MrZombieChicken said:That Summer in Mara and Deiland bundle looks mighty tempting. Mainly for the former. Any opinions?
Oh that's right, Deiland came to Xbox. I backed it on Kickstarter for Switch, and then played Mara while I waited. Mara is definitely more fun, and while very repetitive, the gameplay is enjoyable enough to forgive a lot. There is an awful lot of going back and forth between islands and between NPCs, and there is -some- obnoxious game design.
By this I refer to where you are always bottle-necked by something that you can't access yet, and you have to figure out which of your quests you -can- progress, to unlock something that often seems quite unrelated, to progress others. I've actually played through it twice, and even then, sometimes it was just frustrating, especially where you are restricted to where you can explore until you upgrade your boat.
But at the end of the day, yeah it is good fun. Deiland is even more obnoxious though, because you often have to wait for the right NPC to come and visit you, before you can progress, into the mix of what I described above for Mara. A lot of it ended up being just waiting around with very little to do, because the pocket planet of the title really is small.
I feel like both games are a bit too on-rails. Where games with gathering and crafting often leave you to it a bit more, these literally only have you crafting things to advance the story.
I'll at least wait until Deiland is discounted on its own, for maybe another run for achievements ... but the bundle looks like good value ... if you like what I described lol :)