Baldo: The Guardian Owls Reviews

This game has come a long way since I first played it on Apple Arcade years ago, briefly. I realized there was a great game there but mobile was not the way to experience it, plus there was still a lotta jank and bad game design choices. But boy has it improved since then! First of all, I'm a huge LoZ fan, and this is very much a Zelda-inspired game. At times, it's downright shameless with the similarities lol. But on the whole, I think it does enough to establish it's own identity. It's basically a 3D-rendered, cell-shaded top-down Zelda, skewed 45 degrees to an isometric view, à la Tunic or Death's Door...with a Studio Ghibli aesthetic. It's quite massive tho, and I've only played the main quest, which took me 60+ hrs to finish at about 95% completion, since a couple of minor side quests just seemed redundant at that point. I've only just started 1 of 3 free DLC expansions, separate from the main quest, so the amount of content here is insane! This game was created by only 2 devs, I believe, over several years, and it launched in a pretty rough shape to some very mixed reviews. I can still remember some of the annoyances from back then. So many small indie games aren't able to recover from a bad launch, even though sometimes those bad launches are just a result of the devs being out of time and money. So to know first-hand how much better this game is now, and to see that it's also gotten a total of 3 FREE DLCs, is nothing short of amazing. So if you're wondering why the reviews on Steam are mixed, it's no doubt bc some ppl who bought the game early were disappointed with the quality, gave it a bad review, and moved on. That's just the reality for small games with a bad launch. The YouTube channel SwitchUp has done multiple videos on this game and been in direct contact with the devs, which is how I found out that it was worth giving it another go. All that said, I wanna be clear on what this game is, and what it's not. Combat in this game is nothing special, it's exactly as it is in ALttP or OoT. You spam attack to swing your sword at the enemy until it's dead, and you occasionally might use your dodge roll or toss a bomb or two, that's about it. Very simple, very old school Zelda. The draw here is the puzzles and the dungeons, they're fantastic! There are scattered rune pieces to find for optional weapons and power-ups that were mostly useless, but for me, the fun is in the exploration and puzzle-solving required to obtain them. I came across some real head-scratches, making them all the more satisfying to figure out. This game makes you think, not sweat. Combat may be a breeze, but in no way is it hand-holdy. Don't expect flashing beacons telling you where to go. If you're not asking "where tf do I go now?!" often, you're more clever than I am. If you do feel lost, you should try to complete your overworld map by finding Minisio the map guy in every region, and there's something in the Library that can help you with that, if you so choose. Speaking of maps, I went through half the game not realizing that all dungeons have their own maps, if you just go to the first inventory tab where your shields and equipment are. So the game may not be as intuitive as it could be, and it could certainly still benefit from a few more tweaks and quality of life improvements here and there, but it's already been improved so much that it feels kinda nit-picky to mention. I will say that I don't understand the thought process behind the button mapping for this game, at all. For example, you take out your shovel with B, and then you press Y to use it. So two button presses for one simple action, and there can only be one action assigned at a time, whether it's digging with your shovel, throwing a bomb, playing your horn instrument, lighting a torch, or using any of the optional weapons you might acquire. So you're constantly cycling through items with the D-pad, and I'm just thinking, why can't I just assign the shovel to B, the bombs to Y, the horn and torch to the unused trigger buttons, etc, all swappable within the inventory menu of course, like wouldn't that be so much better? Seems so obvious that I can only assume it's a side effect of the game's mobile touchscreen origin. Basically, if you played Tears of the Kingdom or Echos of Wisdom, and found it frustrating constantly pausing the action to cycle through way too much shit, this game does the same thing pretty much. I didn't really mind it, since the game is more puzzle based than action based. It's still an easy recommend from me if you're a Zelda fan. But I do realize it won't be for everybody. And if you do play it, make sure Depth of Field is turned off, just trust me on that.