To be blunt this game is not in a good state at all for numerous reasons and this initial release is a real disappointment for me. There is a prospect for a really great game here but it's very far off being realised and for that I cannot recommend it at all in its current state but am open to, and hoping to, change this opinion in the future when this game progresses further into development.
Now while this game has been marketed as a Shadow of the Colossus clone it also takes loads of inspiration from Breath of the Wild, which is pretty courageous considering both games have such critical acclaim. If you told me about a game that was basically a combination of those two games you'd have me on board right away. The problem is this game fails at imitating either very well, other than the terrible framerate both games originally had.
Originally Breath of the Wild was supposed to release in 2015 but got delayed twice due to problems with the physics engine. As you can tell this decision paid off big time considering the reviews that that game received with many praising the very area in which they made sure to polish and get right. Sadly this is one of the big problems with Praey for the Gods, the physics are just horrible. Gliding feels rigid and stiff, jumping and climbing are awkward, you can both get caught on and even taken for a ride into the sky by rubble blasted away by the bosses while worst of all attempting to even jump and grab onto a boss just doesn’t seem to work sometimes, a problem enhanced by bad input delay on controllers.
The AI of the bosses is very lacklustre, especially the third and fourth bosses. In the case of the third boss the whole concept is to lure it into charging at you before dodging out the way causing it to bash into a wall and stun itself, giving you a chance to climb on. I often had a problem with the refusal of the boss to charge at me sometimes. I didn’t think it could get any worse but then the fourth boss came along and made it so, having to bait him close enough to a platform where you would either be able to glide onto him or use your grappling hook to climb up however he either followed me to destroy the platform or lost interest and stood just far away enough so I couldn’t reach him.
This brings be to my next problem which are some of the questionable design decisions. The worst offender that comes to mind is that very fourth boss where the way to defeat him is by climbing up ruined platforms to be able to grab onto him, the problem however is that he can destroy every last one, meaning you have to restart if he does so which is pretty easy for him considering the reach he has. Another bewildering decision for me was the placement of some checkpoints, for example before the third boss you had to solve a brief puzzle to get to him however if you failed to beat him you would have to do the puzzle again every time. I don’t understand why the checkpoint wasn’t placed at the start of the boss, they even disabled saving so you couldn’t besides who wants so do the same puzzle over and over again when they’ve already figured it out?
The camera is also often a problem with is getting stuck inside bosses as well as on the environment and rubble from said bosses attacks.
These are probably the most pressing issues this game has, with a few other things that can probably be cleaned up with more polish, such as more iframes when dodging since there didn’t seem to be any, or the weird character model with those creepy arms and even hopefully some more story elements being just a few other things I’d like to list.
I know this review sounds pretty scathing and quite frankly to some extent it is, this game has caused me a lot of frustration but even with all of this said I can still see a lot of potential in this game. There are already some neat ideas here as well as a nice soundtrack. When it actually comes together, such as how the first boss mostly did, you can see this game being a lot of fun.
Unlike some other early access games where there is a clear lack of direction in which to go this game absolutely shows it at least has intentions of what it wants to become. The developers just need better execution with their ideas which is hopefully something we’ll see over the course of development. So while I am advising to avoid it for now, unless you're really desperate to support its development, I do think that this game is one to keep your eye on.
