i liked this! i was surprised how much i liked it, in fact. it's a great short game that feels good to play in the right places ... but can feel kind of clunky or excessive in others, unfortunately. still, i think despite that, wavetale is great.

the most important part of this game is the movement, which they did an incredible job with. skating over the water ( which is some of the most beautiful water i've ever seen in a game, FYI ) feels exactly as it should: fast, free, fluid ... i love diving from tall heights & crashing into the water, seeing your character plundge away from the camera, and then resurface with gusto & power & smoothly pop into her cruising across the waves pose. it just feels great!! the intensity of your jumps feels great, too, which makes traversing the world ( horizontally AND vertically ) inviting & exciting. there were definitely places you "weren't supposed to be" but were still made accessible through the breadth of the platforming. the freedom to zoom around nearly wherever you wanted made being in wavetale's world a joy.

more things i liked: i thought the music was awesome, really stylish & moody in a way that absolutely clicked with me -- it made just wandering around the world even more fun, because i had that incredible BGM with me the whole time. i thought the story & character cast were sweet, too, and i liked the art direction; however, i kind of feel like the 2D portraits & UI clashed in some way with the 3D models ... i'm not sure what to do to fix that, though ( maybe simplifying the models even further, so that the portraits did more legwork fleshing out character appearance & personality, or adding some outlines to the models to make them look closer to the 2D art style? idk, i'm sure they already thought of these things ) so i won't really linger on the complaint.

my ACTUAL complaint lies in the combat, which is unfortunately crucial to the plot & gameplay loop. compared to the platforming, the combat felt kind of stiff & repetitive, even the flashy boss-ish fights with the bigger monsters. i think there could have been a way to make the whole game entirely about moving & dodging & otherwise avoiding enemies rather than engaging directly with them, but ... in the end, it wasn't a deal breaker. it just felt stark how every time a combat encounter happened, i thought, "damn. wish i was surfing rn."

other minor nitpicks include not really seeing the point of the character customization system -- a system i typically appreciate, but in a tight story- / character-focused game like this, it felt kind of distracting & unnecessary ( especially when characters will refer to you as the "blue-haired girl" but you've dyed your hair to something else ) -- and the very contemporary sense of humor & writing, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just isn't my cup of tea & served to take me out of the otherwise interesting worldbuilding.

but barring my nagging, i think wavetale is a success. it's nice to find small, simple, pleasingly-executed games like this ... especially ones that put in an effort to be casually inclusive like this one did. despite not really being a platformer lover, i had a good time with this one.