Sable

I wanted to like this game, I wanted to LOVE it, because it has such a cool premise and it's full of potential. And it's enjoyable sometimes, but has a big problem that's the reason why I'm giving it a negative review: This game is extremely broken.

I have never in my life played a game that's so full of bugs in a way that affected my whole experience. The amount of fun I had with it doesn't compare to the amount of annoyances and frustration I suffered from every time I stumbled upon a bug. And there were so many of them, that I decided to make a list of those I remember, or I wrote in my notes with the purpose of putting them here:

● A lot of "Don't lose your hoverbike!!" Warnings when I'm using the hoverbike in question.
● Your hoverbike call doesn't work most of the time, meaning you have to run to find your own bike that doesn't even bother to move a little bit.
● And when it does, it can get irreparably stuck in various decorations, meaning you don't have a proper way to get it out unless is using fast travel.
● The map not loading at the speed my hoverbike goes, a lot of times ending with the bike glitching out while the map is loading until it repair itself or Sable gets off and get on the bike again.
● Sable disappearing from driving the bike (the UI glitching too)
● A lot of problems with the places loading, making the bike stuck in the textures and refusing to go past them.
● In one of the airship missions, there was a BIG hole in the middle of the room, basically below you, and in one moment I fell into that hole. I couldn't get out. Sable didn't make a single effort to climb the surface, and there wasn't a walkable way out. I had to use fast travel, and it reset my whole puzzle progress.
● There's a common sound glitch that loads every time you get close to it anywhere on the map, and boy it's LOUD. It's like a mini sudden jumpscare every time it activates, and it never stops re-loading while you're playing, so you'll hear it multiple times if you trigger that zone.
● The climbing mechanics are just unbearable. Since you can climb everything, it can glitch like crazy. Sometimes sable doesn't know what to do against a surface, and it climbs it funny, sometimes you DON'T want to climb and she does anyway. Sometimes she free-falls and glitches against the various surfaces beneath her, making her float or jump super high. And for a game that has A LOT of climbing, it made it SO unenjoyable.
● There was one fishing bug in particular that made me SO mad because I was having an awful time completing the achievement and then.... Sable froze in her place with the rod out. And she could move, but she couldn't do ANYTHING else. She just stood there and moved around, and I couldn't fish, and I couldn't get out of the minigame, she did NOTHING and I had to reset the whole game, and then it randomly froze AGAIN in like three different times.

If you can tolerate a broken experience, you may enjoy the game. I did in some parts, and it's gorgeous to look at, but I can't ignore all of these reasons. If the devs had any interest in fixing most of the game, then I would change my review. But seeing that it has been years since the game launched, and it's in this state, I doubt they have any interest in spending more time with it.

A shame, honestly! I repeat that I think it has a cool idea going on, but what left me with was disappointment.

I love this game. Sable is a soft, peaceful, gentle experience. It's an open world exploration game with a beautiful color palette, gentle calming music, an interesting world and just the right amount of gameplay hours.

I can't quite describe how and why this game is so good. The world just becks you to explore it and more than once I've found a region/spot and felt the world expand some more. There's details that just make you feel the love the devs had for this game. There's enough secrets and hidden gems in the game that it'll keep you interested til the end - at least that was my experience.

I highly recommend it and I recommend taking your time with it and sinking into the soft gentle lull that this peaceful experience can be. I played this in increments of a few hours an evening with my partner and not rushing the game really works in its favor.

When the game came to an end it felt the exact right time for me. I both felt not ready to end my Gliding and ready to embark on a new journey and end this chapter with Sable. It was beautiful.

Unfortunately, the game has a ton of smaller bugs. These all seemed more hilarious than annoying to me but they are frequent enough that a star must be subtracted. Glitches are the most common - once an entire region's floor disappeared on me and it seemed I was traversing space instead. It was fun and I don't mind, it also fixed itself rather quickly and never happened again. But glitching through a floor or a wall can sometimes be annoying. Pop-in of assets also exists at times.

Despite the issues, I can't rate the game lower. It is so so good. And if a few funny incidents like these don't ruin your joy, I recommend you try this. It really was a fabulously calm and engaging experience. I'll remember this one.

In short, this is Breath of the Wild without the combat.

The climbing is there, the exploration… you even whistle to call your mount (in this case a rad hoverbike.) It isn’t a total copy of Breath of the Wild, it just uses that game’s framework to create something incredible in its own right. Whether that’s you’re into that is totally up to you, but I was totally down for it.

But honestly, they had me with the hoverbike.

Sable owes its style just as much to Jet Set Radio as Dune or Star Wars, but its color palette, thin outlines, and dropped animation frames also give it the distinct look of hand-drawn anime cells. It looks incredible.

Those intentional frame drops should not be confused with low framerates, which unfortunately did happen on occasion. There was also some strange rubber-banding as I rode my sweet hoverbike across Sable’s many dusty plains. The biggest complaint I have about this game is its performance, which isn’t terrible but has a few hiccups even on the Series X.

Glitches aside, this is a beautiful aesthetic amalgamation of elements that congeal into something both striking and unique. It might seem like every other indie game out there, but it absolutely isn’t. For example, when night falls, the game doesn’t simply get dark- it loses saturation in its colors, but you can still see all the outlines. That way you can see where you’re going at night, but when the sun rises, color rushes back into the world.

In fact, this entire game is full of genius environmental storytelling and is overall more captivating than your usual entry in the hot new (and somewhat tiresome) genre: the painterly, coming of age indie game about an ethnically-ambiguous teen, sometimes dealing with themes of belonging, anxiety, or depression.

No combat means no Ganon; no looming, world-ending threat of any kind. The game ends when you want and when you feel you’ve gotten everything you can from it. You may find one mask or find them all. Solve a crime in a big city or never visit a city at all. Collect beetle dung, climb cliffs to find cartographers’ balloons, or go through the game’s many puzzle dungeons. Or do basically none of those things. “Ooh what’s that?!” Is the name of the game.

Discovery breeds discovery, and emotional attachment is internal to the player instead of spelled-out by the game. The clothing is all aesthetic, even the all-important masks. You find them by completing tasks, but wear them based on the type of person you are, what you like, who you want Sable to be.

It’s a liberating gameplay experience that definitely isn’t for everyone, but it was aimed squarely at me. A surprise favorite of the year.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game but it was quite buggy at times. And some bugs made certain parts unplayable without closing and reopening the game. But other than that it was a beautiful experience, and I still recommend going through it at least once

Underrated gem

A very fun game that rewards exploration my only issues is the technical level of the game in-spite of running on a next gen hardware