I recently finished this one and I’m going to have to agree with what Tycho said (as I so often do) in that it’s a grand artistic vision that they couldn’t quite pull off a matching game for.
My feelings for the game can be summed up pretty adequately with the final boss. I’ll try not to spoil anything but this is how a video game’s final boss should be done; he’s utterly huge and off in the distance, black storm clouds in the sky, and you have to run around between safe points avoiding his fireballs to approach him like a soldier storming Normandy. The experience was tarnished dramatically when I struggled for a whole hour, largely due to unresponsive controls and some buggy collision detection, and that left a real sour taste in my mouth. Yet despite that I wanted to see what happens next so bad that I trudged on.
Since I seem to be a dissenting opinion from the glowing praise everyone throws at this thing, I should elaborate a bit. The majority of the time when you battle the giant beasts, you’re crawling up their furry regions, and they’re trying their hardest to shake you off. Your options are simple: hold R1 to keep your grip, and use the analog stick to crawl around. While you are being shaken around, which is extremely often, you can’t do anything and you have to wait while your guy fumbles and moans, struggling to hold on. And when you can move, for reasons I can’t even fathom, the direction you input doesn’t always match the direction your character moves. Maybe it’s an issue with camera perspective or the complex structures you crawl on, but I remember more than a few times, I would just push my analog stick in random directions until I started going where I wanted to. Now this is bad, but to make things worse there is a strength meter that slowly depletes as you hold on, and while you struggle with the controls or watch your hero flail about, the clock is ticking down until you fall off and have to start your climb over again.
If ever there was a game I had a love-hate relationship with, this is it. Overall I would recommend playing this one, because it’s a memorable experience and when it’s not frustrating you, you’ll be floored by some of the best boss encounters ever. This is a great example of what a modern video game can be, and is very unique and artfully done. But again, the game can be aggravating, and the gameplay mechanics are pretty shallow. I still don’t regret buying it.