This was the first game I downloaded and played from the palestinian relief bundle, and I'm glad I did! I'm the type of person who if a game gives me any freedom in where I go, I will go everywhere other than where I'm meant to go before I progress. This game was so fun to explore because everything is connected and has something going on with it. You're sort of meant to play that way, so instead of finding glitches or bits the player clearly wasn't meant to get to or see, I found new areas to explore, new people to talk to, new things to do, new ways to get somewhere I already was/a better understanding of the area, or just a few extra coins. It was cool because by the time I was prompted to do something (ex: get more golden feathers before you can continue the hike) most of the time I'd already done it on my own just by messing around and talking to people, which was a super rewarding way to play the game because I felt less like I was doing a task trying to find or get something from someone, and more like I was just genuinely hanging out and having a nice time and casually talking to npcs, and then I'd just kind of stumble on what I needed before I knew I needed it
I think the mechanics of the game are really well designed. With the way I went about playing the game, I would go back and forth and around areas I'd already been to a lot, and I imagine that would've gotten really annoying and tiresome if the game mechanics and map design hadn't worked so well in letting you travel around and explore smoothly (it gets like this for me with other games at times). But it didn't get frustrating or tedious for me because moving around is just so fun. Plus I was almost never using the paths properly so often when I'd go somewhere I would know the general direction but not exactly where I was going, so there was still that discovery aspect when I was going around places I'd already been, figuring out how exactly everything connects
Anyway I just thought it was a really nice experience and wanted to talk about it. I completed the game but I haven't done all the side quests or gotten all the achievements so I might come back to it later for that