Spiritfarer

“I can forgive the boring dialogue, because Spiritfarer claims to be a 'cozy game', so you should expect getting the same script just like when opening YouTube and searching for 'boring story to help you sleep ASMR' and selecting anything but that Joe Pera Adult Swim video.”

“The story... that was my biggest hope for this game, because from the beginning it is clear that this game is about death and loss, which could easily be a setting for an emotional story that I would love.”

“Simply beautiful and emotional game, would love to play it for the first time again.”

“The gameplay loop is incredibly boring, focused on extremely repetitive minigames on par with mobile games.”

“Unfortunately, all this tedious busywork gameplay killed any investment I had in the characters on the ship.”

“While the gameplay feels slow at times, I think this actually works in the game's favor as it gives you time to reflect and really absorb everything that's going on around you.”

“I find the music and sounds grating and repetitive, to the point that I always play with it muted.”

“The music is mostly bland at best and annoying at worst. This is a running trend, and the entire OST seems susceptible to constant repetition.”

“The music is also wholly unremarkable - I can't remember any of it, save for the swelling portion of the Everdoor's theme, and many common themes are very repetitive and irritating.”

“With the graphics in certain places being very poor in comparison to what is advertised in the videos and overall in the game, I would not pay more than 20 bucks.”

“After many hours of playing I simply can't comprehend all the gashing about this game... the graphics / animations feel substandard, the gameplay is a tedious loop of micromanaging crops or passengers, each action feels like a mobile-game-style QTE, dialogues are unbearably badly written.”

“The graphics also stutter a bit when you're moving very fast or ziplining.”

“Good lord what were they thinking... every single task takes an eternity and has to be repeated in full hundreds of times throughout a playthrough, from the stale minigames to the long and slow animations, farming, mining, cutting trees, processing resources, it all takes such an insanely long time that I really can't be bothered anymore.”

“For the last 3 hours in this game I've just constantly been asking myself "why did they not let players unlock 'auto' mode after repeating the manual process a set number of times?", it really, really feels like playtime was padded in the worst way possible, making you repeat tedious needless actions ad nauseam.”

“I'll probably try to finish my run but after 20 hours I am completely and utterly done with the tedious nature of every single repetitive task, and it looks like I'm not even halfway done with the story, so that's promising.”

“In short - it's not funny, it's not emotional, it's not engaging.”

“The 'woke' storylines, shallow characters, and randomly inserted expletives (realism?) make me suspect this game was probably written by a blue-haired SJW, with very preachy lines about how great workers' unions are and breaking the knees of 'capitalist pigs.' If that was supposed to be funny or sarcastic, I must have missed the joke.”

“Not funny.”

“I'm glad there was the option to turn Alex's off, but a tad disappointed the same wasn't done with Francis as I feel both can really take you out of the atmosphere of the game quickly.”

“The game is made with great care and you can tell the developers tried to make an atmosphere in the game, but in my opinion there are a few issues: the game becomes a drag with continuous chores, some things should be unlocked at the start like a faster boat to make the game less time consuming etc., which spoiled it a bit for me but the characters keep you going I suppose.”

“After a while the ship feels very disconnected and the atmosphere gets grindy quick.”

“A lot of the 'goodbyes', which serve as the main payoff for the never-ending onslaught of tedious tasks the game subjects you to, are mainly just the characters riffing the exact same dialogue they've been peddling you for the last 5 hours without any actual character development being involved.”

“Character development is managed badly - a lot of characters behave inconsistently or express sentiments or feelings which aren't really earned over the course of their stay on the ship.”

“- bad writing, no character depth, no character development (or at least none after 14 hours...)”

“It's a gorgeous, emotional game, but there are some genuinely game-breaking glitches that manifest so frequently that it becomes borderline unplayable.”

“The game is amazing.. however it freezes and crashes all the time.”

“Worst of all though, there are glitches and they do appear during scenes that are supposed to be emotional, ruining the tone.”

“Only downside is the gameplay, which becomes quite repetitive by the end of the (40 something hour) game and there is not much to speak of in terms of replayability.”

“I don't foresee any replay value or reason to do a second run, but the achievements creator decided to implement one achievement to force the second run if you want 100% so that's a negative mark.”

“No replayability - despite the fact this game has several achievements that you could only get by playing twice (aka an achievement for saying yes to a piece of dialogue, but a different one for saying no), there just doesn't seem to be a reason to replay this game, especially when it's essentially just grinding resources.”

“Twenty fold performance overhead for what are essentially 1st gen pentium visuals (120 mhz at most).”

“Hoaring resources and travelling back and forth between locations is the core gameplay...and needs to be done...countless, countless times; sadly some aspects of travelling, hoarding and forging aren't optimized, few important examples:”

“-poor quality of life optimization (ship pause at every event, unskippable animations etc).”

“This game also feels like it could have easily become a mobile game filled with ads and microtransactions... thank you to the developers for not doing that.”

“The gameplay reminds me of mobile pet city builders, but without all the predatory microtransactions.”

“If you enjoy looking at half-way decent pictures, like being led by a carrot on a stick, or if a mobile game that doesn't have predatory monetization appeals to you, then this may be right up your alley.”