Pine (2019)

I got nothing to say that i don't think has been said in the other reviews. I did have fun but this game is almost painful to play in some spots. I was prepared for it though as I knew it was a Kickstarter project and often, you do get designs like this with those. Fired up cheat engine at some point around halfway through my play time to finish this. Grinding for the benefit of creatures who dont even like you is anything but satisfying. I also got tired of the combat after 8 hours or so and just wanted to breeze through any necessary fighting.

The way the villages and tribes are doing stuff and have reputations and other things and you change all that reminded me of some of the God games in the 90s, except you're not some god you are a weak, wimpy human!

Game is really pretty though, I loved the way it looks, and it was really fun to wander around on the isalnd and explore stuff.

This game scratches the Zelda-like adventure itch for me, though it definitely has the less-polished feel of an indie game rather than all the AAA bells-and-whistles.

I very much got the feel throughout the story that I was being fed a tutorial of strategies and options for a much larger game later, but there was a lot of mechanics that I only used during the quest which introduced them, and a lot that I only used once more, in preparation for the "final battle". I guess it was a little letdown that there wasn't much in the way of replayability after finishing the story, or a longer story even.

But ultimately, I thoroughly enjoyed playing through the story. It wasn't very deep but combined with simple, enjoyable gameplay, I was entertained and felt driven to complete the game by more than just the need to be a completionist.

Intro

You walk around an ugly but atmospheric world constantly trying to figure out what to delete from your tiny tiny inventory to pick other stuff up. There's also enemies that you fight in clumsy but decent third-person combat (sword/bow). There's also a faction system that requires you to donate items to be allowed to buy items/not get attacked.

The Good

• Combat takes a bit of getting used to because it traps you in animations but it's otherwise decent - it keeps you on your toes.
• Thing have cute names.
• Decent variety in enemies.
• The little puzzle system is okay.

The Bad

• The world is pretty empty.
• The faction system is mostly a chore. Plenty of other games have enemies fighting eachother.
• There's like a million different rocks and food stuff and the like.
• Fast travel is limited to the towns of neutral factions and requires an item.
• Clumsy interface.
• No classes/skills/traits/etc.
• Pretty sure you only ever get swords and bows (and traps).

The Ugly

You quickly get your starting inventory size doubled but managing it is still the most annoying thing in the game. I played this for 2,5 hours. One hour was just wondering around. One hour was figuring out what to eat/craft/drop to make space in my inventory. Fifteen minutes was me thinking the game was bugged because the intro quest doesn't have proper waypoints. Finally, i spent about fifteen minutes actually having fun in combat.

Conclusion

Imagine if a team of seven inexperienced devs tried to make a game like Horizon Zero Dawn. They got some of the basics down. You left your simple tribe to explore the scary world. You can hit weakpoints on enemies with your bow. There's some story about where humans used to live involving underground bunkers.

And the rest is just generic MMO-like content spread far too thin. I got a better sword and literally the only difference was it had 2 stars instead of 1. This just really isn't worth your time.