Flynn and Freckles

I really didnt want to write a bad review, but I have to put the facts out there so less people do the same mistake and waste their money on this product. For starters let me tell you - this game is one big mess, feels unfinished, has barely working features which I will gladly describe beacuse they have been source of many frustrations, where I kept playing because it became a challenge to keep going, not for its difficulty, but for its incompetence unfortunately.

1. Game is littered with bugs: You wanna inifinitely fall thru the floor on random places - check (where surfaces should be playable but they are nor rendered as they should) where only way to end that torture is quiting the game where we come to next problem.

2. Random Checkpoints - now this is super weird. Normally games load your last checkpoint as you fail, die...whatever. But here, it kinda random, here if you die you might be teleported to a mile away from place that suppose to be last checkpoint (and you can see saving in progress), seems game doesnt load your last checkpoint but the one that is closest to that place by some imaginary air line distance. So if map is U shaped and you die near the end you will be reloaded at the beggining of the level. With worse jimping mechanics known to man this is another issue, you will start pulling your hair out - doing same thing over and over again, and to top that up with timing sections - be prepared to get some gray hair as you play this.

3. Random deaths with almost full health: You have 5 increments of health bar, game over as you lose all 5 of them. BUt still I cant even count how many times I got game over with 3/5 health for instance...you never know when your game will end cause well game can decide to off you eventough you are healthy AI individual :P.

4. THE WORST JUMPING MECHANICS - this takes the cake. And I'm not exagerating, this game has the very worst jumping mechanics and jumping detection known to a man, in any game in any universe. Its incredible, I just cant believe this is put on sale, itc completely broken, as everything in this game is random, you never get the feeling when to jump, it has some lag to boot making it painful experience. Platforms that change their height as you jump on them are the worst, they just didnt programed it right, left to small time buffer...and successfully clearing them as obstacles for any progress becomes game of big numbers, you will die and die and die until game decides ok we had enough now randomly you will be able to clear them, its crazy. With high density of invisible walls in this game - you might get PTSD for real.

5. Terrible landing detection - as with jumping per se, landing is also an issue, if you drop from height more that 1.5 m you will lose health, it might sound like - sweet they made this game realistic. No they did not, this is not a feature, this is badly programed game. Its again - random, so you will just sigh as it happens, and will happen in most unexpected places and you will wonder - WHY did I lose health again for no apparent reason.

6. ISSUES with levels programing: On second to last level things get crazy. Whoever made this game had it in his head what you should do to progress. You are progressing thru the level and you see - things are getting weird. PArt of levels you finished get reseted. You are thinking to yourself, it must be that random loading issues. But nooooo, you see you can finish a level in only one way, by steps followed to a tee. Otherwise level will go in broken game state. And the worst thing is you cant see it happening, leading to frustration. Not to spoil anything, lets just say again - you will go crazy most likely as I did and lose few hours just to obseve what kind of foolishnes is going on. It just goes to show this game is one hell of a ride. And not for the right reasons.

7. Absolutely atrocious LAG between your input and action on screen, where I was wondering is my gamepad broken or what, tried 2 of them, its the same. Lag is 1+ seconds long, and it totally ruins your rythm where it is needed. Feels like you are giving commands to some future action, forget about immediate response. Your thumb will get sore, cause its only natural to try and provoke something on screen, and you are trying pressing harder by logic where action will be completed on time. I have never seen anything like it.

8. Broken achievement/s? Glitch prone collectible: For all the achievement hunters out there, one achievement is broken for sure. Tested it to no end, and it just doesnt trigger. Other issue related to them, or if you want to collect Totems - other than acievement you gain nothing, is their tendency to bug out. On Swamp level, IF you die only once that totem will for no apparent reason disappear - making you not be able to collect them all and for another chance at it, you will have to replay THE WHOLE GAME. Die again on second try - replay the game again, and so on. With worse gameplay mechanics on the market you can only imagine how tedious it becomes. If you want to avoid replaying this "masterpiece" be prepared to backtrack after 2 hits, fails (dropping in watter, falling from 1,5 meter or above, getting hit by obstacles with atrocious hit detection et cetera) to beggining of the level - to collect respawning health item there, and that is many feets away...plus games "feature" to kill you off with 3 health increments - just reminding myself now...I get terrible flashbacks XD.

