Eidolon

An astonishing exploration game, with some breathtaking moments, that ultimately fails to be satisfying.

Your heart will soar as you glide gently through changing landscapes, weather patterns, and incredibly subtle day-night cycles. There will be moments where you reach a new place and you'll just stare at the screen at awe. You will find well-written documents that will wave together a remarkably rich, sad, and inspiring story.

Unfortunately, you will mostly be bored. The game is far, far, far too slow. How slow? Think that reaching the next location can take 45 minutes. Sure, it's a beautiful ride to get there, but actually the scenery is not so diverse, and it will get boring. With a game so focused on nature, there really should have been more than three kinds of trees and shrubs.

The slowness is exacerbated by a raw navigation system that will not let you easily plan your journey, so that you will surely have to go back and revisit places you've already been. Since it can take 45 minutes to get to them ... you may find yourself looking up a cheat code for faster travel (and it still will take a very long time!), or just quitting and heading to the wiki to read the rest of the documents and get the whole story.

As other reviewers have mentioned, there is a terrible "survival" system that is an entirely unnecessary addition to the gameplay. It's charming for the first 10 minutes, but then it's just a bother. I wish, instead, that there was a good navigation system.

A wonderful idea, and I did thoroughly enjoy some moments in the game, but the execution would have benefited from more development.