Unsighted

Unsighted is this year’s best Metroidvania/Zelda-like game by a long shot. It’s creative, gripping, and accessible with a ton of stuff to do and see. There are a few small issues, like some awkward writing or too much menuing, but those are well worth it for such a fun, polished experience.

With couch co-op and the addition of Steam’s Remote Play Together, you can play with another person with just a single copy, provided you have a solid internet connection. Unsighted is an utterly amazing title for a debuting indie team that is well worth your money and attention.

For Brazilian developer Studio Pixel Punk, Unsighted is an accessible and content-rich debut with a compelling sci-fi drama at its core, and certainly in the argument for one of the best metroidvanias of the year.

UNSIGHTED deserves recognition and exposure not only for the crisp design, beautiful world, hypnotic tunes, and abundant secrets, but for the unique concepts it introduces to great effect, namely the NPC death timers. The stakes in games often lie in winning or losing a fight and having to expend more personal time on a fight that bruised our egos. Here, we have the added layer of humble automaton friends’ lives hanging by a thread. Even though I found several secrets throughout my initial trek, I am absolutely certain more can be uncovered; I just might take a rare plunge into New Game+.

Unsighted is a fun, quick little game, lasting me around ten hours on my first playthrough. Its combat and exploration are rewarding, the presentation is stylishly retro, and the narrative is good enough to round out the package. Some of the systems in place come across a little bit more tedious than they feel they should be, and the time-restriction mechanics don't do anything for me, but nitpicks aside, Unsighted is a solid pixel-art indie worth checking out.

Unsighted delivers engaging top-down action combat and a heartwarming narrative about connection, sacrifice, and love. The gameplay is fast and victory tastes sweet. Not everyone will enjoy the journey's burdens, and getting lost can frustrate you immensely, but the destination is worth the journey.

Had it been stripped away of some of its convoluted system, and instead focused on one or two features and story beats to go alongside its high level of polish and presentation, Unsighted would be a GOTY contender. But in trying desperately to be everything, Unsighted loses sight of the aspects that make it unique in an ever-expanding marketplace of retro-inspired Mentroidvanias. As a result, it’s an enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable experience.

JOGO MUITO BOM PROGRESSAO PERFEITA GRANDE VARIEDADE DE PERSONAGENS VARIAS MECANICAS E BOSSES UM DOS MELHORES JOGOS ESTILO METROID DO ANo

7/10

I have a hard time rating this game. It’s clearly extremely well done and a pleasure to experience in many ways. But. The game is just too dang hard. Even on easy mode. I don’t know, I just don’t have time to Get Gud* to enjoy a game these days. And I feel like including an easier mode wouldn’t have been that hard. *I’m not bad at games I’m just okay at them. But in this case the game was tearing me a new one and I felt like I just wasn’t improving at all. Imho I’ve been gaming long enough that if I missed something, it isn’t on me usually. Shame, good art, good music and sound, both with a few hiccups here and there but an overall fantastic presentation. Story seemed neat. Dialog seemed, well, gamey. But somehow the combat never came together for me. I even tried adjusting my monitor in case it was some kind of lag I wasn’t quite feeling it, but it would explain my inability to get the timing of the parry right. Good if you want a very challenging Zelda game maybe. But if you want another game that’s like Zelda and roughly the same difficulty as any recent Zelda, then I’d suggest looking elsewhere. And if you want a more difficult Zelda in this style, I felt the Zelda Cadence Of Hyrule is far better. I should note, most of my complaints could be fixed in an update someday. But it’s been over a year since launch I think, so I doubt it will happen.

Unsighted does a few things fine and a lot of things poorly. The combat and writing are its strongest points, and both are pretty weak. The level design and visual design are the biggest culprits. The levels don't 'read' very well and do little to reward exploration; there is a lack of visual unity and overall consistency that makes things as fundamental as navigation and combat clunky and unrewarding. It's been compared pretty readily to Hyper Light Drifer, which does Unsighted no favors at all. HLD told a solid story with no dialogue where Unsighted butchers a story with endless text. HLD had strong, smooth gameplay. Unsighted simply does not. It's got a lot of different systems and ideas! But it does absolutely none of them justice.

The writing is verbose and bland. The gameplay is unpolished and time-consuming. The exploration is at once linear and scattered; diversions and puzzles invariably lead to useless items that do nothing to add dimension or enjoyability to the janky, bare-bones combat. The upgrade/progression system is one of the worst I've seen yet. Unsighted is, tragically, broken from the ground up.