I wount even go into lack of voices in game, meaningless interactions with AI, no connection with game world (you never know what is going on, why am I doing all this things, for whom the bells tolls..., music that cuts itself on randokm places like a broken radio, no environment sounds. Enemies itself, with one exemption are total lackeys...you dont even have to fight them most of the times, and when you do, its mash mash buttons and after 3 hits they are dead - it feels they are just waiting there to get offed not even trying to attack you on later levels (like fish enemies).

I just cannot recommend this game. If jumping, landing mechanic was competent and they fixed input lag then maybe this game would have some kind of value. But all things considered it just doesnt. Forget about fun here, this is more or less a pain simulator, and Im 100 % sure there are more fun ways to hurt yourself if that is your kind of thing. Dont be fooled by screenshots, I wouldnt call them a ruse to gain some money, I still dont want to believe someone made this on purpuse THIS BADLY...Just avoid it if you expect some nice Zelda clone, this is not it, this is a torture device for all of your senses.

PS. I tried giving this game a chance few more times, and came to conlusion this game is ABOMINATION of SUPREME ORDER. Come to think of it, it would be better that I gave those 2,5 E to someone who actually needed it, not to this people that made this manure. Hope you are having fun with that 1 E you maybe got from Valve at the end. Now I have to go delete this product from my list and put it on Hidden - fur immer, so I can forget about this mistake and 6 hours of terrible experience which I hope will soon forget, playing something that is actually good and fun.

TL;DR - it's busted on a fundamental level. Due to serious collision detection problems, your character freezes on landing from a jump, or falls through the platform, or fails to jump. The level design does not account for this. I did not finish the game because my save file has permanently preserved or not preserved the state of various level elements in such a way that it can't be completed anymore, with no option to restart the level. Do not buy this game.

The game has crippling problems with collision detection, even with recognizing whether you have landed from a jump, and so you can receive fall damage from a relatively small fall. The collision detection problems also make your character come to a dead stop for like a fifth of a second on landing, and make you simply slide off some platforms without jumping, or fall through solid platforms when falling fast enough.

There are serious problems updating level state after death - some things will stay as they were, others will return to their initial state, some things will do neither, such as raising the water an additional level above what normally occurs in the course of the level, rendering the level impossible. All of these problems will be preserved in your save file so in some cases, all the time you invested in the game up to this point was a waste, because the game can no longer be completed.

The level design has some major problems itself, even without the bugs. The length of levels varies wildly, so you don't know how long your play session will end up being. A good half of the jumps are just barely possible, and it gets worse once you get the double jump, with the game requiring precise timing on both parts of the jump. The way your character freezes on landing is not accommodated in the level design, so sections where you need to be quick on sinking platforms will be insanely hard for no reason. There are wall buttons you have to hit with thrown pots, and they don't really stand out visually. You frequently don't know whether a cavern will take you to a new level with no way back, and so you hesitate to go through when you don't have all of the major collectibles, even if there's no other way to advance. You are often presented with multiple dead-end paths, and you don't know which order you need to travel through them until you already have been through them. The game will mislead you into using bombs by placing bomb shops in areas where you have no need for them. There's one level where you have to keep up with a boat and keep it safe, but the timing is so tight, not failing requires some foreknowledge only the developer would have, and because there are no checkpoints in that level, you will have to restart THE ENTIRE LEVEL after you fail. In the level I stopped at, I legitimately could not find the way forward, and resorted to hopping up terrain in a way that was clearly not intended.

There are a number of minor annoyances as well. Coins that pop out of defeated enemies or cut grass will frequently settle inside of collision. Enemies also can be pushed back through collision sometimes. There's a snake queen boss whose attack you have to run away from until she's stunned, but you can't look to see if she is because of all the threats in front of you. Some switches arbitrarily can only be turned on, while others can be toggled either way, and so you may miss out on something if you activate it. Which you likely will, because it's unclear what a lot of switches and buttons will do until you have activated them. Even the title screen menu is unclear, with a knife stabbed into the paper on the right indicating what is highlighted, but something I did in the options resulted in its position being offset. The game will sometimes trigger cutscenes while you are in the middle of a jump, which can result in you falling to your death. It also seems to be impossible to legitimately trigger all of the achievements as well.

Save your money.

