Interesting/fun take on roguelike deckbuilders, with deckbuilding actually being relegated to skills that you start with and can acquire through party member acquisition (defeat your enemies to gain them) or sacrificing said members (for items, skills, or other benefits).

I've only played a few hours with it so far and although it's not perfect, it's also still in Early Access and the dev team is dropping updates on it all the time.

If nothing else, the soundtrack jams hard. Will potentially revise rating and review later based on more time spent with the game.

Not sure how to feel about this. I died a bunch and that doesn't necessarily make the game a bad one, but the movement is a mixed bag because the jump feels awful, swinging your weapon feels awful, combat in general feels awful.

...and yet the dodge roll feels absolutely magnificent and covers so much ground and requires no stamina, so it's MOSTLY a better way to cover ground than actually walking or jumping.

The game is a lot of dying, learning where shortcuts back to your current checkpoint are, opening them up, and then moving forward again (at least for what I've played) and the enemies sound, and music are just so uninspiring that I don't feel motivated to chase it further to see if it gets better.

Maybe another time. But that dodge roll does feel wonderful.

It's not a terrible game, but there are some unpleasant components to it.

What's good?

-- Once you acquire the power-ups, there are two different gun modifications that feel really smooth.

-- I think that's it.

What's average?

-- Level design is somewhere between okay and bad depending on where you are. Save points are located in precarious places in relation to teleporters, so for most of the game, expect to do some awkward backtracking sometimes (especially the forest, which is annoying to slog through when you're trying to figure out what you're missing next).

-- Basic enemies. They're fine, they have enough behaviors and variety for a short game that they don't wear out their welcome in parts.

-- Exploration. It's a Metroidvania, so it's what you're here for (along with bosses), and this game has a decent number of power-ups waiting around corners or past bosses for you to enjoy and use to overcome gating.

What's bad?

-- Boss design isn't great. One boss you'll end up fighting three times and with only marginal differences between each iteration, and then four other bosses that vary between pushovers and annoying because of certain power-ups you won't have yet. Regardless, none of them are challenging.

-- The climbing power-up. This is a two-fold issue, because being able to basically go almost anywhere is nice, but the real problem is that the areas designed specifically around using it are designed poorly to be an exercise in frustration. Moreover, if you touch a wall, you cling immediately and if you jump off, even if you have double-jump, your jump off isn't long or high, so you essentially lose about half-a-jump of distance. The sticking to walls when you don't want to is especially annoying.

-- Cryptic information regarding keys. This is an optional part of the game, but there are some keys you can try and find to get access to a walled off area. The clues for these are bad. One suggests that the area you're in changes, but it turns out the clue is to tell you that you just need to walk in and out of the room several times for the key to appear. Another says it's near a save point, but the phrasing of the clue made me think it was in one of a couple save points that were in a completely different location.

-- Indestructible enemies. Hazards like the electro ball, I get. Bonefish and the tank? Why? They behave just like other stuff, why can't you kill them?

-- The interface in general. It's hard to really tell how you're doing with picking up power-ups and the pause menu has a decent map, but there's no markers on it, so you better remember everywhere you've been (and you WILL wander).

-- The gusting wind bits where you have to ride wind up in order to reach certain areas. These things were very finicky and resulted in me crashing back into hazards a lot.

Bottom line:

The game is already available on the cheap and it's an okay Metroidvania, so if you don't want to pull the trigger on it at full price, wait for a sale. You might get about 3-4 hours out of it if you take your time and wander around as much as I did.

The SaGa games have always felt kind of unintuitive when it comes to welcoming a player to their games -- it's almost like players are expected to just jump in and know exactly how so many niche aspects of the game work.

My first experience with this game was finding it on sale for 20 bucks not long after it came out. I had read reviews on it that gave it really low ratings and complained about it being a mess. I believe this was only the second SaGa game I had played at that point (SaGa Frontier being the first) and I figured, why not?

I read the instructions to try and make sure I had a good grasp on what was going on and then took it for a spin...and got smashed in short order. The board game-like feel didn't really help matters and the visuals were unimpressive at best. I didn't spend much time with it before kicking it to the curb.

In the last few years, I went back and gave the game another go...and made it only slightly further than I did the time before with no real interest in pursuing the game beyond my progression to that point. There's just so much better out there and so much that's not worthwhile about this game. Hard pass.

Short answer: It's not a bad game but is only very loosely a Metroidvania, unlike what you might see it tagged as if you're looking on Steam. Lots of samey areas, ability trees that feel like fluff, bosses that aren't difficult, and some occasional glitches keep it from being better than it is.

