Genuinely one of if not the most frustrating action game i have ever played. I will just say now that i am fucking ass at this game so take what i am gonna say with a massive chunk of salt. But, this game is just filled with shit that feels like its designed to piss you off while having both not enough tools to feel like you can deal with the easily or the guidance to teach a struggling player if the tools are actually there. Sorry man i can't recreate evo moment 37 while fighting 100 enemies on a 2d plain so they all stack on top of each other so its not easy to see incoming attacks while an off screen sniper is shooting at me creating a massive blinking red reticle which obscures more of the immediate enemies i am fighting. Only to then introduce enemies with super armor.

This game feels like it has an incomplete movelist and certain moves and movement are weirdly stiff and don't flow into each other. Ex: Up+Y. Jumping feels like ass in this game and there are tons of situations where enemies are falling in the air but i can't catch them to juggle for some reason and the game has no made a clear distinction why. Sorry i am too stupid to break down the finer intricacies of the game and its mechanics and its too niche to have other people explain it because the game does a terrible job at this itself.

Incredible art direction that is truly inspired but i wish it was tied to a game that i found more fun to play

Will try again when they inevitably make more patches to tone down some of the shit that is a massive turn off.

Darn. Was really looking forward to this but this small indie game with alot of style and a talented art director just never really gels together into a cohesive game. There are some really baffling decisions regarding the combat system. I see many other reviews going into how poorly thought out aspects of the combat is, but the bottom line is that its frustrating and tedious. Imagine playing a fighting game where you cant block or techroll (only 3rd strike parry or dash) and your opponent has permanent super armour and spams multihit moves and screen wide command grabs over and over again. Now duplicate that enemy a few times lazily and you have the average Slave Zero X encounter. Why are there no moves to learn except some hidden cheese moves that aren't included in the tutorial? Why are there no supers or finishers? There's a real lack of polish getting all the art and ui and cutscenes to mesh together too. There's flashes of brilliance and real talent on display here, but the lazy encounter design and lack of features make me think this was rushed and merged into a precarious build days before release. I really hope at some point this gets an overhaul because there's a good game hiding here somewhere. I can't believe the one thing I don't really have any complaints about is the characters and voice acting in a story written by a RWBY writer.

There's been a thematic subgenre in video games that's been coming into prominence the last couple of years. It's inspired by high octane action games like MGR and DMC and both an understanding that needlessly dark presentation is kinda cheesy, but a willingness to accept the positive elements of said presentation to a limited point. Followers of this aesthetic would wince in pain if you called them edgy. They long to be in on the joke, while still wanting to appear "cool" to their peers. These are the Sol Badguy players of the world, mechanically "proficient" at their pursuits, but still willing to look at these (mostly, there are notable exceptions) masculine protagonists and shout "that's literally me" at the screen, with the hope that others will them them in the same light. Slave Zero X is a game I'm glad I've played, because it both manages to encapsulate the appeal of this thematic current, along with how bankrupt it is in a lot of ways.

Before I rip into the game, the music's good, the sprite work is mostly really solid, I didn't have any issues understanding what was happening on the screen most of the time, and the voice acting, within the limitations of the story, was solid. This was clearly an indie title on a budget. Good on you for getting Jamieson Price, I'm eternally grateful he seems to be willing to voice whatever as long as you buy him Dennys first. Effort went into making this game look really cool.

Mechanically, this game is creatively bankrupt. The developers really liked Arcsys fighters without understanding why specific systems were put into place. In Guilty Gear, there's an ability every character has access to called psych burst. It's full at the beginning of the round, and you can use it at almost any time during the match to push the opponent away from you, even while you're being attacked. It is a solution to two major issues:

1) The lax combo rules of the game allow for unintended game states that might otherwise hurt the competitive integrity, including infinite combos.

2) Even during intended game states, Gear combos can be long and it feels bad for the other player to watch one player do ray charles shit on their stick for 30 seconds while they sit there not playing a video game. Burst gives them a change to interact with longer combos.

