Delightful game! In fact, it's so full of little surprises that I'm not even going to say very much in this review. This game is a constant stream of experiences, big and small, that will make you smile and comment on how that was neat or clever. Or sometimes neat and clever. If you're even looking at reviews for this game, you're probably the right demographic to love it and should probably just get it.

I will detail one thing, though, because there is a rather massive flaw holding this game back from a perfect score, and that's the shoehorned roguelite system. Astalon is a regular metroidvania with all the elements you'd expect, except for save rooms and healing. Both are nearly non-existant and the idea is for you to die, buy metaprogression upgrades with your accrued currency and then restart, except it's the exact same castle down to the fact that minibosses retain the damage you've done to them before you died, so the roguelite aspect is entirely pointless and just leads to wasting even more time running back to where you were than other games in the genre do. This game is still a 15-hour experience to just clear, and a 25-hour experience to do everything including the bonus modes, so it's not too bad overall, but stay away if you value your time or can't handle repeating areas to progress.

Other than the roguelite flaw and the fact that boss rush kind of sucks, there really isn't much to complain about here. Charming, creative, clever and neat!

Gli esseri umani sanno essere persone tremende, come ci insegna Astalon... ma ancor più tremende sono le persone che commettono il mio stesso errore.

Ad una prima occhiata, "Astalon: Tears of the Earth" può facilmente venire scambiato per uno dei tanti indie in pixel art in circolazione, spesso "chimere" di generi videoludici e copie di altri titoli. In particolare, Astalon prende spunto dalle origini di alcune saghe storiche, tra cui Zelda, Metroid, Megaman e così via; da ciò ne consegue la "nascita" di un ignorante pregiudizio, il classico "giudicare (male) dalla copertina".
Quale errore! Quale tremendo errore!

Tears of the Earth si è rivelato essere un ottimo metroidvania con elementi da rouge-lite, andando contro a tutti quei preconcetti erronei che si erano andati a sviluppare nella mia mente. Pur rimanendo effettivamente un gioco concettualmente semplice, riesce nell'intento di far appassionare il giocatore con le sue meccaniche, divertenti e mai scontate.
Come accennato in precedenza, generalmente si tratta di un classico metroidvania 2D a scorrimento (più verticale che orizzontale), ma la novità risiede nel fatto che, per riuscire a proseguire nell'avventura, sarà necessario fare gioco di squadra e sfruttare sinergicamente ogni abilità di ciascuno dei tre eroi protagonisti: Kyuli è più agile e può fare un doppio salto a parete, Arias è uno spadaccino è può spezzare i tralicci, Algus usa la magia e può attivare interruttori a distanza. Dato che, almeno inizialmente, i tre personaggi possono venire switchati solamente nei checkpoint, il giocatore dovrà scegliere oculatamente con chi partire all'esplorazione, salvo poi sbloccare shortcut o scoprire strade alternative nascoste.
Il level design dell'intera mappa è degno delle più grandi produzioni, non solo per la coerenza in sè, ma anche per il fatto che sia stato concepito per essere perfettamente fruibile da tre personaggi differenti con abilità differenti. L'esplorazione, inoltre, non sarà mai fine a se stessa, dato che porterà sempre alla scoperta di power up utilissimi o nuove abilità, che permetteranno di esplorare ancora più a fondo.
L'unico neo in questo sistema riguarda la mappa, purtroppo poco intellegibile persino se potenziata, su cui non è possibile nemmeno prendere appunti o usare lo zoom, dimostrandosi così l'elemento più "old-style" del gioco.
Solitamente, giochi di questo tipo tendono a puntare molto sulla difficoltà crescente delle sezioni action, ma qui accade il contrario. Dopo una impattante difficoltà iniziale, Astalon diventa via via più semplice, concentrandosi maggiormente sulle sezioni platform.
Il richiamo estetico è palesemente quello dell'epoca a 16 bit, ma con delle rifiniture artistiche che rendono ogni singola stanza riconoscibile e pittoresca, ognuna con una storia da raccontare, tanto da fare invidia al buon Hidetaka Miyazaki. Carino anche il design dei personaggi, un po' chibi ma senza esagerare. A parte Kyuli. Non c'è alcun motivo affinché sia mezza nuda, but that's Japan.
Come accennato a inizio "recensione", la trama di questo gioco è semplicissima, così come il suo contesto; tuttavia, a colpire parecchio è la narrazione, che si sviluppa tramite dialoghi molto solenni e malinconici, oltre che attraverso una basica ma piacevole interazione tra i tre amici protagonisti.
Un plauso va fatto pure alla colonna sonora, che non mi pento di definire... grandiosa! Anch'essa, prevalentemente composta da tracce musicali malinconiche, senza però sdegnarsi di utilizzare brani più epici e accattivanti.

