this game is surprisingly really good and only getting better as updates roll out.

that being said, this game seems to be purely based on rng and positioning. it pulls it off well, but it really sucks when your run is just awful cuz you never get the item you wanted for an evolution early on, and your entire run is based on how good your first 10 minutes are.

surprisingly, most of the items in this game are usable in a build. santa water can be a lategame keepout powerhouse in conjunction with other keepout items. again though, santa water will not help you out nearly as much if its your first evolved item at 10 minutes.

this game takes the fundamentals of roguelites, strips them down, and makes it work excellently where other roguelites fail to captivate because of how painful other roguelites are when you lose. this game is fast, simple, easy to get into, addictive, and runs aren't nearly as long and tedious as other roguelites.

very spooky wind noises.

this game is just monotonous and not very polished in all honesty. the textures look good, sure, but that's only because they have like 20 different preset objects that they placed into vaguely different layouts. the character models are fucking awful as well.

the map progressions are always just all over the place because items are placed randomly. you can start cornered in a very small hallway and spend like 10 minutes trying to find a small ass key thats in a random spot, while the lunch lady walks around in the same spot for the whole duration because youre stuck there.

speaking of the lunch lady, what a joke. this game is contending for worse jumpscares than fnaf, it's literal trash in terms of horror. the atmosphere of the game is purely made off of wind sounds no matter where you are in the building, little to no light effects, and the lunch lady grumbling with red light being emitted from in front of her. its just not scary, its annoying.

also, its just really jank gameplay wise. the lunch lady cant see me when im crouching behind a teachers desk with my head poking out, fully able to see her, but for my friends that strategy doesnt even work. if you hide under a pipe in one of the misc rooms, she can see you and she'll try to throw a cleaver at you, but the cleaver just doesnt do anything then she walks away. its laughable, and adds to how inconsistent and annoying the game is to actually play.

whatever, its obviously just a quickly and cheaply made game because few co-op horror games really exist nowadays, least ones that are "pure" horror and not fps games or whatever. i havent played devour, but that game is definitely worth your money more than this game from the seems of it.

fun little game with solid gimmicks. everything is pretty simplistic but it works fine, just wish there was something more here. perhaps more levels, better visuals, or just more mechanics in general. ultimately its a good bit of fun but nothing particularly special necessarily, just a good time.

though, the netcode is not ideal and if you want to play this on controller, be warned that the input is kinda screwed up. it's either input lag or the fact that theres no movement speed scaling based on where your stick is and so theres an arbitrary point at which it starts moving your character. might be better with dpad but my thumbs are trash.

this is a masterclass in metroidvanias. however, metroidvanias are still marred by exploration being a tedious endeavor when things start heading into backtracking territory. the reality is that, though exploring a new environment is really enjoyable (especially in a game so artistically compelling in visuals, presentation, and story), backtracking still sucks when you've gone through the same obstacles multiple times. the most notable example is the goam section in the crossroads, you end up having to go through this area many times and it's just kind of annoying. the game does give you tools to circumvent this, but the stag stations are pretty damn spaced out (for the most part) and the dream nail teleport isnt unlocked till around the 3/4 point of the game for most, id imagine.

aside from that, this game is excellent. i find it really cool how you really can play this game in many different ways depending on the charms that you choose and still be pretty effective. theres also just so much content here and so many little things to appreciate that build the world.

theres a real sense of progression as you go through the early stages of the game, and this mechanical progression is then followed by narrative progression. it works really well, and every area in the game feels like it has legitimate purpose to be there, both for the game and for the story.

great game. probably the best metroidvania game ever made.

aesthetic is wonderful, the ideas are good, the combat has direction, but it just falls apart in execution.

the gun variety exists but is incredibly shallow. it's pointless to take any gun that isn't the precision revolver that gives you crits for perfect aim, if you take two of those you basically win every run (i did three runs after buying the game on steam and i beat every single one and completed the game in about 5 hours). abilities are pretty useless as well in all honesty, some of em are pretty good but really if youre just shooting everything dead quick enough it doesnt matter.

the game is slow. it would work if the combat felt slow in a good way, but it feels pretty artificial because of how reloading is slow, movement speed is slow, taking cover is sluggish, etc. it really doesn't work great later on when enemies also hide behind cover and you have to figure out a good way to hit them, or just wait for them to peak out after like 10 seconds. not to mention the rare overbearing enemy type, like the spawners in the churchyard and the rock guys that are a pain in the ass to deal with in addition to being buggy as fuck.