These aren't issues Slave Zero X should have at all. There are times where the player gets wailed on by enemies, but it feels less like the encounters are thought out and will combo you in a cohesive manner (outside of a few late game fights) and more that you're going to get chaingrabbed by a recolor of the same enemy you've been fighting since stage 2. It even behaves the same way it does in Guilty Gear, where if you use it in a neutral state and the shockwave of this burst hits an opponent, you gain full meter. There doesn't seem to be any retooling of this game mechanic to fit a sidescrolling brawler, they just slapped it in there because it's in Gear.

Meter is also inspired by Guilty Gear in a very superficial way. In Gear, you gain meter through aggressive actions, and this meter is spent on a variety of actions ranging from combo extensions to critical defensive options that make the game a chore to play without. There's a lot of right ways to spend meter, but lacking it at a critical time could cost you a round, making management important. Most importantly, you can spend your meter doing cool and flashy shit that doesn't take deep mechanical understanding of the game to care about. Slave Zero X's meter is boring as sin. You mostly regain it through gibbing enemies that have already been dealt enough damage to be considered defeated (this is a major issue, because enemy variety is low and they already come off as a bit damage spongy). You spend that meter not on meter exclusive moves, but on:

- paying a slight amount of meter to backdash cancel attacks (I almost never had to do this)

- canceling the startup of weak attacks into "EX moves", which are just heavy attacks with tweaks to frame data/damage/properties (like the ability to hit an opponent off the ground with an enhanced air attack as opposed to a normal version). They're not fundamentally different attacks, nor do they change your decision making, they just allow for longer combo extensions.

- A "Devil Trigger" enhanced state that allows you use unlimited EX moves, and heals you for all damage dealt.

If I made this sound interesting, I apologize, none of it is. Meter problems go away with just a few shop upgrades (there are no new weapons or moves to buy), and enemy fodder is so omnipresent that after the first 1/4th of the game, in combination with using burst to get meter back, I spent a large chunk of this game in this enhanced state. There aren't a ton of visual differences between having this state and not having this state. You don't get exclusive moves. The healing doesn't even really matter that much, as you'll be able to either juggle 90 percent of the game with the same stale kit of moves, or have to deal with bosses with such a limited period of vulnerability that you'll get three swings off before the meter's drained. It's so fucking lame, and it pretends like what you're doing is the next coming of Bayonetta. This game pretends like it's this tough as nails, very technical brawler for people who want a break practicing sidewinder loops, but most of it can be handled by light attack - stuff - launcher - juggle until they blow up, and if not, fights take 3 min and mostly consist of learning when to parry (because of course this game has a parry) or where to fuck off until the game decides that it's your turn to play. I didn't feel like I got better after playing this game. I sure as hell didn't feel the need to enter the game's training mode, and thank god because even though they advertised it being there, it's a more barebones mode than games from over twenty years ago.

I had fun with this game still. While the game lacks the memorable set-pieces of the games it was inspired by, and very much wore out its welcome after the 3rd of it's 5 hour playtime, this wasn't an aggravating experience (outside of the dreadful platforming sections, an overwhelming majority of my deaths were to a train environmental hazard early on). But for the most part, when playing this game, I just thought "wow, Hakumen from Blazblue sure is a cool character". Hakumen has airdashes, this power fantasy arcsys inspired brawler doesn't have airdashes. Haukmen's counters are really cool, and he has a variety of them. X's parries don't lead to anything other than "cool, you can keep mashing attack, unless the enemy pressed the super armor button again. Hakumen's "I get to use all of my stuff for free" enhanced state, Mugen, is sick as hell because it allows a normally limited character to ignore the rules of the game for six seconds, and potentially one shot the opponent. X's enhanced state puts me to sleep. The fact they both happen to be robotic, eyeless, long white haired, katana wielding nerds is besides the point.

There's also a story. "Rip and tear until its done" turns into a slightly deeper emotional connection between the main protagonist and the sentient and fucked up bio-mechanical suit. There's little here with any emotional sincerity, and the setting doesn't even come off as interesting as the 25 year old game the devs took the setting from. There is some homo-eroticism between Shou (X) and Not Zero, game respect game it's about the most bold decision the Slave Zero X staff took, intentionally or not.

