I finished Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (Galla), and I have never fallen off a game so hard after loving it so much. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how much I was hating the end of the game. I quit after doing three of four statues, and I was dreading going back in. I only had one last statue to do, yes, but I had a hunch the bullshit was not over. Spoiler: I was not wrong.
I could not find out how to get to the fourth statue for the life of me. I looked it up online, but nobody had a guide to the last chapter*. I kept going around in circles, getting more and more frustrated, until I decided to try to go to a seemingly empty corner. Nope. It had something in it, snomething that was not intuitive, and I was finally able to finish the fourth statue. That meant I could progress and fnish the game, right? Well, sort of.
What it did was call down the big baddie, who was the assistant to one of the other Bright Souls (which is what I, a dead snake was. I seemed to be the only dead animal who was a bright soul, but that is neither here nor there), and he started chasing me around. I had to go back to all the statues again. I was so exasperated that by this time, I was seriously considering just stopping. I didn’t care about the story any longer, and I certainly did not want to revisit the statues with the big baddie and the two screaming pink ladies (I knew there were two of them) chasing me.
Plus, they would set things on fire–but I could go through that. However, there were things that were already on fire–and I could not go through that. They looked the same to me, which meant memorizing which the baddies set and which they didn’t. As I was trying to get away from them. In the dark.
You can tell how much fun I was having, probably, by my tone of voice. (None. That was the amount of fun I was having. Absolutely none.)
When I finally did it, the baddie’s mentor (the Bright Soul who had been guiding me in the last chapter) came to help me, and then there was a really misguided conversation/fight between the baddie and the mentor, a counterintuitive and puzzling (as in, why is this in the game?) fight, and then–credits? Oh, I forgot. Right before the credit, the snarky bird who had been negging/insulting me all game had to get in one more barb. There’s a story reason for it, but it felt unnecessarily negative.
In fact, the whole ending was a puzzler. The whole game focuses on helping souls stuck in limbo to move on. It was up to you to uncover their stories, give them what they needed, and accompany them as they walked into the light. It’s about letting go of pain and making your peace with the past. It feels like it’s pushing hope as the main vibe. You’re Bright Soul! You want to help those in limbo move on.
Then, in the denoument, the takeaway from the exposition was that you did more harm than good in helping others. It wsa such a 180 on the theme, I didn’t know what to do with it. Also, throughout the whole game, you’re supposed to use one mechanic to finish off bosses. Then, during the last boss fight, that made you fail the fight. I get the feeling that they thought it was profound/deep to end the game this way, but to me, it was really unsatisfying.
If they had stopped the game after the fourth chapter, I would have thought it was quite a good game. I still do in most ways, but the last chapter really soured me on the experience. I know it’s mostly because of me and my issues, but I could not stop thinking, “They really did not need to do that.”
I have said for quite some time that it’s worse to just throw gameplay into a game for nebulous reasons than to keep it out. If the last chapter had been a maze with the puzzly bits, but not with the screaming pink ladies or the big baddie s-l-o-w-l-y chasing me around the map (and, by the way, I could have done with a map, too). Oh, and there was screaming metal music the whole time, too. It just put me completely off the game, and as I said, I was seriously considering not finishing the game.
If the game had ended after chapter four, I would have given it a 7 or a 7.5, easily. It’s so charming, bright, colorful, and touched on deeply personal issues. It made me tear up, and I had a hard time letting a few of the spirits go. Although I was a bit confused as to whether people in Limbo actually died or not because some seemed to be on their last legs, but others just seemed to be stuck in general, not on the brink of death.
I don’t mind that it was a bit messy and not fully explained. But I can’t get over the fact that the ending seemed to refute what the game was espousing for the four chapters prior. It feels cheap to me or that the devs wanted a shocker of an ending. If they had even gone for neutral, I would have been fine with it.
I do feel like they ran out of time or something because there are a few threads that did not get closed out. Or maybe they’re leaving it for the sequel. There was a pretty big plot point that never got resolved, and the character it revolved around just…disappeared.
I’m really trying not to be too hard on it, but it’s only because I liked the rest of the game so much that I felt unaexpectedly let down by the ending. It feels like they wrote the ending first and then made everything else fit into that narrative. Anything that didn’t fit was ignored/dismissed/brushed away.
I still recommend the game, but not as enthusiastically as I would have after the fourth chapter. Again, I don’t think I would have been so disappointed by the ending if I didn’t dig the rest of the game so much.
*I found them. I was googling the wrong thing. Apparently, I had to include “gameplay” in my search and not just the boss of the chapter or the chapter number. You live and learn.