Che sorpresa Astalon! Non mi sarei mai aspettato che un gioco simile potesse rapirmi a tal punto. Peccato per le modalità extra, di post-game, non molto riuscite, altrimenti lo avrei sicuramente platinato. Giocatelo se ne avete l'opportunità, non fermatevi alla prima sciocca impressione, come stava per fare il sottoscritto.

Fact: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of my favorite games ever. Ever since I exhaustively completed it in every way possible during my formative years, I've been aimlessly looking for a true successor. A few games got close, but ultimately were missing something I couldn't put my finger on. Astalon is the closest game to scratch that itch so far.

It's more of a "metroid" than "vania" game, and it shares some similarities with the Igavania sub-subgenre. It doesn't feature the complexity or sheer number of gameplay systems as SOTN, but it absolutely nails the exploration aspect - you're always finding new shortcuts, secret rooms and new abilities to help you traverse the map and reach previously inaccessible spots.

One of its core mechanics is that everytime you die, you get sent back to the first room in the game (albeit with all your upgrades, items and map progress carried over). It's a testament to how well connected the tower is, because you're almost always able to find yourself back at your previous death spot with very little effort.

Unfortunately, this can sometimes lead to some repetitive bouts, especially during the latter harder (and cartographically isolated) sections of the game. Still, the game is never unfair with the player and greatly rewards pattern learning, memory and exploration.

The first time I caught a glimpse of Astalon: Tears of the Earth was on a quick hidden gems video. I really liked the graphical style and how the characters color's would pop very simialr to NES Castlevania or Mega Man. Watched a quick review for it and then I knew that this was a title I wanted to try out.

Astalon is a metroidvania style dungeon crawler through and through, although it plays and feels more like a classic vania but just in that world structure. What stands out the most about Astalon is it's difficulty and it's level design. Both elements are at it's core of what makes this game special and unique amongst it's peers.

Astalon's difficulty could turn off most fans of the genre but it's really one of the elements I really felt refreshing. First of all when I talk about difficulty I am not referring to it's combat. It's combat is very simple Castlevania style, with a few attacks and upgrades with multiple characters switching mechanic. Certain characters and only reach certain areas or have different kinds of attacks. Some are better for traversal or maybe better at tanking hits. It's very similar to the Curse of the Moon franchise of the last few years, and if anything feels like that I'm on board. Like most metroidvania's though with enough grinding and upgrades ypu will make most encounters trivial with time, so even if there is an initial hurdle on an enemy or boss it isn't for very long. Every time you die you get a chance to upgrade your characters, health, damage and acuire new items. So even if you are constantly dieing and feeling like you are not making any progress, you actually are.

The difficulty is really all about exploration. Moving from section to section taking out monsters and trying not to die to reach new areas is where the struggle lies. Everytime you die you start back at the very begaining of the game. No checkpoints. Granted yes you can make some short cuts and open some elevators in the massive tower but reaching one side of the map to the other usually is quite the trek. On top of that Astalon has an interesting system when it comes to healing. Enemies do not drop health pick ups, nor are there item useage to recover health and you do not recover health from killing enemies. (Although there is a late game upgrade that has a random chance to drop health) Instead there are candle sticks that littered throughout the tower that drop 4-5 HP refills. Once they are used they are gone for good. The only way to replinish them is to buy them back after death from the merchant. This may sound kinda punishing for new players but I felt this really prevented repeated enemy spawn killing for health and made exploration more tense.