Is it totally fair to compare Slave Zero X's failures to its inspirations? Probably not, but the game constantly invites the comparisons and doesn't do enough original to deflect away from them. It's a game that wants you to think it's the next best thing since high-frequency katana sliced bread, but lacks any convictions of its own and comes off as a very reserved, scared project because of it. The game arrogantly sets itself up for a sequel, and I hope they throw everything in the game part of the game out, and start from the drawing board. Slave Zero X is a game that promises a combat canvas, and hands you a 4 pack of crayola crayons instead.

this is so fucking raw man

this is the ultimate mecore video game because the playable character is almost 1 to 1 Hakumen from Blazblue and that's the guy i main in those games

please make more games in this universe

Vamos de mais um gamezinho que joguei, nesse início da semana: Slave Zero X, jogo bem intrigante com uma pegada mais clássica e que chamou muito minha atenção para a jogatina deste mês de fevereiro.

Slave Zero X se passa no futuro, em uma cidade em decadência onde um governo fascista toma conta de tudo. Você controla Shou, que é membro de um grupo rebelde dedicado a derrubar os governantes. Frustrado com o que parece ser uma falta de vontade por parte de seus aliados para agir, Shou rouba uma armadura biomecânica chamada Slave e parte sozinho para acabar com a graça desse governo.

Slave é basicamente aquilo que você já espera encontrar quando vai jogar um side-scrolling beat-'em-up. Você tem um ataque forte e fraco e pode usá-los juntos em vários combos, que você usa para prosseguir nas fases do jogo. O jogo também conta com um sistema de cancelamento, que por sinal é bem criativo e permite que você use um combo e um cancelamento de salto para interromper um combo com outro combo, o que dá um charme diferenciado na hora da gameplay.

Por falar em charme, o game e seus gráficos são muito charmosos. O jogo apresenta um estilo 2.5D, onde você segue um caminho predefinido entre as lutas. Existe também no combate uma barra de especial, onde ao você apanhar ou bater ela vai enchendo, onde você pode gastar com certos movimentos especiais que permitem fortalecer seus ataques ou dar um modo rage quando você está com a barra cheia, que permite você regenerar sua vida e também inclui o fortalecimento das skills. Há também o dash, que permite que você evite um ataque tendo alguns momentos de invencibilidade. Sabendo disso, monitorar e saber utilizar essa barra é fundamental. Já que o modo rage é uma das poucas maneiras de curar que existe no jogo.

Um dos pontos mais negativos para mim em minha jogatina com o Slave é a sua jogabilidade dura. Eu entendo que a proposta do jogo é exatamente essa que é parecer limitado ou retro até mesmo na sua gameplay, porém eu senti que o game não fluiu de maneira legal, principalmente quando a gente fala da grande quantidade de inimigos no mapa. Eu acho que a parte que mais faz você sentir essa rigidez em seus controles é as lutas contra os chefes e quando o assunto é plataforma isso se eleva em mais de 8000, até porque saltos simples parecem ser desnecessariamente difíceis por causa dos movimentos limitados e rígidos do nosso boneco. O estilo visual 2.5D também não ajuda muito e em algumas situações podem até confundir você, principalmente quando a gente fala de passagens secretas.

Mas de maneira geral a jogabilidade do game é bem legal mas ao mesmo tempo não parece compensar muito, porque realmente terá bastante momentos onde você vai se sentir frustrado e certamente está longe de ser um Streets of Rage 4 ou um Shredder's Revenge que são jogos do mesmo gênero que joguei ano passado e simplesmente amei.

