Vesta Reviews

Relatively simple yet challenging puzzle game, with rather quirky characters (not too many, but still) with Vesta of course being my favourite. Also the cutscenes are made in comic style which looks great! It starts easy but gets increasingly tougher to the point of one level being exceedingly frustrating and the final boss being quite a hike in difficulty (if you're RNG unlucky like when the boss decides to punch you and you're not close enough to the escape point) but either way it's all manageable. I kinda like the story unfolding via logs and the snippets you'll get to know through the various robots on the way, but I'm not entirely sure what to think of the entirety of the background story and the ending that leaves a few questions unanswered for me. Encountered maybe one bug if I remember correctly but it was neither a big deal nor game breaking or anything, the only real downside I personally see, and this is really just me, that the checkpoints don't remember your personal progress. If you die and get reset to the checkpoint, they have predetermined progress saved for that. But at least as far as I could see this was more to the advantage of me rather than disadvantage, was confused when I realised this at first but it was ok. Still I'd rather have them remember my personal progress.

Quite nice puzzles-level game... I only miss cloud for save-games. Even at full-price (10€) is worthy

Vesta (3.0 stars out of 5) Brief description of gameplay: The game is a puzzle/stealth game. You need to reach the end of the level by accumulating enough energy which can be found throughout the level. Sometimes the energy is just sitting round and sometimes you need to use your druid friend to shoot robots and take their energy. The game still has stealth mechanics because as the little girl you are defenseless from the robots, so you need to find ways around them in the level. There no real stealth abilities but the game felt stealthy especially in level 4. My personal opinion: This game is a nice puzzle game. I enjoyed each level and searching for the secrets. The game does a very good job at starting easy and getting kind of crazy. Unfortunately the combat (and as a result the boss fights) were not as clean and obvious as i would have liked. I had issues where the Droids shot did not match his laser, sometimes his shot somehow missed the target or it was really difficult to get the right aim which can get really annoying when your timed to do those actions. Overall I still enjoyed my time with Vesta. Pros: the puzzles are well thought out. They add a decent amount of new robots and concepts throughout the levels so the puzzles usually always feel fresh. Cons: Their is a noise in the final boss that just irritated me. I turned the music all the way down but it was still there. The combat feels clunky at times. For some of the later robots it was not obvious how close i could or couldn't be before they killed me. Achievement total: 21 Total hours played: 8.2 Tips for any achievements: Not really. There is an option to select your level so feel free to finish a level and then go back to search for the secrets later.

Vesta is light but trickier than its cute exterior suggests. I like that when you fall off something or get lasered you don't lose the "secret" points you've gained, but there are a number of times when it is hard to plan ahead and restarting the level becomes the only option. Puzzle games should make you feel clever when you've solved them. However, with multiple choices that sometimes result in your first choice being the wrong one / out of sequence, this can be frustrating because you have to restart the level. It's hard to make good choices without all of the information up front, and it's annoying when the only method to gather the information is through trial and error and error and error. Alternatively, I could simply be worse at puzzle games than I like to think. If you are good with this process of trial and error I think you'll enjoy the tone and mechanics Vesta has to offer. It's one that the entire family can enjoy together. I also liked that moments of this game reminded me of the old board game RoboRally. Here's a let's play of the first few levels I recorded if you want to get a sense of how it plays: https://youtu.be/m3zys0K-NMc