What I really like about the exploration in Astalon is just how much of the world is explorable from the get go. There is barely a set path that makes you feel like you have to explore this area first or this one next. There are three major bosses that have to be killed before the reaching the top of the tower and they do have to be killed in order but the rest of the map is completely optional. Exploring one hard section might feel like your not making progress in anything but then you get a really useful item or get some permenant upgrades and a ton of cash that make the off the beaten path totally worth it. The items in this game are really usefull and total game changers. Imagine not unlocking the elevator to travel up and down the tower. Toatally missable. So if the game is so open to explore is it frustrating to make any progress? Well yes and no. The game kinda works on a simple 3 key system. White keys, Blue Keys and Red Keys. Keys are in fixed locations and never change. White Key's typically lead to more critical pathways in a dungeon. Blue Key's seem to be more for rewards, hidden areas and short cuts. Red Key's are the rarer key's that unlock major critical areas or super rewards.

You will find yourself at times with like five different areas to explore and you choose one and you don't have enough keys to fully explore yet or lack a upgrade to get through an obsticle. In fact it seems a very common response to this game is people asking if it's possible to soft lock your game because you used the wrong keys in the wrong areas and the answer to that is no. That just goes to show you the importance of choice of what kind of key to use and in what spot. I can see a permenant health upgrade over here but I aslo need a blue key to keep exploring the catacombs and I might not know when I find another one. It's these kind of choices that really highlights how well crafted this games world is. Many games have secret areas or false walls in these old school platformers but only Astalon I can remember where some of these areas are required to progress and not just small easter eggs to get an item. You never ever wanna leave a single room unexplored and pay close attention to how many exits a room has. Also I REALLY appreciate that once you explore about 85-90% of the game you can buy a map to fill out the remaining rooms you haven't found. So many metroidvania's time wasted missing one or two rooms preventing 100% exploration but not here.

The only thing I didn't like about Astalon where the unlockable extra modes. They were extremely poorly designed and overly difficult. It made a nice platinum run a little more tedius and annoying. Boss Rush is a complete RNG nightmare. Just ignore those extra modes. Still I got a solid 15-20 hours completing the main game 100% and it was a very enjoyable experiance. I would definitly say that Astalon is a hidden gem and right out of the gate for 2024 a definite contender of my favorite games of the year.

Platinum #200

I had a lot of fun but there were a couple of hangups I had about it. Your first impressions with some of the locked areas is "it's a metroidvania" but on that end it was sort of weak. I got very far and skipped several items that were meant to continue progression that I found long after they would've been useful. It's more of a roguelike platformer with some metroidvania aspects.
As far as it being a roguelike it was heavily imbalanced in favor for the player. I hardly felt like I died to anything except when I was rushing to get from a point to another and making platforming mistakes.
Still, I would recommend this game if you're looking for a retro platformer fix, the controls are very responsive, and outside a few performance issues I experienced on Switch it was fun experienced, just possibly needed more time to balace the difficulty.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth is a very strong metroidvania. The gameplay style is very Nintendonian and often feels like it was more inspired by NES titles then Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night, giving it a refreshingly baroque character.

The exploration is tight and I liked the progression which focuses on discovering and activating a lot of shortcuts. Closing the distance between the start of the tower and wherever you need to go is important since HP recovery in this game is scarce and there's a lot of focus on room-to-room survival. It puts intensity on every bit of platforming and combat.

I thought the RPG elements were okay. They're not an afterthought but they're not as tight as the more traditional metroidvania mechanics. The game map itself is fun to explore.

Where the game loses points is in the glitches. A few are gamebreaking but the most prominent one is the touchy dialogue confirm button which sometimes skipped past dialogue for me. I had to be careful advancing text because of that and no matter what I did to my controller and input, that never changed. There are also a few other gameplay glitches like the occasional time that I would fall right through ladders when I walked on them.

The music eventually found its way into my head. The graphics utilize and rich 8-bit style. There isn't much story but it does add to the atmosphere and the game wouldn't be as deliciously desolate without it. One of the game's most interesting qualities is even though its a Metroidvania, the movement vocabulary never gets so empowered that vertical movement is no deal. Even late in the game, a four-block high platform can be an obstacle, a puzzle to be solved. That... physicality is present even up to the end of the journey. Glad to have played this one.

