I was hyped for this one even though I put it off for like a couple of years, but that was probably for the best since I didn't really end up falling in love with it. It's got some really engaging ideas with a lot of bad execution. Slowing down and stopping time are fun mechanics, and I especially loved the idea of the graze mechanic, where you're meant to get close to monsters and projectiles in order to regain mana and HP in an obvious and fun reference to grazing in shmups, but the execution of all of these things also feel disappointing. The areas where you have to pull comparatively complicated time-controlling maneuvers feel more irritating than fun to me, and the graze mechanic can partially be abused too easily by just walking into a room with a big beastie in it, graze it real quick, back out and repeat until you have full HP and MP, and partially leads to just frustrating and unfun moments where you're out of mana and can't even do a basic attack, since even those cost mana.
The map and metroidvania structure is also a bit disappointing, since there really isn't anything cool to find either visually or mechanically. All you find are Metroid-style MP/HP/Time upgrades and the damage upgrade only lets you throw more daggers while time is still, not while time is running, which just feels like a let-down. The game is also light on backtracking, making it quite short for the genre, and losing one of my favorite aspects of it; running back and forth to explore so many different areas that you start to memorize the map and feel at home in certain areas. This game is much more linear than other games in the genre and the only real backtracking happens at the end when you go secret-hunting to prepare for the final boss.
Speaking of, the bosses are actually mostly great. They're challenging but not maddening and employ the time-control techniques and grazing pretty nicely. It just feels cool to be at 10% HP and pulling some daredevil graze manouvers to get back to full health, and the game is often generous in that the most aggressive attack is also the biggest opportunity for healing.
It's too bad that they didn't really do anything with the whole gem system. As you kill enemies, they drop gems that you can sell for some rather underwhelming and lame-feeling upgrades or keep for a stat boost. This is a really interesting system that could've been so much more had the shop had anything worht buying and had the stat upgrades actually been higher than the paltry like 1% they give you for having loads of gems. There's even dialogue about how little of an upgrade holding gems gives you. Spoiler alert: At the end, you find out that the gems actually give the boss power, but according to the internet, nothing changes if you hold onto all gems and the boss is just exactly the same regardless of how you spend them. Why even bother implementing the system at all at that point?
Kinda sounds like I hated the game since I'm writing it fresh from beating it and the final boss was frustrating, but I did have some good times with it and the game is a fine purchase for anyone that has played all of the other big metroidvanias and want more. Especially since the game has the now-too-uncommon strength of being rather short. Two or three evenings and you've got this one done, and that's just a nice diversion in the era of 100-hour games. A short metroidvania romp that has some good parts and some bad parts and amounts to an overall enjoyable few evenings of play. Had it been longer, I probably would've liked it less. This has left me even more curious about this team's Lodoss War game and now I can't wait to check that out...even though it'll probably take me like a year to do so.
The map and metroidvania structure is also a bit disappointing, since there really isn't anything cool to find either visually or mechanically. All you find are Metroid-style MP/HP/Time upgrades and the damage upgrade only lets you throw more daggers while time is still, not while time is running, which just feels like a let-down. The game is also light on backtracking, making it quite short for the genre, and losing one of my favorite aspects of it; running back and forth to explore so many different areas that you start to memorize the map and feel at home in certain areas. This game is much more linear than other games in the genre and the only real backtracking happens at the end when you go secret-hunting to prepare for the final boss.
Speaking of, the bosses are actually mostly great. They're challenging but not maddening and employ the time-control techniques and grazing pretty nicely. It just feels cool to be at 10% HP and pulling some daredevil graze manouvers to get back to full health, and the game is often generous in that the most aggressive attack is also the biggest opportunity for healing.
It's too bad that they didn't really do anything with the whole gem system. As you kill enemies, they drop gems that you can sell for some rather underwhelming and lame-feeling upgrades or keep for a stat boost. This is a really interesting system that could've been so much more had the shop had anything worht buying and had the stat upgrades actually been higher than the paltry like 1% they give you for having loads of gems. There's even dialogue about how little of an upgrade holding gems gives you. Spoiler alert: At the end, you find out that the gems actually give the boss power, but according to the internet, nothing changes if you hold onto all gems and the boss is just exactly the same regardless of how you spend them. Why even bother implementing the system at all at that point?
Kinda sounds like I hated the game since I'm writing it fresh from beating it and the final boss was frustrating, but I did have some good times with it and the game is a fine purchase for anyone that has played all of the other big metroidvanias and want more. Especially since the game has the now-too-uncommon strength of being rather short. Two or three evenings and you've got this one done, and that's just a nice diversion in the era of 100-hour games. A short metroidvania romp that has some good parts and some bad parts and amounts to an overall enjoyable few evenings of play. Had it been longer, I probably would've liked it less. This has left me even more curious about this team's Lodoss War game and now I can't wait to check that out...even though it'll probably take me like a year to do so.