I finally got around to playing Kya (don't know why this kind of thing seems to take me so long, it's not as though I do much else...) properly and it's not bad. The art design ranges from pretty good (areas like The Flying Forest and the village look suitably lush and fantastic, if somewhat unremarkable) to spectacular (Hunter's Domain is awe-inspiring and for some reason reminds me of Hieronymous Boch; a word should also be said for the beautiful world map), the universe has a pretty coherent feel while allowing some diversity and most importantly the gameplay's fairly varied.
On the negative side the writing and voice acting are terrible throughout, the progression of difficulty isn't completely consistent and the camera can be quite unwieldy and unresponsive, as well as clipping a lot (which can be particurlarly frustrating in the free fall segments.) Level design often also doesn't seem to have any sort of internal logic. Overall though I found it pretty satisfying and worth playing, at least up until the point where it inexplicably stopped recognising all my saved games. I'm surprised it's not more widely known/admired, even if it could use a fair bit of polish.
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