So I originally bought this just because I knew it was a Metroidvania and I thought it was more of a "choose your character and go" kind of game, that's it, I had no other notion of the game besides that and very few images, yet I still bought it. And I'm glad I did.

I honestly wasn't expecting such an amazing yet minimalistic love letter to retro Metroidvania type games. It also has an element of rogue-lite in it as well, you're not actually punished for dying, in fact it's kind of the opposite in a way, you are rewarded for lasting as long as you can and the more enemies and/or bosses you kill, the better stuff you are given when you die and have to try again to get back to where you were. It's actually pretty thrilling, it took a bit to catch on, but once I understood it I loved the game.

The music is honestly stellar, it's really good and has a kind of NES era vibe to it.

The story is a bit of a mixed bag, at the beginning you are told a slight bit of the story and the character's purpose annnnnnnd that's about it...at save points the characters have dialogue as well as the character you are using comments on things here and there, but you could go quite a while without seeing any progression in the story itself, exploration is really the whole key to the game.

If I had to think of any flaws I have maybe two, one being that, the game takes a bit for you to understand how it wants you to play, if you don't learn to understand that the game wants you to explore and grind a little then you could easily find yourself frustrated and losing interest and I don't feel the game eases you into the correct mindset. Second, the controls are a tad frustrating, not all of them, just the climbing and falling through ladders and open spaces you are supposed to just climb yet you fall instead, it's something you'd have to play to understand, but some of the controls make platforming a bit frustrating. But that's about it for negatives, I really enjoyed what I played and I'm glad I just too a leap of faith and tried it out.

Really lovely little retro Metroidvania/Search Action game with a couple of unique gimmicks. You have three characters that you swap between who develop their own unique strengths and weaknesses as you unlock upgrades, and there's a death loop where healing is basically nonexistant, but death sends you to a shop where you can cash out currency and then respawn back at the start of the map. Adds up to a pretty satisfying experience, exploring, trying to hold on to every hit point until the bitter end, then launching back in with juiced stats.

There are a couple of annoying or disappointing elements.
The tower is very big and rambling, which is fun to explore at first, but when you're backtracking in the late game it's easy to waste minutes of time only to hit an unmarked wall you forgot about and realise you have to take a completely different route. There's a lot of tantalising story hints thrown out, and I had hoped that exploring the most difficult optional areas would offer some answers, but they all give unsatisfying rewards instead.

Overall it's very well paced and a great size. The map feels expansive, but I 100%ed the main game in under 20 hours, which is pretty perfect for me. The art style is really gorgeous and all the characters feel great once they find their rhythm. Absolutely worth picking up if you like the genre.

I picked this up from a humble bundle, and I'm pretty glad it was included because otherwise I don't think I would've ever even heard about this game. It definitely flew under the radar a bit which is a shame because I think it's really good.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Astalon, all I really knew was that it's an NES-style metroidvania. The start of the game was kinda slow, but I feel like that's a pretty frequent problem within the genre so I won't hold that against it too much. Having three characters to play with (and later 5) is pretty cool. They all have different weapons and attributes that make them feel unique. I can only think of two downsides, first is that swapping between them requires a lot of backtracking in the beginning, but that issue basically goes away entirely once you find the item that lets you switch on the fly. The other is that in my opinion Zeek doesn't really fill any role particularly well and is almost completely outclassed by Bram (who is the most hilariously blatant Simon Belmont copy I've ever seen by the way). Beyond that though the main three you start with are all great.

The game is pretty hard honestly. There are really few ways to restore health so I died a lot. I do think that's fine though because dying is not very punishing at all. There are a lot of warps to get back to where you need to be and it's also the main way to get to the upgrades store. Sometimes I just have a lot of orbs and hit the lowtiergod "I should kill myself NOW". For real though it's a pretty cool mechanic that takes away a lot of the sting of dying since you can always buy some stuff and come back stronger.

I did 100% the main game and for the most part it wasn't too bad. There were definitely points where I got so lost that I had to look up a guide though. Arguably a skill issue but whatever. The only part of it I really disliked was finding the few rooms I never entered which was a huge pain considering how big the map is (plus it's required to get the good ending). And farming orbs is absolutely mandatory for getting every shop upgrade. But if you don't care about those then you'll be fine.