Visualmente como já dito antes, Slave é ótimo. O visual cyberpunk casa perfeitamente com o game. Na primeira jogatina que você dá já dá para notar que ele possui um gráfico mais retro, o que obviamente não faz dele um game feio, pelo contrário, ele tem muito charme em seu visual, mesmo sendo um game meio retro ele te passa uma sensação mista de algo moderno mas ao mesmo tempo antigo, algo bem similar ao que senti jogando Shredder's Revenge;

Slave Zero X é um game ok, facilmente não compraria ele, mas não chega ser um game terrível, já joguei coisa muito pior na vida, quando você entra no ritmo do jogo e passa a entender melhor ele tudo fica muito fácil, mas em diversos momentos eu me vi me forçando a jogar ele o que para mim já foi um ponto bem negativo. Então é bem difícil recomendar Slave Zero X.

Pontos Positivos:
- Gráficos 2.5D são bem legais

Pontos Negativos:
- Sistemas de combate extremamente difícil de masterizar... ou melhor colocando horríveis.

Versão utilizada para análise: PC

Very goofy (good way).

Two of the three games the dev team cites as major inspirations are Devil May Cry and Guilty Gear. Know that they specifically mean the first Devil May Cry. As for the Guilty Gear comparison, I understood it at the surface level (Roman Cancel + movement is similar). Then I reached the penultimate boss-fight of the game and had the feeling of "this game is now for people that place top 8 for Guilty at EVO".

Slave Zero X is the game that has kicked my ass the most since playing the original release of DMC 3 when I was a child. This is the first game in 20 years that I am putting on the "I'll finish someday" backburner solely because of difficulty. Game is pretty neat for that.

I will say there are still criticisms. For one the game often feels like it leaves the "DMC" inspiration in favour of a traditional Beat 'em Up or Musou. These moments can work briefly, but the later levels really lean into this, I think to the game detriment. As these are the moments where the game most heavily devolves into popping DT to spam EX moves as much as possible, then popping Burst to get full meter to repeat the cycle.

Also for a game that cares enough about player skill expression to put in a training room, it's weird there is not only no movelist, but the only time you can view the controls/see what the mechanics are is if you replay and skip the intro cutscene level.

Even with those gripes, I think the game mostly succeeds in what it's trying to do. If all of that sounds like something you need in your veins right now, I would definitely recommend. Visualy gorgeous with an OST that goes off, if you are looking for a challenge, Slave Zero X is a great option.

If you do pickup the game, I'll give two recommendations:
1. Go to volume settings and max out the Music track. Otherwise it will get completely washed out.
2. EX moves aren't L+H like it says, its a piano roll. So in very quick succession L>H (For the people coming here as a character action fan, like how you would pull off an Afterburner Kick in Bayonetta)

[Edit, literally the day after writing this: Beat the game, penultimate fight was the hardest fight for sure. The final boss right after was pretty weak imo.]

This game really wants to be a fighting game, but unfortunately it also wants to be a character action game. There's a reason these are separate genres.

It borrows mechanics like Bursting, Roman Canceling, parrying, and ex attcks from Guilty Gear and Street Fighter, and these have varying degrees of success in how they're implemented.

At first the game is frustrating as you try to chain together stylish combos only to get hit with D ranks over and over, but then when you figure out the game's intended loop, which is

>get all enemies on one side
>activate fatal sync (this games version of Devil Trigger)
>spam combos and EX moves
>when fatal sync runs out, burst out of a combo for free meter
>re-enter fatal sync
>repeat

It clicks and you stop having trouble.

This really is the optimal way to play, and after you realize it, it's kind of disappointing because the game, unlike the character action greats like DMC or Ninja Gaiden, never "elevates" above this loop. This game was explicitly designed for you to be in Fatal Sync ALL THE TIME since the devs idea of difficulty is to throw hordes of enemies at you, and all of them are big damage sponges. You MUST combo everything to absolute hell and back, even the basic mooks. It's fun and feels good, but it gets old since your moveset is limited and you inevitably will do the same MAYBE 3 or so combos over and over. There are no extra weapons or unlockable characters, you have your entire moveset available from frame 1 of gameplay. Some people like that, but I like to have incentives for replays other than the typical rank chasing, if nothing else.

