Hatchwell Reviews

Zeldalike with some good bits that are ultimately overshadowed by persistent UI/UX and flow of play problems. Good - Some creative ideas e.g. for bosses, puzzles, and usable items Bad - Very little exploration - Lots of missables/loseables. Missable quests (due to timing), missable upgrades/bonuses (from quests and minigames and planting seeds), expensive items that are lost without warning, e.g. the 200gp pet ball is lost if it lands in the wrong place when you throw it. - Despite the lack of exploration, there still manages to be a surprising amount of backtracking -- just within a given dungeon. The dungeon design isn't actually bad, there's just a lot of slow time wasting, especially when e.g. you happen to not take the door with the key in it right away, etc. - The game doesn't autosave. This is good given all the missables, but it's also bad, because we're all used to Zeldalikes autosaving, so it's hard to remember to do it manually all the time; and that means when you actually miss/lose something and have to reload, you're potentially going back a half hour. - If your pet ever has a good use case, I never found it. This also compounds the sidequests being uninteresting since so many of them give dog treats as a reward. - Your sword swing covers basically a 90 degree quadrant on your front/side. This is to be contrasted with every single other item, which works straight in front of you. So you have to approach enemies a bit oddly sometimes to use your sword. Mostly this isn't a big deal, but it starts to feel like a handicap any time you're in a cramped map space, or sometimes even on bosses (which mostly have a very brief window where you can hit them for damage) - Moving is fine on its own, but combining it with attacking feels very awkward due to the long pauses (where you are still) before and after attacking - Roll is mostly great and helps speed up movement, but if you bump even slightly into a wall, you richochet backwards enough that you are very likely to take damage if there are enemies (or spikes) around. - There are some weird hitboxes that feel unfair, especially on bosses. For example, approaching the 3rd boss from the front, you can get in their face without taking contact damage, but approaching from behind, you take contact damage when you are like 15 pixels away from touching, which is the opposite of what you'd expect given that the boss is a lot taller than you. - A few less significant weird UI choices - to switch pet modes you have to go to the menu, equip an item, exit the menu, use it, then swap your items back to normal. Needlessly complicated versus just an in-menu toggle. Similarly, to save, you go to the menu, press "map" (why that button? who knows), use the regular buttons to save and confirm, then have to press "menu" (not cancel) to exit the save options.