Once you beat the game there are three other modes you can play - boss rush, and two extra campaigns as new characters. I didn't really mess with the last two since they seem to just be playing the whole thing again which I'm not really interested in doing right now lol. I did do boss rush though and I feel like it sucked. When you go into these fights you are nowhere near as strong as you'd be in the main game which makes it pretty miserable. For the average player I feel like it's pointless to even try it without getting Blood Chalice right away since it's the only reliable form of healing, but this also results in the fights taking ages because of how much time you need to spend turtling waiting to get some HP back. I wouldn't recommend bothering with it. Also I'm trying really hard not to let it affect my rating too much because it is the last thing I played before deciding I was finished lmao.

Anyway to get to the point, it's not a perfect game, but I had really a great time and would for sure recommend it to anybody who's into metroidvanias.

I played the demo for this a long time ago, and I wasn't fully in on the game immediately, I only got it because a friend got a humble bundle with the game was kind enough to gift me this game from the bundle. I'm very glad that happened, because I ended up really liking this game!

Graphically it's some pretty solid pixel art, the art design isn't anything special though, not particularly memorable character/enemy designs or map design. The music is the same, nothing stood out as something I can super remember or think back on fondly. None of it is bad by any means, just nothing super special.

Gameplay wise it's a fun metroidvania! The characters feel good to control, each unique aspect of the (spoilers) 5 characters is useful and have a decent amount of use throughout the game. The bosses are alright, but aside from the final boss aren't particularly memorable or the most interesting things ever. There is a pretty great amount of variety in enemies too, this isn't the longest game ever and each area is pretty full of new types of enemies to fight. None of them are particularly annoying either, which is nice to say. The secrets are satisfying to find, and 100%ing the game was overall a very fun time. It felt satisfying to clean up the map and even do the side modes. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to get all the achievements but after starting the Black Knight mode and eventually the Monster mode they ended up being a lot more fun than I was expecting and I beat them both back to back after beating the main game! They're very short and allow for a lot of skipping parts of the game and zooming through that I had a lot of fun abusing the mechanics and speedrunning the map again. I do wish the monster mode had a more consistent way of healing though, I found myself just backtracking through the world finding candles/health upgrades for the final boss since it was killing me in like 3 hits. Having to do that and also die whenever I took too much damage and redo sections without getting as much damage because there's no real way to heal or respawn healing candles was frustrating.

There are a few tiny QoL things that bother me a little bit, they fix some of them as the game goes on which is a bit appreciated, but also makes me question why they made the start the way it is in the first place. The big immediate annoying thing, is that each character has a unique ability and those abilities mainly are for traversing specific parts of the map, and for the first hour or two before you get an item, you have to return to a bonfire to swap characters. It was very frustrating exploring as my current favorite character and finding like a wall of blue vines I can't cut down and having to backtrack all the way back to a campfire to swap characters. I don't know why they needed an item to fix this, just let us swap between characters immediately, it wouldn't break the game or anything all it does is cut back from annoying and frustrating backtracking. Speaking of backtracking, while I do find the map cleverly designed with lots of shortcuts to make cleaning up 100% of the map I really wish there was some sort of item that insta teleported you back to your last campfire or your last elevator you used. That's less of an issue, though just another little thing I would have liked to see. I also wish you didn't need to die to purchase upgrades, or eventually find specific statues to buy upgrades. Being able to just buy upgrades at campfires or something would be nice, and also it's weird you have to buy something before it tells you what it does. Obviously you can look up what each item does (which is what I did) but it would have been nice to just get a descrption for each item and also be told if it was a permanent upgrade or just for this life upgrade.

I was surprised at this one, found myself having a great time 100%ing it and running through it. I don't think it's particularly special, especially in the context of the genre, but not everything has to be! Some games can just be solid entries in a genre without rocking the boat much.

In terms of visual aesthetics, the game is exceptionally well-crafted. The pixel art is highly detailed, though I suspect there's some issues with the hurtbox in certain sprites and the hitbox of specific attacks. The animations are well-executed, and the lighting is particularly evocative, especially in some key scenes. I also appreciate the interconnectedness of the world; in this aspect, it truly embodies the metroidvania genre. Some of the power-ups, essential for smoother traversal, are cleverly concealed, and many areas crucial for progression remain inaccessible until obtaining these enhancements.