Speaking of, the post game is also seriously lacking. Typically in a character action game, your first playthrough is to learn the combat system and to unlock everything, and then your real playthrough begins your second time around on a higher difficulty now that you're familiar with the systems. In Slave Zero X, there are no extra difficulty modes. All you have to look forward to after beating the main game is the Crimson Citadel, a bloody palace style arena mode where you fight every enemy and boss. It's decent, but very short. A typical Bloody Palace run can last upwards of 2 hours whereas the Crimson Citadel can be beaten in 20 minutes. Other than that, all you really have left to do is unlock color palettes and chase after stage ranks, which, thanks to your limited moveset, can feel like a grind.

There's also a serious lack of real defensive options. If you're in a group of enemies and you get launched, it's very possible you can get comboed from one enemy to the next until death from full health without ever touching the ground. Enemies can throw you back and fourth from one another with no cooldown, with no chance for you to recover, and don't EVER air tech in his game, as all it does is make you float helplessly in the air, which is the worst possible place to be unless you're juggling enemies. All you have is the third strike parry, which is completely infeasible when you're surrounded (example of a fighting game mechanic not suited for an action game, poorly thought out), and your dash which grants a tiny handful of i-frames. Sometimes the game will throw 2 boss enemies at you, who of course have hyper armor and multi hitting attacks or super long combos, and if they manage to get you in a pattern where they're hitting you back and forth, just set the controller down and go get a snack.

There's also a few times where the game resorts to some downright cheap bullshit to make things artificially harder, like putting big objects in the foreground to block your view, or even straight up turning out the lights completely at one part. In a hardcore action game like this, that is just not acceptable.

+ Pleasing visual style
+ Feels like the game is testing the breaking point of enemy density. You push the crowds or else you will die first.
+ Felt unfair at first because the movement felt too stiff to deal with the enemies on the screen, but still there are many tools that can be used for making your own space (like izuna drop, LLL-dash loop, get-off-me-tool that uses resources, grenades), and the dash i frame is surprisingly lenient.
+ Healing system also encourages you to be more aggressive and the meter management also plays into this process.
+ Bosses are (as long as they are functioning as 1v1 humanoids) pretty alright.
-A lot of encounters blend in too much because barely any environment plays into the combat arenas.
-Maybe way too long considering the enemy variety itself and the monotonous gameplay flow shifts. I would remove some levels in the middle.
-3D background and camera panning can make misaligned hit boxes which can make some how-did-that-hit-me situations
-Final boss sucks ass
+- Tutorial dump at the beginning can be overwhelming, but hey, if I could comprehend it, maybe you also can.
+- I think S ranking is in the unreasonable territory. It requires a no-hit run in regular encounters and bosses.. and honestly that’s…reserved for only the top 0.1% of the player base? It’s definitely not for me lol

Slave Zero X is, with no hyperbole, one of the sickest games I've played in years.

Gorgeous spritework, on top of badass 3d environments, with a kickass soundtrack, and some of the most visually stunning character portraits I have ever seen.
And the game is fun to play too, which is nice.
Shou feels great to control, large combo strings are relatively easy to pull off, and the sheer amount of stuff you can do is crazy
Grounded combo, into launcher, into an air combo, into a mid air grab that causes splash damage when you land it

There's a taunt that can be used as a launcher, a taunt that can be used for pushing enemies away from you, a divekick, three different grenade types, a shuriken, a super meter, and a burst that can refill your super meter. And that's only scratching the surface really.

Even after you beat the game there's more to do, because after you finish, you unlock a (seemingly) endless mode, where round by round more and more enemies spawn in, leading to boss rematches.
I say seemingly, because I didn't make it that far! Only to the round after the first boss rematch. Also the announcer in this mode makes little fighting game references by saying stuff like "Live and let die!" And "Can't escape from crossing fate!" So that's kinda cute.


But with the good, there has to be some bad, and unfortunately there is a a bit of bad.
Too many sprites on the screen at once cause the game to lag
A lot
In the later stages you could see anywhere from 10 to maybe even 20 enemies on the screen at once, some of which have projectiles and other flashy effects like flaming swords and it can get to be a bit excessive.

