If even moving around feels this off, it’s hard to have any real fun with the game, to say the least.Īdd to that all the mind-numbing backtracking and aimless exploration Baldo is brimming with, and the simple act of getting around becomes even more excruciating. It just makes even the act of going from point a to point b tedious and- well, simply put, not fun. Even your default movement speed is slow, and though you can sprint, you cannot do it endlessly. In fact, it’s not just during puzzles that movement presents a problem- the moment-to-moment gameplay, something as fundamental as moving your character around, feels stiff and unresponsive and sluggish. Your walking speed while carrying something might be excruciatingly slow, the enemies you’re supposed to avoid might have weird hit boxes, you might fall off the narrow beam you’re walking on because movement in this game is inaccurate and you can never accurately judge your speed. On paper those might sound like ordinary activities, but the issue here is that Baldo is more often than not incapable of supporting even basic activities like these. "This is a large game, and conceptually, it shoots high, especially for a small team with a small budget- but ambition means nothing if the actual gameplay isn’t good and if the design isn’t smart, and Baldo has major, major issues in both of those areas." It doesn’t help that puzzles often involve frustratingly tedious tasks that serve as unnecessary time-wasters, like having to carry pots from one end of the room to the other while avoiding being touched by enemies, or walking back and forth across narrow beams to get to a distant switch. Puzzles are consistently frustrating, almost as if they’re the game is constantly trying to prevent you from having actual fun with each new puzzle it throws at you. Frustratingly enough, neither of those things is well-designed. Structured like a classic Zelda game, Baldo takes place in a surprising large world, and tasks you with exploring the overworld and dungeons, with an emphasis on puzzles and combat. Rather than one or two big problems compromising the experience, NAPS Team’s action-adventure title is weighed down by hundreds of frustrating issues that seem to be collectively hellbent on ensuring that you’re miserable, and as far from enjoyment as you could be. Sadly, it buckles under the pressure of those expectations, but more than that, its own ambition. This is a large game, and conceptually, it shoots high, especially for a small team with a small budget- but ambition means nothing if the actual gameplay isn’t good and if the design isn’t smart, and Baldo has major, major issues in both of those areas. With its promise of a game inspired by classic The Legend of Zelda titles, set in a world that owes its inspirations to Ghibli films, Baldo: The Guardian Owls has certainly had the attention of quite a few people. Clearly, it’s something of a passion project, and over time, Baldo has built up a pretty sizeable group of people who’ve been keeping an eye on it. Indie Italian developer NAPS Team has been working on Baldo: The Guardian Owls, in some way, shape, or form, for about fifteen years now.
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