However, my overall assessment heavily leans towards the negative. The narrative is horribly fragmented, and the few moments of interaction with the party are excessively repetitive, failing to take any opportunity to develop the characters: the same two-three sketches are recycled each time, and these interactions can only be activated once after each boss fight. In this regard, the game somewhat reminded me of "In Stars and Time" but fell short of reaching the quality of its storytelling. I found the story itself unengaging, possibly due to the overly simplistic writing of the characters.

The level design is generally well-executed, yet some issues caught my attention. For instance, the arena of the second Gorgon makes it challenging for the boss to complete one of its combos, and a specific attack is trivialized by certain tiles that can always provide a very easy cover. Consequently, part of the boss fight becomes too simplistic due to the arena itself

Speaking of level design, I often found it frustrating, especially when combined with key placement. Keys are necessary to open numerous doors scattered throughout the map, and too many times I felt disoriented, unsure of where to find what I needed or where to proceed. The minimap, in this context, was confusing and lacked sufficient information. After playing for an hour or two, it's possible to purchase important items, including one that displays the location of still-locked doors on the map. However, this awareness rarely proved helpful for me; in fact, it often exacerbated the issue making me even more confused due to the lack of other infos

Let's delve into the shop-feature, where the developers seem to have drawn inspiration from roguelites. The game, however, never embraces that shape; instead, it introduces the somewhat bothersome idea of allowing the purchase of items and enhancements only after death. This proved irritating to me since death itself serves no purpose other than this. At most, it serves a narrative function, but I am confident that a more effective approach could have been devised. Admittedly, after a while, it becomes possible to purchase an item that opens the shop when standing in front of certain idols scattered on the map. Yet, in my opinion, these idols are too few, and the opportunity to do this comes too late.

At first, the boss fights seemed enjoyable, only to become entirely trivial once acquiring power-ups. For instance, one of the later humanoid bosses is completely annihilated by the ability to evade any of its attacks by hopping indefinitely on the side walls. None of his attacks can counter this, and the arena is entirely flat, restricting any creative reactions. While there's an option to disable one's own enhancements, I believe it's the developer's responsibility to bring challenge in a fight, rather than leaving this responsibility to the player

Another significant issue for me is that the game, for too many hours, fails to effectively integrate the individual party members' properties with environmental puzzles and their combat potentials. The warrior is utterly useless for two-thirds of the game, and I resorted to using him solely to cut vines (10 of them in 10 hours of gameplay, I think). I used the wizard a bit more, but he also suffered from being minimally useful in the early hours of the game. The archer, on the other hand, is overpowered from the start. Dealing excellent damage from a distance (remaining almost always safe), being able to climb walls (useful for both puzzles and combat, compared to the other two characters), and jumping slightly higher than the rest of the party. I had no reason to use the wizard and the warrior, this game really is not "Trine" at all. Moreover, only towards the conclusion we are introduced to some spectral enemies that can be damaged only by the wizard

The first half of the game was, therefore, frustrating especially due to the fact that the player HAS TO RETURN to a campfire EVERY TIME to switch characters – an inconvenient and displeasing aspect considering the lack of balance in the party. Finally, a bell is obtained, allowing the flexibility to change characters at will, making the game more dynamic and less methodical, albeit still not dynamic enough. To traverse the map, I still predominantly used the archer, deploying the other two exclusively to dispatch certain enemies more quickly. Furthermore, their power-ups were essentially useless to me. The wizard's gliding ability was never used to traverse the map, and the warrior's dash functioned similarly, proving also ineffective in combat.

Ah, and of course: fighting almost any of the bosses with the mage or the warrior is too damn difficult. Again, I used the archer almost everytime

A pretty fun metroidvania with some strong screen design. A bit glitchy and frustrating at times though.

Maybe this gripe won't ring true to everyone, but there's an item one can acquire relatively early that lets you switch between each character at will out in the 'field', instead of needing to find a station to do so. This actually took away a lot of the fun for me. It was enjoyable to make mental notes and think about traveling to certain areas as the other characters, as opposed to the extreme convenience of pressing a button and being any of the three at once. If you were going to turn off the mechanic so soon, It might as well have simply been 1 character that had all 3 weapon types and abilities, as opposed to 3 distinct playstyles and limitations. Maybe just me.

