game nearly had it
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.
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.