1. I don't know if you've read any other reviews of this--or anything on it at all--but you might have heard it is along the lines of The Legend of Zelda. Well, congratulations, you heard right. The influence of that classic franchise is all over Hob.
2. It is not exactly a clone or anything. Hob has a much lower emphasis on combat and puzzle solving and a greater emphasis on pure exploration. A good deal of the appeal of Hob is simply being in its gorgeous world. You are rewarded for diligent adventuring w/ new places to diligently adventure. It's a good system when there's things that are worth seeing all over the place.
3. And seeing things in this game is something else! Hob really grabs your attention w/ its visuals. It's got a playable cartoon vibe w/ its cel-shaded graphics and bright, high-contrast fantasy setting. Stunning bright greens and purples in the overworld which cool off to muted blues and purples underground. It is simply gorgeous, start to finish.
4. Hob's world is set up as a formerly lush and green living world that has seen finer days. While swatches of it maintain its character from better times, much of it is taken over by a venomous purple creep. Early in the game, your character loses a hand to this active, slimy growth and another of the world's stony-looking residents helps you replace it w/ a giant mechanical stone hand. The same stony-looking humanoid marks a point on your map and from there, the majority of your in-game time will be spent going from marked point to marked point. Your task, it seems, is to repair the world--and I mean repair in the same sense that a mechanic repairs a car. Hob's green and living game world is made out of some sort of crazy, somewhat magical seeming machinery. As you progress, machine pieces pop into place and lead you to more areas to explore.
5. The storytelling here is sparse and basically all told environmentally so you are really just feeling your way through. The few NPC's you meet speak in gibberish and gesture vaguely before marking points on your map. In-game lore is presented through murals only. It's not a whole lot to go on and intentionally ambiguous at times.
6. The general lack of direction and outright explanation fits Hob well. As you literally explore the world so too are you invited to explore within yourself, the
possible nature of your task and the reasons behind the current state of the world.
7. *the sound of minds blowing*
8. Speaking of sound, what Hob has going on is equally as sparse as its storytelling. Its soundscape consists mostly of drones and ambient sounds punctuated by an occasional short melody when various tasks are completed.
9. The world is designed such that it takes a long time to see everything but you open up paths over time that allow you to traverse most areas much more quickly. Several fast travel locations help out as well. The biggest frustration is some areas require a bit of platforming and this can be a bit fiddly. Save points are placed pretty generously but this is still enough to be occasionally frustrating, esp. because platforming mistakes frequently feel like they are more the fault of the controls than player input.
10.
Also, holy crap is the camera ever bad. It is mostly a slightly
angled down top-down view but it changes angles and zoom levels as you
move around. These moves seem to be mostly for the sake of creating
dramatic shots rather than giving you more information about your
surroundings. Every aspect of the game from combat to exploration to
platforming is negatively affected by this at some point.
11. Enemies are pretty well varied throughout. There's not a ton of different kinds but many can be felled by different strategies and your combat style can evolve a bit as you unlock new abilities. Combat never really gets into too engaging of a flow though and it is ultimately a good thing that almost all enemies stay dead once you kill them. It also means the classic gamer logic that finding living enemies mean you've discovered a new area.
12. Hob has puzzle solving elements but they are mostly of the find-the-switch-and-hit-the-switch variety. It is more of a call to further explore each area than something that really teases your mind. In a sense, the entire world is a puzzle like this. It might not be too difficult but the game keeps you engaged enough that seeing each piece snap into place is enormously satisfying.
13. Going back to the Zelda comparison: that feeling when you finally get an item that allows you to reach an area you could see but couldn't, that is the drug that Hob deals. I have used the word explore approximately three million times in this review because exploration is so unquestioningly the core of this game. Hob builds a world that is worth exploring and then sets you off too explore it. It's awesome.
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