I couldn't even remember this from when I played through it on the PSX, so what better time than now to give it another go?

...nope, there was never going to be a better time, because the negative impressions I had but couldn't remember came back tenfold this time around.

Encounter rates that make Suikoden IV's sailing segments seem reasonable, unintuitive directions at times for where to go next (often enough that it could get annoying), lack of combat-free travel until right near the end of the game (yes, the airship takes that long to get), and holy crap, the stat growth system is really THAT BAD.

I'm not sure if there was some kind of bugginess going on, but despite working on unarmed skills on Guy (the most generic Guy who ever Guy'ed), he stopped gaining skill points once he hit Weapon Skill Level 11 and the others slowly but surely passed him with a bow and swords. Even at endgame, he was never gaining points no matter how many enemies he'd kill. Weird stuff.

Also, I think it's safe to say that making a QoL change to create a quick autosave each time you enter an empty room in a dungeon is probably indicative of how bad the game design is when the later dungeons have long paths to traverse where you can just die to being ambushed and bad RNG. Mysidia Tower screams "FIX ME" at the top of its lungs, but FF2PR can't hear it over all the stun/stone-inflicting doom it's throwing at people while they're trying to cross a single hallway. I swear that I must have gotten ambushed about 33% of the time in this game, and in the late game areas, that sometimes equates to death or a lot of wasted resources.

So, yeah...unless you bought the collection, maybe consider skipping this game. And if you bought the collection...maybe consider skipping this game.

So, PS4 controller doesn't work with a game on PC that is listed as part of the "PlayStation Talents" program during the opening splash screens. Actual KB/M controls are pretty awful and unmappable, too. Hold RMB to aim with your gun, press LMB to shoot, but use WASD to aim. It's like they tried to replicate the authentic feel of bad controls with...bad controls. Great job, guys. No way I'm finishing this because it's an act of the gods to shoot an enemy in a remotely timely fashion. One star for atmosphere and nothing else.

Original review follows.

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Keeping this in the backlog for now and not giving it an actual rating yet, but I figured it's worth noting for anyone who is considering buying this on Steam -- PS4 controller's L and R triggers do not register with the game, which means you can't aim and fire your weapon without putting some extra work into reconfiguring stuff.

Will post a real review eventually when I get back to it and manage to actually kill an enemy (and hopefully play further).

I don't really have anything strong to write about this. I played it for a bit awhile back, came back to try it again, and the only conclusion I can come to is that it's an okay Metroidvania with some interesting ideas that has a bit too many issues with controls and bugs in general for me to enjoy it.

It's cheap on Steam, so if you see it on sale and you're hard-up for a Metroidvania to try, give it a shot and maybe you'll get more mileage out of it than I did. It's Trine-meets-Metroidvania, with an emphasis on puzzles and without the charm of Trine.

EDIT -- Guess I'm already done. Went back to play it some more, accidentally started a new game, skipped the tutorial so I could quit back to the main menu, only to find out it didn't take my manual save I made from the previous game and the only autosave now was the one that it created at 0 hours and 0 minutes in the first room of the game. WHAT A GEM!

Original review follows below.

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Oof, this game seems to be a mess. Metroidvania that's VERY light on the exploration and VERY heavy on the bugs (both as monsters and as issues with the game).

Take these impressions with a grain of salt, as I'm only an hour into the game and have just reached the Process Control area (for the record, Global Steam Achievements suggest less than 4% of people even get this far into the game).

Things I've encountered so far:

1) Controls are a VERY mixed bag. Using a DS4 and although the tutorial tells you to keep an eye on contextual prompts for things you can interact with, the control system only displays on-screen prompts properly (or as properly as they can when it assumes you have a 360 controller) during the tutorial. After the tutorial, all interactions will tell you to right-click, left-click, or whatever. A bit lazy, but I won't hold it against them.

2) There's these boxes you can shoot with your gun to get resources. You want these resources. Fun fact: the first time you shoot at one of these boxes (it takes several shots with the basic pistol to break one), the AI warns you to not waste your ammo on the boxes because you need to conserve it for enemies (despite having infinite ammo in your pistol). By the time you find out that you NEED to break some of these boxes, you're already a couple areas into the game and the backtrack doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Speaking of backtracking...

3) If you decide to backtrack, enemies MIGHT show up, but save points don't seem to work anymore in areas you already left. Why? Who knows?

4) When you reach your first elevator, you're in for a treat if you're using a controller because when you walk in, you interact with the elevator...and nothing happens. I thought maybe something was wrong and climbed up on top of the elevator to check out the area up there. After getting partially stuck in a wall a couple times, I jumped back down and noticed that when my character hit the ground in the elevator, she'd duck down slightly and there was a second interactive prompt. YOU HAVE TO CROUCH IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE THE BUTTON TO GO DOWN A FLOOR WHEN YOU'RE IN AN ELEVATOR.

4) Nevermind the text errors in the logs you discover on the way through the ship, the real gem is finding random code notes that will show up if you're running and aiming at the same time. One of them comes and goes too fast for me to read but in most rooms (at least in the Security and Maintenance areas), you can see one pop up a lot that's listed as "pre-camera_trigger" or something to that effect. Always a fun time when you can see flags for code just hanging out in your game.

5) They tell you to keep your light / surrounding lights off to avoid enraging the bugs/monsters/whatever. When a bug is enraged, it'll jump through the air toward you and likely hit you. Fun fact: they'll do this with the lights off and only really care if you're within a certain range of them. This includes LEAPING AT YOU FROM OFF-SCREEN. Definitely had one of those purple jankfests yeet itself through the area into my face while I had all lights off just because it was apparently the life goal of this thing to make out with my character (and apparently have no hitbox briefly so the shotgun wouldn't hurt it).

But yeah, I'm only an hour in, so this game's surely going to get better...right?!

Seemed like an alright game for the most part. I liked the idea of having your head disconnect and having its own behaviors available (such as attacking or vacuuming off other heads so you can take over another body). Not a big fan of the aiming system where you rebound your laser shots in order to hit other enemies, but not a deal-breaker.

The deal-breaker was when I went to go shut off a shield for a satellite, snuck by a red guard and used my shield to slip past a laser on the other side of the guard to get into the control panel for the satellite. Worked fine, got inside and shut the satellite shield down, then came back out to find a minor issue.

I'm still on the other side of the laser, that guard is still alive, and although I can block the laser with my shield, I have to get by the guard or take its head off in a very narrow area. Basically, blocking the laser puts me in close proximity to the guard, who swats me backwards...into the laser. The laser kills you immediately, and you respawn in the room in the same spot you came in from -- next to the laser. Tried vacuuming his head off, got swatted. Tried using the shield and just dashing with my smash attack past him, got swatted. Tried smashing directly into him after shielding, got swatted. Died about a dozen times or so and figured it just wasn't worth the hassle. Technically my fault for trying to be sneaky, but that is quite a bug.