This is a $60 game in a $30 container. It's refreshing to play a game with such obvious Dreamcast and PS2 design philosophy in 2023. It's just fun to play, plain and simple. Not to mention the influence Edgar Wright's work on Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver had here; the needle drops, and their integration are sublime. The art direction is incredibly vibrant, and so lively that I'm almost overstimulated looking virtually anywhere.
There are consistently seamless transitions from cell-shaded gameplay to 2D cutscenes, and the staunch commitment to 60+fps it makes the whole experience fluid; the game is polished out the ass. There's a lot of depth to the combat if you're willing to play ball, although it would have been nice to have timings other than 4/4. It's more restrictive than Devil May Cry by nature of being rhythm based but there is a huge array of ways to play and a high skill ceiling if you don't want to just parry on beat or spam partner abilities. The color-coded enemies are annoying and there's no manual lock-on, but those are my only real complaints here combat-wise.
I have a few grievances but overall am super satisfied. The game is over-tutorialized to hell, I assume to really settle those unfamiliar with character action games, and there's no way to skip them even after completing the game. Combat encounters are spread a little too far out on some levels, with the platforming being total ass (the jump is like a 95% vertical hop), making navigating feel artificially difficult at times.
Technically though? It's flawless outside of not having an in-game calibrator for more input lag-ridden TVs. A seriously crazy game to shadow drop, and looking at the talent behind it, this was never going to be bad. I'm hoping the success here inspires some more innovation in the genre down the line, because this is an achievement of genre mash that surprisingly hasn't really been done in this way to this degree before.
There are consistently seamless transitions from cell-shaded gameplay to 2D cutscenes, and the staunch commitment to 60+fps it makes the whole experience fluid; the game is polished out the ass. There's a lot of depth to the combat if you're willing to play ball, although it would have been nice to have timings other than 4/4. It's more restrictive than Devil May Cry by nature of being rhythm based but there is a huge array of ways to play and a high skill ceiling if you don't want to just parry on beat or spam partner abilities. The color-coded enemies are annoying and there's no manual lock-on, but those are my only real complaints here combat-wise.
I have a few grievances but overall am super satisfied. The game is over-tutorialized to hell, I assume to really settle those unfamiliar with character action games, and there's no way to skip them even after completing the game. Combat encounters are spread a little too far out on some levels, with the platforming being total ass (the jump is like a 95% vertical hop), making navigating feel artificially difficult at times.
Technically though? It's flawless outside of not having an in-game calibrator for more input lag-ridden TVs. A seriously crazy game to shadow drop, and looking at the talent behind it, this was never going to be bad. I'm hoping the success here inspires some more innovation in the genre down the line, because this is an achievement of genre mash that surprisingly hasn't really been done in this way to this degree before.