While the game overall feels fairly balanced in terms of challenge, it also at times feels a bit unfair in its difficulty. This is less a criticism with the game, and more just me complaining about how I'm bad at it.
Enemies can easily combo you into the attacks of other enemies. For example, an enemy can stun lock you with an assault rifle, which gives another guy the opportunity to smash your skull in with a hammer, which gives another guy the chance to charge tackle you into the wall. It's just a bit much sometimes. But again, I'm bad! This might not be a problem for you, especially if you're good at nailing down the parry mechanic.

The game is, incredibly unfortunately, riddled with bugs. Bugs which, a lot of the time, cause the game to crash. It crashes so much, to the point where I took a two month long break from the game while I waited for a patch. And after the patch I experienced more crashes than I originally had back in February. At the time of writing this (April 15, 2024) there is not a second patch out, but one is rapidly being worked on by the dev team, and will be out the door as soon as possible. And I'm really happy about that, it shows that the team cares a lot. They're very clearly passionate about this project.
I experienced the crashes while playing on PS4
Maybe the other versions of this game aren't as bad, I have no idea.



I cannot, in good faith, give Slave Zero X a full recommendation. Not in it's current state. Give ithe team some time to patch out the bugs, and yes, I think SZX will be fully worth buying and playing all the way through. As it stands right now though, I say wait. It's a fantastic game, truly a masterclass in its genre, and a Game of the Year contender for me. It's something that will stick with me for a long time, and something I want other people to experience, but not in it's current state.
I give Slave Zero X an 8/10



Game is actually a 10/10 though, it's so fucking cool dude, my God.

Above all else this game succeeds on an aesthetic level. Detailed pixel art on 3D backgrounds that have change angles is a late 90s look that not a lot of modern games follow. The character designs are also great, committing to that biomechanical look the original had to move away from.
On the gameplay side, the initial impression is pretty positive, enemies and player alike have no invincibility frames until they hit the floor so you can get into lengthy combos, as can enemies. Unfortunately throwing more enemies at you so they can stunlock you is where most of the difficulty comes in. You can escape this with a burst mechanic straight like Guilty Gear, but the fact that most fights increase the difficulty by piling more enemies on rather than increasing complexity is unfrotunate, I feel the game could've benefited from more enemies/enemies having more abilities. On the defensive side, you get a brief invincibility dash and a SF3 style parry. The dash doesn't function so strongly as other invincible dodges in modern action games so that's nice, some attacks have long enough reach that you'll just dodge into them if you're not careful. The individual zones associated with each boss do feel like they set themselves apart enough that they stand out, as do each of the bosses.

hmm :/

I still adore this games presentation. The sprites and backgrounds are gorgeous, designs are incredible and sound across the board is great!

But the gameplay. I heard people complain its a mash light attack game. I can see that for the first 3 stages, you can coast pretty well with some C and D ranks throughout with mild issues.

Then you get to chapter 4 and the difficulty spikes. Parrying goes from being something to strive for to something you'll need to do if you want to get good scores going forward, and later if you want to even beat the game, trust me. You also really need to grasp how to keep a good combo and meter going as some of the later enemies become real tanky, total damage sponges.

I don't want it to come off as complaining "Oh game that aims to be hard is too hard" No that's part of the appeal, just the game really doesn't prep you beyond a quick screen at the very beginning, loading screen tips, and a basic training mode. A better difficulty curve that preps the player for what the latter half of the game will be asking of the player and maybe some tutorials that help people with the parry mechanics would help.

Maybe I need to get good, maybe I need to finally play SF III so I can learn to parry in this game, but I digress. I like this game, I just wish I liked it enough to beat the final boss.

