Owlboy is a short but fun platformer with plenty of good, and some bad.
The story Of Owlboy is about a mute owlboy on his adventure to save the world from an evil pirate captain with the help of three friends. While the story is simple it's perfectly fine for a platformer, and it still has some emotional moments throughout the game. However, The ending to this game sucks. For one a character that is your ally does that cliché "I'm doing something that seems evil because I don't wanna tell you that I'm actually saving the world" which leads to a forced final boss because the idiot wouldn't simply explain what he was doing. many questions are left unanswered and you never even get to fight the big bad pirate captain which I found very disappointing since the game built him up as this super powerful warbot that was nearly unstoppable throughout the story and even destroyed a major city by himself, but he is easily killed by a plot McGuffin leaving a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Another issue is we don't find out what happens to everybody after you save the world, and your character presumably falls to his death. In it's attempt to be deep I found only a disappointing void that has a negative impact on the game.
The graphics are very pretty for a 2d platformer. everything looks nice, colorful and every area stands out from each other. I don't understand why the main character and his mentor look more human that owl, but the other owl people look more owl than human which I find an annoying inconsistency for the sake of a more human relatable character. There's also a discount prinny in this game (if you don't know what a prinny is they are from Digaea) which are about the same as their counterparts. Overall the game looks good
Finally the gameplay. you can jump, roll, attack, pick up objects, fly indefinitely, and teleport your selected ally to your hands whenever you want. You can carry around one of your three friends to shoot multiple projectiles to dispatch enemies and obstacles. One issue I had was dodging while shooting as I found it difficult to do this with the button layout, and usually didn't use the move. I have two major issues with the gameplay. 1 there is no map, and 2 there is no fast travel making navigation a bit frustrating and backtracking a pain. You can gather up some coins in the world to unlock upgrades to your gear and accessories, but I wouldn't recommend getting all the coins because it would involve some backtracking if you don't use a guide to find them all. Also don't waste your time gathering the three big coins. It's not worth it, and it doesn't really unlock anything other than a bit more lore to the world and some bull$%&$ nonsense about a guy who was so good at math he was able to predict his own death, and everything that would happen after that including the main character's death but like a moron instead of trying to prevent his own death or everything that would happen after it he just accepted it as fate.
Overall Owlboy is an okay game it's fun to play, but the ending isn't satisfying and there is no completion bonus so if you do get the game just collect up to the second to last upgrade and beat the game. I wouldn't recommend this game over Mario, Kirby, or most famous 2d plaformers, but it's a decent distraction. My score is a 6.5 out of 10
