So I picked the game up at the Magical Underworld Store, and I think the Gametrailers.com review I watched is pretty spot on. There's a sense of wonder and joy at every turn, and also a sense of disappointment. The game is a magical thing, and amazingly well done in many small ways, particularly in relation to the creatures themselves (who definitely take center stage), but there's a huge, huge sense of wasted potential for me, even as early as the first stage, the cell stage. It's really neat in a lot of ways, fun to play, and gorgeous to look at... but they did virtually nothing with it. It's so paper-thin it's disgusting, and not because it's terrible, but just because the system they set up could have been built upon almost effortlessly. They could have made some interesting little mechanical choices and come up with a much deeper, longer little experience, and it would have required practically no major changes to the system that's there. It's the grandest example of wasted potential I've ever seen, and because of that lasts you maybe 10 minutes. What a shame! I haven't explored the next stage much, but I hear all the stages barring the last are very short, and while some are cool, the shortness is unsatisfying because you just don't get to revel in the quirks of that particular stage for long enough.
So I'll maybe post more impressions later, but I think a lot of what's been said about this one is true.
