Don't know how to hide spoilers, thus post will include some.
Finished hollow forest. Missed one heart though. What I didn't like: The watch and the armor upgrades. I don't see for what they are good, you honestly don't need the armor, especially not with the watch. It would be something else with some extra area that is near to impossible to manage in 10 mins, but like it is it only takes away one of the charms of the game. Same with the watch, sure, if you will explore and search for missing items the watch helps, but the idea of punishing the player for not looking thoroughly I like far more, it also favors replayability. Oh, and I fully take back the game is too difficult, even I could handle it well, what makes the game fairly easy.
Furthermore the last area. You are thrown into the rooms wich move. I kind of don't feel pushed. I mean shortly before you can save and feel secure, that makes it difficult to feel occurring danger, you know you can just try over and over again. It would help a lot if there would be some puffer, some not so difficult rooms that eat up your time with the fairy already warning you beforehand to make you exited and full of adrenaline if you enter the moving rooms. And that you can't just redo the moving rooms but have to get back to them first including the warnings once more also adds up to it. The boss fight is also a bit of a let down. First it doesn't fit very well into it. You just avoid attacks and mindlessly attack, something more tricky (attacks that have a more obvious pattern that can be avoided easily with cautious gameplay coupled with the time running out faster than usual to punish cautious gameplay. Including direct battle after continuing to study the patterns) would fit better. I just shoot it down with my remaining bullets, I had troubles to avoid the attacks.
Last the story. I don't dislike it, but the presentation could have been better. The big feary statue and heart look a bit weird. Something more tree/fairylike would fit better in my eyes. And the story is sad and depressing [edit: that is not a complain, I like it a lot, only wanted to say the ending does not fit this mood], I hoped fore something like arriving to late to stop the rot or the fairy tricking arvid. Kyubi-like, not evil, but heartless and cold with reasoning. Arvid being the bad guy is not to my disliking, but it comes to sudden, its like "ohh, I am the bad guy" with calling Oberon pathetic and so on. Just throwing out his story. Slowly approaching the topic and keeping the nice and calm personality (rather smirking about Oberon and enjoying his failures instead of making him a fool) would be more to my liking. Though that might be just me preferring a calm, heart- and merciless evil over a mad-ruler and jerk-like evil. Its just that I think the game has a great atmosphere to it and the potential to end with a truth that gives you the chills. Instead it rather fells like "that's it" and I want to go on, tormenting and ending the world as now evil arvid.
Anyway, awesome game, regarding story and atmosphere one of the best I ever played. And no lags, not even on my outdated laptop.
Edited by Naru, 20 February 2017 - 06:35 PM.