Summary:
Chronicles of Teddy, previously known as Finding Teddy 2, is a game that has left me with very conflicting emotions towards it. It pleases with a charming art style, a soundtrack that adds character to the world, a sense of exploration common to Metroidvanias, and a unique feature called the Musicom that creates the opportunity for some neat puzzles. However, it also frustrates with a mediocre combat style, terrible boss designs, occasional unintuitive puzzle solutions, some poor level design and a very minimalistic story.
Full review:
Easily this game's best gameplay element is the Musicom. It is a musical communication and puzzle solving tool with 12 notes that you gradually find over the course of the game. The complexity in which you are required to use it also ramps up as you progress. The language of the inhabitants that you meet as you travel is a sing-song language made up of these same notes. All communication is constructed from a relatively short list of 80 words, each of which you are capable of singing. This imposes a limitation on NPC dialogue that greatly reduces the depth of conversations. It does, however, allow for many puzzles where you have to use clues to discover which words will unlock certain doors or chests, or convince a guardian to let you pass.
The Musicom is often leveraged in the way levels are designed. Early on it is used to great effect. Part of its first half effectiveness comes from how the game doesn't hold your hand and only provides hints if you seek them out. This makes the process of discovery more fulfilling. Unfortunately, the game's second half largely falls into a predictable pattern. It adds bulk to the puzzles in the form of more notes and locked doors, but the basic process of solving them is the same. It ends up feeling like unnecessary busy work rather than stimulating brain-teasers.
As you would expect from this genre, there are many areas early on that can only be accessed with an ability that you acquire later. These are mostly optional paths that reward you for backtracking. The first time you are required to backtrack in order to find a story critical item was the only time I ever had to use the hint system. Up to that point everything necessary for story progression was found within the region you were currently in. In this case, two of the three items you are tasked with collecting are in that region, but one is not. I found no indication that you might need to look elsewhere for the third. This particular puzzle made me feel like my time had been needlessly wasted by this unintuitive solution.
I am very glad that a map has been implemented by the time I played this. Areas connect logically in most cases but occasionally there are doors that link to areas that they are nowhere near. This helps by creating shortcuts for when you need to travel long distances, but without a map I could see them creating confusion. The map itself is well designed and once you've figured out what all the shapes and colors mean, it provides a great deal of useful information. The Steam store page estimates the main story length at "over 20 hours", yet I finished the main game and all optional side content in 18 hours. I suspect the addition of the map, as well as some exaggeration on the developers part, plays a big part in this discrepancy. Simply not getting lost, being able to see the quickest path to a location and having a general indication of where there is still treasure to be found makes for a less meandering experience.
Combat in Chronicles of Teddy felt archaic to me. You have a basic attack, a dash attack and can attack in the four cardinal directions while jumping. I think the developers tried to create challenge by making your attack reach very short. Because of this, it was far too frequent that I either bumped into an enemy accidentally while trying to make sure I was in range, or I stopped just too short and missed my swing. I did develop a feel for it over time but it never became particularly enjoyable.
The best enemy types were the defensive ones where you had to figure out how to damage them. The most annoying were the numerous types that explode moments after they die. This is dangerous the first time, but once you know to expect it, it becomes a tedious break in flow as you have to wait to continue past. One other baffling design decision worth mentioning is in an optional late game room. The final section of this room involves a leap over a chasm where you have to bounce on top of enemy projectiles at least twice to reach to far side. The problem is that the enemy's fire is entirely random, so there is no way to time it. You basically have to jump and hope you get lucky. I got a game over twice here before giving up and using a guide to get the door code that I would have gotten by making the jump.
Boss fights are another weakness in this game. The first couple are fairly average without much to complain about other than not being memorable. The third, though, infuriated me. It is a giant snake-like creature in a partially vertical room design. If you ever have the misfortune of falling into him you'll essentially get stunlocked by his massive body, causing you to take a lot of damage until he moves by. The subsequent bosses are better than the third, but still exercises in frustration.
The artists did a wonderful job with this game. The rich colors and relatively simplistic character designs fit well with the child's storybook theme. I'm usually not drawn to soundtracks that use as much ambient noise as this, but in this case it worked to help bring this world to life and give it more character. The free inclusion of the mp3 soundtrack in the game files is an appreciated bonus. I transferred more of the tracks into my music library than I expected to.
I'll wrap up with a few notes on replay value. First, the story is nearly entirely contained within the intro and outro. It's just enough to give purpose to what you do, but it's not anything you'll be dying to experience again. There are basic upgrades that can be purchased with marbles, the game's currency. These are kept in a new game+ mode unlocked after finishing the game. I only played a short period of new game+ but I was happy to see that levels had been redesigned to be harder in addition to the expected bump in enemy parameters.
For those that come across this game, I expect you can find something to like in it. It's far from perfect, but it's an adequate entry in the Metroidvania subgenre. If you haven't played Guacamelee!, Valdis Story or Child of Light I recommend taking a look at those before this.