I am so glad I went into this game without watching any of it. When I "beat" the first part and then I became a shopkeeper, I was like,
"Haha, I loved this silly game. I'm happy the 'western hero' wasn't some white-savior trope, I love how they subverted it. The cabinet payoff was indeed grand. Well worth the rants. Probably not worth $11 though. This was, what three hours?"
and then the next messenger fucking DIES and the game changes its entire genre from sidescrolling hack-n-slash to a Metroidvania-lite for nine hours???
I didn't like the backtracking and the cryptic clues very much but GOD the controls were tight and enjoyable. The part where you take the Leap of Faith and all the graphics change ??? That was scrumptious. The exposition dump at the end was meh but I appreciated it, just wish I could've skipped through parts of it.
So much of this game feels improvised, like they kept adding little parts on to the end to get the playtime past 10 hours, but in a very good and well-executed way. Compared with other indie games like Undertale, which feels like a cohesive thesis, The Messenger felt so wild and unpredictable.