Unfortunately bought this game a while before trying it so may not be able to refund it.
Even in the first area it was unplayably buggy. Imagine Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but now imagine you have to constantly manually adjust the camera angle and that you have a 50-50 chance the platform you're jumping to will glitch out from under you and you'll pass through the solid rock.
Running through the village Flynn would randomly drop through the ground and drown. It is unplayable in this state.

[table]
[tr]
[th]Byte-sized review[/th]
[th]A platform adventure best left marooned on a deep sea ocean island[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Review[/td]
[td]I adore 2D/3D colourful platformers (next to RPG's it's my second favorite genre). In fact some of my favorite gaming memories consist of myself huddling around the NES, SEGA Mega Drive, Playstation 1 and 2 playing through each systems latest colourful platformer, often staying up into the wee hours of the morning getting lost in each ones world. While the genre has fallen out of favor somewhat unfortunately with the big publishers thankfully we have indie game studios trying to rekindle the flame and through that we have seen a popular resurgence with 2D 8/16 bit adventures such as Shovel Knight and The Messenger and in the 3D realm with the brilliant A Hat in Time to the mediocre and somewhat disappointing Yooka-Laylee (disappointing considering the talent behind this one) to even Crash Bandicoot making an appearance on modern systems with the well received Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy. The moment I saw Flynn and Freckles pop up on the Steam store I knew I immediately had to give it a try. Sadly, and really it pains me to do this because I can see the developers clearly have the same love for the genre as I do even citing Spyro, Guybrush and Crash in the credits as inspiration for the game, I just can't recommend this game. While the PS2 aesthetics didn't bother me in the slightest (I found the graphics quite charming in a simple way) what is unfortunate is how bland and unremarkable the adventure is. Had this released in the early noughties it would probably have gone completely unnoticed as well and while it tries to pay homage to the era it does nothing to make it stand out. Coupled with terrible animations (Flynn walks like he has a carrot stuck up his backside) and a dull-as-dishwater plot (young pirate searches for the treasure of one fabled pirate), I could have probably gotten over those issues and simply given the game a "meh" rating if it were not for the one mechanic that simply ruins it all, a mechanic you need to absolutely nail in a platform adventure, you know - the jumping bits. Jumping bits that require precision but that are totally broken. I spend more time dying and getting frustrated with the jumping, especially since the game is quite puzzle heavy (nothing taxing), but often requires that the jumping mechanic actually works, which it doesn't. Lots of trial and error ensured much to my chagrin. The second major issue I have with this game is that it only saves periodically but not enough (mostly only when you enter a new area) and should you die (and you will thanks to the broken jumping mechanic) you are often forced to replay through large sections, having to resolve puzzles you just solved (and often struggled to solve because of the jumping mechanic working against you). This ultimately ends up sinking this adventure.[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]One word to sum up the experience[/td]
[td]Broken[/td]
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[tr]
[td]Performance/Bug related incidents[/td]
[td]I did come across a few bugs, especially where Flynn has to pick up pots to depress certain switches where I could not pick up the pot at all or I would put the pot on the switch and it would end up getting stuck in the geometry resulting in me not being able to use the switch or pick up the pot.[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Similar to games[/td]
[td]Jak and Daxter; Crash Bandicoot; Spyro the Dragon; Yooka-Laylee[/td]
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[tr]
[td]Suitable for[/td]
[td]People who enjoy colourful platformers although you are better off giving this one a wide-berth[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Current position in my games of 2018 cleared list[/td]
[td]33rd position.[/td]
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[tr]
[td]Rating[/td]
[td]https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=869455135[/td]
[/tr]

I couldn't finish the 1st level, because of the horrible jumping mechanics. You jump higher if you stand still, but to reach the first cave, you'll have to run and jump... well good luck with that!!

If you like old school 3D platformers you're going to like Flynn & Freckles.
It has the vive of a late 90s game with modern graphics. Controls are good and camera behaves well.
I love the begining of the game, there are some parts of level design through the game that I would change, but the overall feeling is good.

It has charm characters and enough back story to keep you interested about the world.
Some elements remember to Zelda on N64 or GameCube, some to 3D Mario's games, somes to Spyro or Ratchet & Clank...
It's quite linear but with enough exploration, some figthing and variety on the gameplay mechanics. It's just about having a fun time, as simple as that.

I totally recommend the game.