Away is by no means a great game, but if you can get over some of its simplicities, it can be an enjoyable one.
Still, money has been more scarce in the past year and I decided I would wait for a pricedrop. Well, it finally went down to around 10 bucks I decided I'd get it. My first time playing I wasn't impressed.
Over time it grew on me though and I started to actually enjoy the dungeons and the swapping mechanic. Basically, you are thrown into a dungeon and each screen of the DS is one piece that connects to the other. With a given amount of time (there's a clock that will countdown) each piece swaps out for another one. This idea may seem novel in concept, and perhaps it is, but it also has its flaws. Such as the fact that it may take a long time for certain pieces to swap back to where you can enter them again. Say there's a treasure chest you want really bad. You'll be moving back and forth until it pops up again. Sometimes it will be 6 or 7 times before it happens.
While you're in the dungeons you can also collect little blobs called Fupongs and use them as a form of magic. The fupongs can only be used once for each level of the dungeons, but you can also level them up by feeding them or combining them outside of the dungeons.
Outside the dungeons there really isn't much more than a village spread out into three districts. You can buy various items and weapons, upgrade weapons and upgrade shops by selling certain items. There's also a village creation aspect that is ever so tiny and ends up being fairly ineffectual.
The graphics seem to be rubbing some people the wrong which I don't understand. I think the graphics outside of dungeons are some great looking cartoony 3D, somewhere between Wind Waker and Animal Crossing. Inside dungeons it's a less vibrant 2D, but it still looks great. To each their own I suppose.
Besides the things I stated there's not a lot else to game honestly. There's the occasional boss fight which are typically uninspired where they have one simple attack pattern. There's of course a pretty lukewarm story with some tame but sometimes funny scenes with characters... but that's about where it ends.
With so little extra going for Away, I can see why the mild reviews were so commonplace. It is a very simple experience and may be even geared more towards kids, but at the same time it does have a bit of challenge as you move forward. The dungeons can be an interesting distraction, as well as some of the shops and characters in the village. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you can get it cheap.