Adventure Gamers - Forums

I played the demo, and it didn’t go well on my computer at all. Crazy frame rate drops; slow and jerky movement (which makes gliding, let’s say ...interesting); controls, especially for climbing were kinda frustrating; and when I got close to walls - I could see right through them. I read the reviews and some people call it outright buggy, while some blame it on the particular hardware. I have a decent machine and fit under all the minimum specs but decided this wasn’t something I’ll be able to fully enjoy. I really like the art style though - that’s what drew me in in the first place, so I’d love to hear from others how they liked the game.

But how’s the game itself? Did you enjoy it? What was the best/worst feature? Would you recommend it?

Hi, i could not resist to register just to voice my opinion how strange i find that
Omno got score 4 while Sable got score 2.5 here at adventuregamers. Of course these are subjective opinions but it’s hard to find the reasoning that could lead to this. Omno is a completely boring generic game with no original ideas or personal charm, a typical time-waster, possible good enough for a mobile game. While Sable is quite the opposite. Indeed it is quite ambitious in its design which led to plenty of bugs but i could completely enjoy it nevertheless, they were not that serious overall.

All in all so far adventuregamers was my first stop to check if i could play a game or not, but with these scores i don’t trust their scores anymore as much as i did before. Perhaps the different authors should somehow align their scoring system so that the scores make sense.

immorelity - 03 November 2021 01:49 PM

Hi, i could not resist to register just to voice my opinion how strange i find that
Omno got score 4 while Sable got score 2.5 here at adventuregamers. Of course these are subjective opinions but it’s hard to find the reasoning that could lead to this. Omno is a completely boring generic game with no original ideas or personal charm, a typical time-waster, possible good enough for a mobile game. While Sable is quite the opposite. Indeed it is quite ambitious in its design which lead to plenty of bugs but i could completely enjoy it nevertheless, they were not that serious overall.

All in all so far adventuregamers was my first stop to check if i could play a game or not, but with these scores i don’t trust their scores anymore as much as i did before. Perhaps the different authors should somehow align their scoring system so that the scores make sense.

Yeah, I couldn’t believe the score either. I do know that the game had a bunch of technical problems especially the game pass version. I played the GOG version on release and didn’t really experience any problems so I can see how that could knock down the score.

Actually, if you look at the bad:
  - Lighting effects tend to wash the visuals out and eliminate much of their charm
  - Much of its open world feels empty and repetitive, with frequently uninspired quest and puzzle design and one-dimensional NPCs
  - Main character is chronically underdeveloped, which creates difficulties in a story about her growth as a person
  - So full of bugs and glitches as to feel unfinished on release, with the hoverbike mechanics especially frustrating

I do agree that the puzzle design can get repetitive and the main character could be more developed.

On the other hand, Sable is my choice for adventure game of the year primarily on the strength of the sense of exploration and visuals. The exploration feels amazing in this game. I like it a lot more than in Breath of the Wild because it doesn’t hold your hand. This is a very special game that doesn’t come along every day and it’s unfortunate that the technical issues are holding it back.

On the topic of other reviews here, in general Adventure Gamers reviews are pretty much the only ones I care about and the reason I subscribe to the Patreon every month. However, I have noticed that lately they’ve been quite generous with 9’s and 10’s. Especially, if you look at the last few years some of the games that receive high scores barely even get mentioned in the Aggies.

As a recent example, they gave Overboard! 5 stars so I picked it up primarily on the basis of their endorsement. It’s a good enough game and I enjoyed playing it, but it’s definitely not on the level of a 5 star classic LucasArts or Sierra game that I will want to come back to in the future or even on the same level as There is No Game from last year.

Gabe - 03 November 2021 05:05 PM

Bashing an indie developer’s creative debut work is unbecoming.

if you mean Omno, then while i agree with you that bashing is worthless (as an indie developer myself), i think scores should not be biased by the fact who made it. especially not this much. also i think ag gave low scores to indie developers and first games easily in the past. and my opinion about Omno is just what i feel/think after playing it for a while and that how much it differs from the score ag gave.

but the main point is Sable here, which is my game of the year too, despite its weaknesses. Instead of feeling its space empty i just felt that it is spare/has a lot of room for exploration and I had a lot of fun exploring it up and down. i liked the fact that its a game without fighting yet unlike many other games fighting was not replaced by infinite dialogs, instead i could climb etc as much as i wished. a relaxing game resembling the first tomb raider game’s climbing elements.

Well, there are 5,000 words between the two reviews explaining the reasoning for why each got what they did.

Sable clearly would have got a higher score if it weren’t such a buggy mess, but there are plenty more issues clearly detailed. The more ambitious the game, the more things there are to potentially go wrong.

If you didn’t particularly like Omno, fair enough, but if you acknowledge that reviews are subjective and still expect them to reflect your opinions and not the writers’, prepare to be disappointed many more times in future.

Incidentally, while no review ever needs validation, you piqued my curiosity so for comparison’s sake I checked Metacritic, where Omno is averaging 77 and 82 for PC and PlayStation, respectively. That hardly makes ours an outlier, does it?

Oh, and do feel free to leave user reviews to share your own experiences. Diversity of opinion is exactly what they’re there for.

Yes, the general Omno reviews on the net surprise me too, i don’t see what they see in it. But again, i wouldn’t have started to comment just for my surprise about Omno’s high score and regard. It is only in comparison to the Sable low score (which is not in line with the metacritic reviews btw) which made me mention it.
I had a lot of fun with Sable and just encountered 1-2 annoying bugs during that. And also philosophically i think in general being ambitious and fail in a few points is much better and i give more credit to it than having minimal ambitions and succeed in it completely. But again, i’m happy to omit Omno from this discussion in the future and just discuss the merits of Sable.