Two frustrating experiences mashed together is what ReCore feels like.

You've got your first half, a puzzle platformer that has moments that feel pretty good and then a second half that, out of nowhere, becomes a battle arena/stage survival style game. Unfortunately, these both feel very half baked because of this shift and ultimately buries this game.

The more puzzle platformer type area that you start off in is decent. The jumping is responsive, the exploring areas is solid. Combat is not great but not frustrating. The story feels like something that got scrapped too late into development to entirely remove. It exists to some minor degree, but the game is not actively attempting to draw you into what is actually going on.

Combat revolves around an ally who you can command attacks around and your gun. You gun features a charge ability and ammo that needs to reload if used for too long. Early on in this game you will start to collect color variants to your gun which evolves combat a bit. Basically you'll run into enemies that are yellow, blue or red and the ability to change your gun to shoot color specific bullets. Red enemies are weak to red attacks, blue to blue, etc etc.

Enemy groups will slowly evolve where you'll have multi-colored groups attacking you which makes the combat a little more on-the-fly and fluid.

The biggest issue with the combat is the eventual repetitiveness to this formula and the fact that the game doesn't make it easy to get away from the enemies once they get close up.

You do have a dash button that makes dodging general attacks but the dash itself is limited and many enemies are faster than you, so I often found myself stuck dashing until my sidekick was able to draw aggro away from me.

Some attacks can stun you though and this game doesn't feature any damage invulnerability after getting hit. I found myself constantly getting stuck in waves of attacks that take out a full bar of health because I got stuck in an attack loop that I couldn't move out of because I just would keep getting hit without any pause.

Its in part what makes the arena survival shift so frustrating.

Eventually you start climbing a tower with each floor featuring tougher platforming sections cut in between arena/enemy rush sections. The look of these stages is bland, boring, and never changes. You just climb and fight, climb and fight, for way too long.

There are bugs and other various nitpicks that combine to make this game not worth your time. The music is pretty solid, it's relatively short and there are little bits and pieces that you see throughout that could've been cool and fun in a better developed game but there are so many games that do the puzzle platforming thing better than this that those little flashes are nowhere near worth it.