Europa Reviews

Absolutely stunning

The platforming mechanics are fun as hell, and even though they would have been better suited to an open world rather than a linear adventure, only one guy was developing this, so I can hardly be disappointed! The story is quite sweet with a small twist at the end that surprised me, and I really enjoyed the work put into the voiceover. The setting, a terraformed moon of Jupiter, is absolutely fascinating, and the quiet, Breath of the Wild-like score and bright, beautiful Ghibli-like graphics do it incredible justice. The sight of Jupiter on the horizon is breathtaking and the stunning views from the tall places you could reach with the jetpack made me long for a photo mode! The only thing I found kind of annoying was that in the beginning the game presents us with enemies we can defeat, and later we get upgraded to enemies we can't defeat. It's understandable to want to scale up the difficulty, but getting swarmed by them without being able to take care of them kind of messed with my immersion. I also kind of wish there was a New Game+ mode where you had infinite charge on your jetpack to back and catch the collectibles I missed. Overall, though, the journey was a pleasant one, and well worth your time and money. If you like Studio Ghibli, Breath of the Wild, or Journey, this game is for you.

Relaxing and cool storytelling. Amazing art and music.

Solid and playable platformer, amazing story and OST, pretty to look at 🩷

This game [i]should[/i] have been a beautiful and soothing little flow-type. Instead, some terrible design decisions make it almost the opposite: unpleasant and frustrating. The core problem is that traversing this inviting landscape is anything but a "flow". It's not just that the controls are poorly calibrated and that the camera often doesn't cooperate. It's that the game's systems deliberately make it much worse. The "challenges" you are supposed to overcome are all about slowing you down, obstructing, and essentially annoying you. You're constantly running out of the "flying" energy, which forces you to walk at crawl-speed, and every time you get hit by an enemy or fall down there is an "I'm hurt" animation that stops you in your tracks for an unbearably long time, often enough to be hit by the stupid enemies again. Finally, sometimes instead of walking you "slide", which is barely faster than walking and is much less maneuverable. It ends up making things harder rather than easier. I would groan every time "sliding" happened to me. And, seriously, why are there enemies in this game in the first place? You don't fight them, you can't die, and there are no stealth tactics. All they do is pointlessly slow you down. Do you like collectibles and achievements? Well, they are all missable, and many of them are crucial to the game's story. That's one of my most hated design choices in video games: Why punish people who aren't so good at video games with a fragmentary narrative experience? Yeah, have fun with those. Even if these problems were fixed, there's just not a lot to [i]Europa[/i]. The landscape is pretty, but its elements are repeated again and again. The prettiness wears off fast. Puzzles are very trivial, just busywork that is made annoying by the awful traversal mechanics. [i]Europa[/i] is very disappointing.

Frankly speaking, this is more a scene and rendering showcase with minimalist story-telling and puzzle. If you want a serene 5-hour journey for the price, this game should be right for you.