The Legends of Owlia

Faithful adherence to a retro aesthetic isn't an excuse for poor design. This would have been a middling title back in the day, and it's a middling title now. It's not a Crystalis nor a Startropics. That said, compared to prior 8-bit era titles it's only below average, not outright bad. While I feel there are better titles for getting one's retro what-could-have-been fix (which is ultimately my reason for not recommending the game), it does provide what it claims to, and sneaks in a few amenities despite appearances (for example, there's a password system, though if you die your end password is also auto-entered in the Continue menu, and you aren't actually penalized for dying). EDIT TO ADD: This is a near miss for me, and re-reading my review makes it sound more harsh than that. If you want a faithful NES game, it absolutely is one, and I'd recommend it for that. Otherwise, I would have trouble recommending for reasons discussed in the comments.

This is game reminds me of when I was first playing Legend of Zelda and other NES games that I've cherished over the years. It has a good storyline, which is Adlanniel, a student of falconry, and her owl companion, Tyto, are asked by Great Owl King, Silmaran, to save five of the Great Owls from Mermon, the Merman King, who is bent on taking over the land of Owlia. It has a wide variety of floating sea creatures you can defeats and different dungeons with a lot of puzzles. If you want a preview of the game, here's a link: https://youtu.be/_GE0dqfdb-Q

This game looks and feels like an NES game because, well, it is! This game delivers the fun of the classic adventure games with a fun story and excellent game play.

Owlia is a game that hits the nostalgia just right in terms of graphics, sound, music, and boss battles...but that's a small portion of the game. Too bad most of the game is excruciatingly cryptic. And not in the NES way where you could figure most things out with in-game hints. In Owlia, many of the puzzles are just guess work. Many puzzles require bombs and whatnot that require a lot of grinding if you're not lucky enough to figure out the solution to the puzzle before running out of bombs. In Owlia, every treasure chest contains gold pieces. Strange, being you don't purchase anything in Owlia. Gold is used to enter every dungeon.... Yep, you have to grind hundreds or thousands of gold pieces just to enter a dungeon. Too much tedious grinding. If the grinding was removed, the game would be fairly decent. If the puzzles weren't terrible, the game would be good, even. But in its current state it is not good, imo. In the game's three to four hour duration (the game would be maybe 1-...