Just saw the game came out yesterday and of course I had to try it. I finished the two tutorial missions and the first real one, which was more of a speedrun.

The game is more of a side-scrolling platformer. I only go by the first line usually before trying a game, so I was expecting more of a stealth/tactics game. Levels are divided into two parts: the casing, and the escape. During the casing you progress through the level and set up what you need for the escape. During the escape (after you grab the artifact) you are being chased by attack drones and have to leave through the escape route as fast as possible.

The platforming uses a parkour system in 2.5D where you gain a speed bonus if you press X while vaulting over an obstacle. It offers suitable verticality to follow alternate routes and get a better escape time.

The game gives short history lessons on the artifact and the culture to which it belonged, but nothing too deep. Could be a good primer into African cultures if you don't know anything about the continent, giving you a foundation to do further research.

The first real mission for example has you get back the silver bull of Dahomey, which you can see here https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/318416 in higher res than the game's (and yes this is the Met Museum lol)

I assume the gameplay opens up more later. The first three missions were a bit underwhelming: you have 2 tutorial missions (why?) and then the first 'real' mission can be escaped in 33 seconds, so it's kind of more tutorial. A lot of cutscenes too, hopefully they wind down later on. It's the old adage: show, don't tell.

The escape portion is kind of a speedrun, and you are rated on time taken to escape at the end of the level. So you better set up everything beforehand so you can escape as fast as possible. Reminds me of teardown in this regard. Apparently in later levels you have to grab more artifacts but the first one will trigger the alarm, so you have to figure out a route first.

The most unrealistic part really is the heist team has a French guy helping them lol.

If you play on linux: Unreal Engine doesn't play well with the compatibility layer. In your wine config, replace dll "winmm=n,b" (winmm.dll replaced with native, builtin) and the game should work. Thank you deepseek for finding a 10 year old Russian forum thread that had the fix lol.