Bloodroot
released on May 06, 2022
A war between the mages and regular humans ended with the regular humans acquiring the power of magic. Despite overcoming this hurdle, they possessed no army capable of beating the mages. Luckily, the half-blooded witches were able to take down the lord of the mages, allowing the world to reset in peace. The half-blooded witches of the church used their magic and miracles to dispel the crazed magic that warps the regular humans. The heroine was one such witch. One day, she receives information from an old church friend named Yuris regarding a certain underground city, and sets off to explore it.
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For the uneducated, Bloodroot is a metroidvania with clear inspirations from games such as Symphony of the Night. It's also porn, porn which some might call <problematic> considering most of the cast consists of <petite bodied individuals>.
With that out of the way this game is fucking awesome, with most metroidvanias I run into the issue of simplistic combat which isn't done any favors by lackluster boss design across the majority of the genre. Even games I adore, such as Symphony of the Night, have pretty w/e to shit bosses with some exceptions. Bloodroot however has some of the best boss design I've seen in gaming period, pair this with the insane combat system, which takes notes from fighting games of all things featuring shit like cancels & assists. And then pair THAT with the movement, which after a certain point becomes so ridiculous that the only limiter becomes your skill. With all that this game becomes something that feels so unbelievably good to play it's ridiculous, very few games feel as good to play as this one. Even aside from the basic gameplay there's so much to love here, the map design is great, with my only complaint being the odd visuals and structures of some areas (I can't really fault it for this considering how low the budget obviously was). There's also an obscene amount of customization here, allowing you to have up to 9 weapons equipped at once alongside 3 <sub attacks> (basically fighting game assists). The accessories here are also all VERY good and useful, forcing you to decide what you equip based on how you want to play rather than equipping the few things that aren't useless (thank you fromsoft). Basically, there's a lot to love here, this game is VERY well put together.
Now to address the elephant in the room, which is the porn. The porn is great, I will not comment further otherwise the team at backloggd may get somewhat upset, a tad bit perturbed. But what I will say is I respect this game so hard for being what it is. I despise when games are made to appeal to the masses, things like Hollow Knight I find so safe and boring, gameplay and aesthetics alike. Yeah, the (singular?) dev could've made something with mass appeal that could've been incredibly successful given how good this game actually is. But that'd be lame. We have enough games that try to appeal to the masses, give me more games like this that appeal to only the most specific of niches.
With that out of the way this game is fucking awesome, with most metroidvanias I run into the issue of simplistic combat which isn't done any favors by lackluster boss design across the majority of the genre. Even games I adore, such as Symphony of the Night, have pretty w/e to shit bosses with some exceptions. Bloodroot however has some of the best boss design I've seen in gaming period, pair this with the insane combat system, which takes notes from fighting games of all things featuring shit like cancels & assists. And then pair THAT with the movement, which after a certain point becomes so ridiculous that the only limiter becomes your skill. With all that this game becomes something that feels so unbelievably good to play it's ridiculous, very few games feel as good to play as this one. Even aside from the basic gameplay there's so much to love here, the map design is great, with my only complaint being the odd visuals and structures of some areas (I can't really fault it for this considering how low the budget obviously was). There's also an obscene amount of customization here, allowing you to have up to 9 weapons equipped at once alongside 3 <sub attacks> (basically fighting game assists). The accessories here are also all VERY good and useful, forcing you to decide what you equip based on how you want to play rather than equipping the few things that aren't useless (thank you fromsoft). Basically, there's a lot to love here, this game is VERY well put together.
Now to address the elephant in the room, which is the porn. The porn is great, I will not comment further otherwise the team at backloggd may get somewhat upset, a tad bit perturbed. But what I will say is I respect this game so hard for being what it is. I despise when games are made to appeal to the masses, things like Hollow Knight I find so safe and boring, gameplay and aesthetics alike. Yeah, the (singular?) dev could've made something with mass appeal that could've been incredibly successful given how good this game actually is. But that'd be lame. We have enough games that try to appeal to the masses, give me more games like this that appeal to only the most specific of niches.