So I’m through the first dungeon, downed the fowl Tiamat (which was a bit of a struggle), and I’m now making some progress into the second area, I’ve got about four and a half hours in, and I’m amazed. I had several of those, “ugh” frustrated moments where I’d turn the system off, put the controller down, go do something else for 5 mins, and fire it back up so I can try again. It takes something special to really have that effect on me.

The level design in the first dungeon was awesome, the puzzles, though while they weren’t especially challenging by any stretch were fun. I can totally see why it draws comparisons to classic games like Zelda in that regard, but what I don’t understand in the flak the game is getting for being derivative. Yes, it is taking some tried and true queues from some games that make me feel very nostalgic about gaming. And pairing it with the likes of newer games in terms of controls and combat mechanics to me, is an amazing accomplishment. On top of that the boss battle was cool, it was an mechanic/attack pattern battle that felt very traditional but was very satisfying once I got it all figured out. If the levels and bosses persist to be as incredibly designed as they have thus far, I would definitely add this to my (fictional) list of must play titles.

The “challenge sections” as I’m going call them, are beginning to feel like filler, but there is a fair amount of diversity in each of the areas to mix it up from just the simple kill X bad guys. Instead you get a kill 6 guys with only block attacks, or killing 30 guys with only environment attacks, defend these guys for 5mins while waves of baddies come and so on and so on. This would probably have been better had they have been spread out more instead of having to do 5/6 of these challenges in a row before advancing to the next area.

Assuming things continue to be as good as they have, this is a truly remarkable accomplishment for a studio’s first title. Hopefully my full review will be out soon, but not too soon…