In Baldo, bugs are hidden around every corner – and not just the kind you squash with your sword. It's almost like Baldo is passive-aggressively daring you to stop playing it altogether. It doesn’t help that the rest of the interface is equally egregious, often making basic tasks like checking your inventory or your quest list much more arduous than it should be. Many of the major mechanics, including the one that lets you shake yourself loose from spider webs, are not explained whatsoever. Beyond the very first screen that shows you some basic tooltips for your controls, there is absolutely no tutorial. The main problem – at least when you’re getting started – is the lack of direction. You’ll spend a lot of time solving dungeons, exploring an overworld, doing quests, and then backtracking every time you receive a nifty new piece of path-opening equipment like the Owl Bomb or the Sacred Fire. This is a pretty standard Legend of Zelda-esque plot, and there’s really no unique spin here. The premise of a young boy attempting to save a world in danger is simple but effective for what’s intended as a light-hearted story. In fact, experiencing upwards of 50 hours of wildly inconsistent dungeon-crawling and puzzle-solving to reach its meager ending is more like wading knee-deep in a swamp than strolling through a park. Those are lofty ambitions, but Baldo rarely instills the same depth into its story or characters, and very little of it feels good to play. It’s rare to see Studio Ghibli’s iconic and instantly recognizable anime art style take shape in a video game, but developer NAPS Team’s isometric action-adventure RPG, Baldo: The Guardian Owls, claims both Ghibli and The Legend of Zelda as its primary inspirations.
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