Going into Valis IV I was expecting the game to feel old like some of the other Valis games I played up until now, but I was honestly in for quite a surprise.

I know in the past I've compared Valis to the Castlevania series in a sense, and Valis IV doesn't change that, I kept getting Castlevania Generations vibes as I was going through it. This was most heavily felt in the gameplay, due to the switching of characters and each one having their own set of attacks, magic, and skills when it comes to platforming, such as one character can kinda double jump, one can slide under low platforms, and the other can ignore some of the stage hazards. I felt the game played very smoothly for the most part, the double jump was kinda picky on activation.

The music is actually the amazing part, it sounds soooo great to hear epic rockin' tunes that every stage sounds great as do the boss themes. The cutscene animations still have that late 80s into early 90s anime vibe which is cool.

My only few issues with the game kinda fall under some stuff that the whole series tends to bug me with.

- The story again, isn't something I'm all too interested in, I did enjoy some call backs and having played the past games, I get the story...but I still don't care about it.

- While the controls worked pretty well, the double jump needed some work, it sometimes doesn't cause any rise or it won't go far enough.

- Some of the spells and crouching attacks don't lend themselves very well at times, they tend to have directional properties or animation properties such as homing or falling down in ways that make you wonder "why?"

Other than those things, this game was amazingly fun, would be nice if all the Valis games got remakes in this style in the future.