Recent reviews by TOPACES

A mod well done! Great story and immersive voice acting. Around 8 hrs playtime. Recommended for any Portal-Fan!

This is just my personal opinion and doesn't claim to be a complete or balanced review:
There's several points that came to my attention even without intentionally looking to write a review for this game.

STORY:
The story is just too flat / linear. You can basically guess the whole plot by the end of the first quarter. And unfortunately, there are no plot twists to surprise.
The characters appear 2-dimensional and have little to no development.
From the trailer, I was hoping to get some lore

BUGS:
As of this review, the cutscenes-bug remained - even though a hotfix-release was published.
Cutscenes will freeze after a few frames, and Audio will get scattered and delayed to the point of being incomprehensible.
I basically had to view the cutscenes via YouTube everytime I got to one to understand what was happening.
For a game that can be played in two day's time / over the weekend, this is quite annoying - especially since the cutscenes encompass pretty much all of the big story moments, or are announcing boss fights.
I once also clipped through the floor while trying to pass through a bush to enter the next region, because I was slightly elevated, standing on frozen water. Nothing too annoying, but it shows the limits of the game design quality imo.

GAMEPLAY:
At first, I found the gameplay to be quite challenging - especially with a gamepad.
The tools and gadgets just seem unintuitive at first. I had to switch difficulty after dying multiple times against some very basic mobs.
Then, after a while, and after continuing with Keyboard and Mouse, I got the hang of it. But very soon, the fights were getting way too easy.
To be honest, I didn't change the difficulty again at this point, as I was more interested in the story anyway. But the gameplay just felt a bit rough or unbalanced.

Riddles and puzzles are few and very easy, prompting the question why they were even included at some times.

LEVEL DESIGN:
The levels seem maze-like at first, but soon turn out to be quite linear. There are a few "hidden" areas here and there, but simply by looking out for them, I got all on the first try.
With the scanner update you can get later in the game, there's little left to be discovered.

The Biomes offer nice graphics upon first contact, but over time they feel a little monotonous and repetitive.

GRAPHICS:
This was probably the biggest disappointment. I played the game on highest graphics.
In general, the graphics are okay, through I would say definitely not up to current standard.
But the meshes of the environmental model are sometimes so rough that you cannot overlook it - again, I wasn't looking for this, it just sprang to eye.
The worst were the waterfalls, which could as well have been copied from a 90s video game.

OVERALL:
Overall, the trailer promised more than what was delivered. I would say it's an okay 12-hour main story game.
But even with reduced expectations, I found it to be too disappointing and barely worth the 33,99 € that I payed for it.
I am sure the developers did the best they could with what was available. But it just feels like the game was forced to finish or cut short, or simply not given the time to develop its full potential.

My personal rating: 4/10
Not recommended.