1" and then at "The Witcher 3" – it's a huge jump in quality!

Still Alive Studios can similarly grow into a well respected developer studio.

With such low sales and ratings I don't see how it can be considered anything else but a flop. I do agree with you that it was too abitious for such a modestly talented and inexperienced studio to attempt. I was hoping to draw some lessons out of it.

Too often success is dwelt upon instead of the failures. I think we can all learn much more from failures.