TELL ME how this game filtered you, you can't HANDLE the unmitigated 2000's swag oozing from this game.

Combat is fun as fuck, major complaints would be that I wish the dive would go a little further like in OD, overall though the combat is a MASSIVE step up, and the ability to to switch to full auto mid game is great in going against the true main villain of the series: Repetitive strain injury

GONE are the minimalist huds and and the rebooted "mature" take on an old franchise, "oh look at this story about a father learning to understand his son it's so much more mature than the old entr-" FUCK THAT SHIT, this game has a GOOFY SKULL that laughs at you as the most prominent hud element.

Game has JUST enough variety and consistency to keep the fun arcade-y feel of the first title, while still having lots of meat on it's bones like in OD, star of the show are definitely the demolition attacks, which all provide their own weaknesses and strengths, and with how much more enemies are in the game. you'll be getting them far quicker so you'll be mixing them up often.

The aesthetics of this game I also love, YES, the first title looks amazing and this game doesn't hold a candle (I didn't expect this entry to since the devs have basically made nothing else), but the grimey industrial city-scape the helps makes Graves colours pop that looks like it came straight out of the PS3 is so my shit, even things like the music tracks are actually really good here too! Very edgy, very nice

The game even has post game unlockable skins and even a character who you can replay every stage with! Not even DMC5 gave that option so this is honestly sick!

It's not perfect, there's a general level of jank (sometimes in a not fun way) and boss fights are for sure the weakest part. Also upgrades are dished out waaay too slowly and there's plenty of filler ones, also no remappable controls is LUDICROUS for modern day gaming like come on (also important to note I played the post patches version of this game that fixed many things so day 1 players understandably won't like it as much).

all in all though, this games fucking SICK, you're probably LAME if you don't like it #GUNGRAVEGORESWEEP

Shadows of Valentia is such an interesting case where it's almost a perfect game. The presentation, voice acting, narrative, and music are all so goddamn perfect that it carries that really repetitive and mediocre gameplay that this game has. It's clear that Intelligent Systems wanted this game to be pretty faithful to the original Gaiden in terms of gameplay, but I feel that is what really brings it down for me. Especially in the last quarter of the game where the dungeons become a lot longer and the map design is either nonexistent or really bad.

I do really love this game, but replaying it after 4 years from my last replay has made me realized the game's highs and lows pretty clearly.