Rift Apart is Incredible (Early Impressions)

Spoiler free, please! I'm still early days.

I just started Rift Apart and I love how stunning it is! At the moment, my issue is that everything is so stunning, enemies don't really stand out - nothing pops if everything pops. It's especially the case in populated areas, where civilians add confusion to what is and what isn't a target. I suspect I just have to get my eye in, and it's been a long time since I played an R&C game. I just did a full run of the main Xenoblade trilogy, too, so adjusting back to shooter-platformer gameplay after months of JRPG is tricky!

R&C themselves are as great as ever; you can tell the writers care deeply about these characters, because their consistency and growth through the main games has clearly carried on into RA, and I'm really impressed with Rivet, too - I hope she becomes a franchise regular.

I just wish the game had a damn mini map! I'm constantly opening and closing the menu map and it really shouldn't be necessary.

Oh, and they seem to have absolutely nailed the mini games again. I only did the first Clank rift puzzle, but I can see where they're going with it, and based on the quality and difficulty of the time-repeat puzzles in CiT and the various lock picking puzzles throughout the franchise, I am going to have a blast (and lose my temper now and then!) with these! They never quite reach CrossCode difficulty but they are well designed and fit the story very creatively. The little hacky spider bot (Glitch?) is cute, too, and I can see it being very fun.