Longer answer: The game is a bit of a mess, but mostly in a good way.

Every location (other than hidden rooms) are made up of four uplink terminals and progression can largely be done by picking a direction you want to go in and rolling with it. When you find terminals in a location and use them, you're basically saving your data, making a backup point if you die, and also unlocking more potential paths and fast travel points in case you want to come back to the location you just completed to try a different route. Essentially, you spend a bit more time in each "room" so that you can fast travel back later instead of having to walk back.

The leveling system is a little obtuse, in that you get the experience to level by destroying enemies, but you don't level until you use an uplink location (whether you've liberated it or are just coming back to it). Leveling up gives you four stats to choose between, but they're not particularly intuitive as to their benefits. The damage bonuses I got while focusing on Strength for my melee weapon were negligible (there's no numbers, so you're just eyeballing lifebars as they go down).

In addition, you get a skill point to throw in one of four fields (two of which are for weapons that you have to spend a skill point just to unlock a blueprint to build those weapons -- and one of those weapons is mandatory if you intend to beat the game, I believe). Most of the abilities in a field are concentrated to a weapon, but occasionally there are skills that give you increased armor or something of the like.

The fourth skill field is the fun one, in that you get access to infinite oxygen and zero fall damage if you invest enough points in the field. 10000% worth it.

Combat is just wailing away with your melee weapon or one of your one-to-three guns (if you've crafted them) until the enemy stops coming at you. There's little in the way of strategy with enemies other than the tried and true "don't get hit" approach.

Bosses are a mixed bag -- the ideas are interesting sometimes, but as far as bosses go, they're largely pushovers. I know this is a short paragraph, but they're that underwhelming.

I've encountered some glitches with dying because a spike wheel lifted me into a corner and just continuously damaged me until I died, or jumping off ledges causing my second jump in my double jump ability to just not go off while I take a plunge into a pit far below. It's frustrating, but since it's so easy to respawn and head right back to where you were within a minute or two, it's not the biggest deal. I've also had issues with sometimes getting new pieces of equipment, trying to put them on, and having the game exit the inventory menu. Again, not a big deal, but still annoying.

Music is alright, if not extremely repetitive after a time. At least for all its repetition, it isn't unpleasant repetition.

Order of progression is the weirdest thing, in that you can miss entire abilities granted to you by the game simply by going in a different direction than what the game might have expected, even if that expectation wasn't signposted in any way. I got the freeze ability for my third gun only after I had already done about half of the entire world map and decided to go back and check out some earlier areas -- not because I was stuck, but because I just wanted to be a completionist.

All-in-all, it's an alright game. Serviceable and passes the time, but not really the fix you're going to want if you're craving a Metroidvania. Steam price is 18 bucks, I think. I'd recommend waiting for a sale of 12 or less, if only because of the lack of variety and polish. I completed the game with 12.5 hours to my name and I imagine anyone who wants to just run around and not fill stuff out can LEISURELY get most of the rooms explored (even if you skip half the uplinks) within 6 hours.

This would probably be an interesting game to speedrun, if nothing else.

Some of the power-up ideas in this game are brilliant and the Ikaruga-esque combat style of element-swapping to absorb damage and gain back MP is fun and makes for some excellent boss designs.

The arrow puzzles are a little off-putting, though -- not because they're particularly bad (other than one section late in the game that's mandatory), but because they kinda detract from the action-centric feel of the game. I appreciate trying to find a way to incorporate Deedlit's archery skills, but maybe have the bows do more with their arrows based on the bow type (a few bows fire more arrows or use homing arrows as examples). Players should be encouraged to use the bow, but aside from the mandatory puzzles or optional ones, there's no real need to use the bow.

The game's a little on the short side and enemies are a mixed bag, ranging from complete pushovers to absolutely obnoxious depending on their placement in rooms (looking at you, Mummy Masters alongside those flying gargoyles with both of you immune to opposite elements). For the most part though, enemies are just a very poor-paying XP obstacle on your way to bosses.

I won't speak on the boss design, other than to say that the difficulty range is all over the place, but I still approve of them for the most part. There's some really fun ideas at play in there and I would liked to have seen a bit more gameplay length to maybe offer a few more creative boss ideas on top of what was already there. Some moves are shared between bosses, but that didn't really bother me.

Overall, the game is fun but very short -- I clocked about 7.5 hours with nearly all rooms explored. Definitely worth checking out at least once but if Metroidvanias aren't your thing, consider waiting for a sale -- it's a solid one, but it's not a must-buy for your average gamer who just wants to check out a random given game.