TLDR: Slave Zero X is a sensational game with an even better story but with such glaring flaws it becomes almost difficult to reccomend. 7/10

starting with the good
The story is genuinely sensational, it has fully enthralled me all the way to the end and i love the story progression with shou and isamu and shou and x.
this games combat is amazing* but with a massive asterisk. When you're in control you are an unkillable demon with some of the most fun beat em up moves ive ever played, but you have almost no defensive options other than parry and parry doesnt even work when most enemies have meaty attacks that linger past your parry timing.
The graphics speak for themselves, the style is so stand out beautiful and the game takes clear inspiration from devilman, guilty gear, dmc, and all the maps were made in the quake engine afaik which honestly helps the style even more
the sections for each calamity really show the calamities characters well, and add a new challenge, thorman is a barebones section as it teaches you the game, enyo has the sniper on you so you're constantly moving, uriel has mostly chase scenes and it really just enhances the games storytelling through gameplay

now the negative
The difficulty: i dont think the game is too difficult, but the game doesnt scale difficulty well at all. The way the difficulty works is instead of giving you more chances to outplay the opponent, the game just spams enemies and minibosses with super armor that will lock you in hit stun until you die. it is insanely frustrating and doesnt actually make it more difficult to win, just more infuriating to play against.
secondly, the game doesnt have great save points, as you finish a section and die 2 sections later and it will reset you to the beginning of the level in some levels instead of the section you died on.

In all, I hope this game gets a DLC, I hope it gets updates to add a difficulty selector, I hope that X-Shou is a guest character in a fighting game or that they make their own spinoff fighting game as its clear that fighting games inspired the combat heavily, and I generally do recommend the game to anyone looking for a beautiful spectacle beat em up with a great story, but I cant recommend the game to anyone getting it for the difficulty because it wont challenge you, but just make you irritated in the later levels with enemy spam and hit stun

A few missions in, this feels...wrong. On a few levels.

Mainly, the fighting mechanics feel unfinished: I've yet to encounter a single enemy type that would give me any grief if I just continue wailing on them, and dodging or parrying is strictly useless. There are a few combos you can input, but their effect feels homogenous, and doing them seems pointless, in part because the style system doesn't seem to understand what made Devil May Cry special. There it feels 1-1 with your actions: many cool and varied moves = good, a few repetitive moves = bad. Your rank changes every other second in direct response to your gameplay, and, especially in DMC 5, it feels good to maintain a high rank. In Slave Zero X, I can't figure out what even effects rating, because the only thing that I can always reference is the combo counter, which depletes WAY too quickly. Other than that, I'm not sure what's so different between my E-rated battles and my S-rated ones (the only two ratings I managed to get).

The second big "wtf" thing is the story. I don't know if I'm dumb, or shoud've beaten the game, or listened more closely to radio chatter, but I'm not sure this narrative makes sense. After a scene where two Guys talk about Things You Don't Know About and then Do Things You Don't Understand, you just take control of this guy with his sentient exo-sceleton acting as comic relief. The game doesn't try to establish...anything, really? All dialogue feels like exposition, and yet nothing is stated concretely. I almost felt like my (admitedly pirated) version was fucked up, until I looked up some playthroughs and no. It's just incomprehensible.

Looks good, doesn't work.

Atavaka me estaba rompiendo el ojete y me quise bajar un trainer para ponerme vida infinita y pasarlo y no solo no anduvo sino que tambien casi pierdo la cuenta steam.

Igual valio la pena porque esta buenisimo el juego, pero aveces se recontra llena la pantalla de bichos y no se entiende una pija.

Si les llego un mensaje mio diciendo que hagan click para recibir $50 dolares no lo abran, besos.

the sovkahn boss has to have something wrong with it besides it crashing because he just wont let you hit him its kusoge the rest of the game is awesome and atavatka is good and hard and fun
the unpolished parts like the crashing and how i have to change the taunt bind every time i launch the game makes me sour on the game even if its so fun gameplay and iconography wise and i only made it to sovkahn after they fixed apparent crashes and fixing when you change directional input binds on keyboard you cant double tap sprint


(below if from when the demo came out)
the demo is so good im so excited, game has come out and is so good having more enemies and levels gives you time to actually figure out the combat better and the combat is fun, it is really hard on controller but i dont have a fightstick and cant use keyboard even if it would work because no quarter circles because steam. but the story is really good too and the characters are fun and the environments get so much cooler. i havent beat the game yet but when i figure out a controller sitch i wanna go through and s rank the whole game