YMMV / Owlboy

• Awesome Music: Just check out that trailer!
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Dirk. Was his aggression towards Alphonse throughout the game rooted entirely in his betrayal of Molstrom, or was he upset that his only friend had left him? Was it both?
• Broken Base: The controls. The game's two core mechanics are flight and using partners to attack, which means Otus himself doesn't fight directly. Some players find this awkward and frustrating, while others have no problem with it.
• Complete Monster: Captain Molstrom is an automaton originally created by the Ancient Owls as a war machine. After the owls inadvertently caused the world’s continents to lift off the planet’s surface and subsequently vanished, Molstrom took control of the other automatons who were left behind, exterminating any who didn’t agree to follow him. In the present, Molstrom is the brutal leader of the Pirates, the remaining automatons who are loyal to him. After retrieving the first of three relics created by the owls, he uses its power to decimate the large capital city of Advent, leaving only a few survivors. When he possesses all three relics, he plots a course to the remaining settlements, which he plans to destroy as well. After getting betrayed by Solus, the young owl who told him of the relics, Molstrom seeks revenge, and even after learning that Solus wanted to use the relics to stop the continents from floating off into space, he makes it clear that he doesn’t care and tries to prevent the heroes from saving the world from destruction.
• Difficulty Spike: The Floating Continent is much harder than the areas proceeding it.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Some players, while finding Otus and his friends enjoyable enough and the world and lore interesting, found the core mechanic of flying and using partners to attack rather than fight with Otus directly frustrating, among other things.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Calling Otus "Owlboy". The "owlboy" in question is actually Solus.
• I Am Not Shazam: The main character's name is not Owlboy, it's Otus. The "owlboy" the title refers to is actually Solus.
• Magnificent Bastard: The meek outcast Solus is the prophesied Owlboy, who masterminded the attacks of the pirates to save the world. Aware of the history of his people and the Hex Machine they made that will end up floating the world into space, Solus plans to steal the owl relics in order to use the Anti-Hex machine to stop it, working with the Sky Pirates and Molstrom to attack the cities the relics are hidden feigning world conquest. Gathering them all after their invasion, Solus betrays them and steals the relics for himself while leaving the pirates at the mercy Otus and his friends. With the relics on hand, Solus activates the ritual to use the Anti-Hex machine, battling Otus and his friends in a cosmic final battle using the powers of the relics, finally saving the world from the Hex Machine and Molstrom after getting Otus to his side to stop the two.
• Nightmare Fuel: Otus's dream sequence at the beginning of the game, where he's hounded by shadows.
• Once Original, Now Common: The pixel art style, beautiful as it is, fell victim to this trope as a result of a very Troubled Production. When Owlboy was first announced in 2007, post-SNES/Sega Genesis games with pixel art, while not nonexistant (e.g. Cave Story), were fairly uncommon outside the realm of handheld consoles. The game then spent nearly an entire decade in Development Hell until it was finally released in November 2016, by which point the Indie Game industry was in full swing and many other games with pixel art had already been released, with Terraria, Towerfall, Shovel Knight and Undertale being just four of many examples. While Owlboy's art style has been highly praised, its long time in Development Hell meant the pixel art didn't stand out as much as it would have if the game had been able to be released a few years earlier.
• That One Sidequest: The Cannon Mini-Game. An extra challenging Unexpected Gameplay Change with clunky and confusing control scheme ^note to the point that some people found holding the controller upside-down helpful and screen transitions that will immediately crash you into a wall unless you memorized what's coming and started turning on the previous screen. There's also no way to quickly restart the Mini-Game after failure, and the initial animation can be nearly as long as an attempt cut short. And that's not even mentioning the rings that need to be passed through for 100% Completion.
• The Woobie: Otus. From the beginning of the game, he is abused by his caretaker and is convinced that he is a disappointment to his whole village. It never really gets better for him, either.