I was a big fan of this dev’s previous game, Castle in the Darkness, so I was very pleased to find that this game was really similar but expanded on into a full length metroidvania. The mechanic of starting every run from the castle entrance and buying upgrades on death felt weird at first for a game that is otherwise not a roguelike (no randomly generated elements) was pretty interesting and a little annoying at first but once I got used to it, it definitely made this game more unique. Good music and surprisingly decent story for a MV. This game excels in terms of upgrade variety and map/world design. The biggest weakness is it’s pretty unbalanced, early bosses are kinda hard but the further you get into the game, the more you’ve actually been exploring and buying upgrades, the easier the boss fights get, to where if you get even 90% completion like I did, the final boss is completely trivial.

GRAB THIS GAME. The only reason I don't five-star this game is because there are some bugs that occasionally surface and at least one was responsible for making me have to die at least once in order to get back to normal progression.

That aside, level design and gameplay are STELLAR. The tower is a behemoth that sprawls upward and about and as you think you have a grasp on the size of the tower, you find that you're only seeing about half of what's actually there.

Secrets abound and you're actively encouraged to poke around. In fact, that's one of the quintessential cornerstones of why this game works -- it implores you to explore to your heart's content. Dying isn't an issue because any currency you build up is spendable on death and none of it is ever lost, even if you choose not to spend it. Worried you're not going to make it to whatever goal location you've got? Just try your best, spend some currency on upgrades after you die, and then come back to it again.

The character swap system is largely fun, though Arias wasn't really worth it to me and I spent most of my time switching between Kyuli (who I mained for her range) and Algus (after he got an ability that I found to be very useful).

Area progression is hypothetically linear, but sometimes getting lost can lead you to some secret areas that let you pick up some more goodies and come back with massive stomping powers as a result.

You could argue that if anything, the game actually gets too easy once you start branching out in different directions after the first boss because it's not difficult to start amassing orbs from a slew of enemies if you're not just actively avoiding them and some of the ability power-ups you find while exploring give you major leverage on both regular monsters and bosses.

Regarding bosses, all of them were fun to me, though as I mentioned before -- there wasn't much challenge after the first one. That's probably on me, but I won't delve into why because it's spoiler territory. Boss patterns are simple to understand and the difficulty in the fights lies largely in how to get the most damage out there without being greedy -- if you don't temper your desire to get a few extra hits in, you will pay the price.

Visually, it's an 8-bit spectacle and the bosses and minibosses are far more entertaining to look at (and fight) than most of the regular monsters.

Music is good, not great -- it's solid adventuring vibes throughout the entire tower, but none of them are specifically sticking with me right now after 100%ing the game.

Content is wonderful. There is a true ending for players who want incentive to strive for 100% bestiary, items, and map collection (the bestiary isn't mandatory, but you may as well if you're on your way!). There are multiple modes of play that are unlocked after beating the game or finding certain secrets/fulfilling certain conditions. Boss Rush and NG+ (which shuffles items and other such things) are some enjoyable staples, but there are others I won't mention here. Beyond the modes of play, there are other secrets that are optional to the main game that also alter the gameplay a bit.

I achieved 100% bestiary, items, and map completion along with the true ending at roughly 16 hours of time. I'd say at least an hour of that was wandering around, maybe two. There's a lot to get lost in, and that's a great thing in this game.

There are two features I'd like to add, but for sake of spoilers, I'll refrain from mentioning one of them. The other feature, however -- it would be nice if you could place markers on your map to indicate your own areas of interest. The game does try to give you a number of useful markers via some upgrades you purchase, but they're not really helpful when trying to figure out if you need a certain character for a certain ability in a room or if you just walked into a room, walked out, and never completed the room. In that respect, this map system could use the Batbarian treatment. Other than that, a little polish and at least for me, this is a 10/10 game. Buy it at full price, it's absolutely worth it at 20 bucks. Over a dozen of hours of fun before even unlocking multiple modes that change the dynamics of the game? ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, I'M THERE FOR IT.