the controls arent great either. everything feels sluggish from the menus to the dialogue button to the rolls and dealing with cover. its so strange.

the aesthetic really is the saving grace here, but that novelty doesnt really last and you're left with a really middling experience that needed a couple more months in development to really have something special.

i have to say, this game is incredibly satisfying when it comes to the visceral feedback you get from headshots with the pistol, or eviscerating enemies with the shotgun. the uzi is pretty useless though.

in addition, its a really interesting exercise in how the brain can interpret information and read it even in this context where everything is so visually loud and bright.

regardless, it really is a headache to play. i appreciate how short the game is (i ended up finishing it in an hour) because its kinda painful to look at after a while. i understand that this may be a positive for some and that it is the point of the game in some respects, but in general i dont think most people would appreciate how aggressive this game's aesthetic is past the first ten minutes.

its fine. difficulty is about right for a game like this. satisfying to play for short periods, but gets grating over time.

i wish this was longer. really great in every way other than the variety of actually effective moves (dodges into spin hook kick destroys everything in the game except yang). the camera can be a pain in the ass sometimes too.

aside from that, the combat is refreshing and responsive, the visuals are unique, compelling and great in every level (personal favorite being the museum, im sure many agree), and thats all the game really needs in all honesty. the vague story works, and so does the music.

just great. play it.

the only points this gets are from the story pieces and some of the environments being pretty neat. aside from that, this is really lame.

they really did choose the worst part of revelations to add to a dlc. not sure why they didnt make this better either, they really couldve just made all the segments like this better by implementing, i dont know, actual gameplay mechanics, but it ends up being unchallenging and boring.

whatever, its a short dlc. youre better off just reading the wiki for what is revealed in it if you really care about the lore and dont care about completionism or whatever.

i genuinely loved this game. i just think that specific skill checks shouldve been a 100% chance to occur after a certain amount of points. for example, getting into the building where you pick between a savoir faire skill check and a physical instrument skill check can straight up soft lock your game if you cant do either, so i had to savescum it to do it. it sucks because a big part of the game is dealing with the failed skillchecks that you get along the way.

aside from that, the pace of the story is a little wonky sometimes, but the first half of the game was genuinely one of the most engaging and wonderful stories ive gone through in any artistic medium. its amazing how much work was put into crafting this world.

lieutenant kitsuragi is a true homie.

Great art style, great music, some of the worst gameplay and level design choices I've ever had the displeasure of playing. Disappointed. Maybe the annoying enemies and stage gimmicks would be okay if the controls weren't so awful. Bear in mind that Pro Skater 2 came out the same year as this, and Pro Skater 1 came out 2 whole years before it as well.

Game is tied to 30fps by the engine no matter where you play it. This usually doesn't bode well for platformer-type games.

If you want to engage with this game, just appreciate the art from a YouTube playthrough and listen to the music or something. It's just not worth playing. Maybe Future is better.

It's really cool that they added in levels from Origins just so you could clearly tell how much better the level design in this game is. It's like a night and day difference between playing an Origins level and a Legends level, and that's not just because they picked some of the most annoying levels from Origins to put into this game. As much as the actual world design in Origins can be really interesting and creative, the world design in Legends is far more alive and the levels actually feel like they fit the gameplay.

The perfect example of this is the boss design in Origins versus the boss design in this game. In Origins, bosses were essentially just trial and error to see what they do, die, then go back and move forward one chunk, rinse and repeat. In Legends, it feels like the bosses actually have telegraphs, which makes the boss levels less annoying to go through and actually enjoyable.

I also really, really like how every "ability" from Origins is unlocked from the start, it opens a lot of opportunity right from the get go instead of having to drag through a bunch of levels without a wallrun mechanic.

The gimmicks in this game are a lot better than Origins. Almost every level has its own interesting spin on the mechanics of the game and it keeps the game fresh through and through, where with Origins levels really got repetitive over time because there was only the Fly levels, turning small, and the Treasure levels for gimmicks and thats pretty much it. The rest is just grinding through these platforming levels that don't really add anything substantial and repeat concepts while trying to get a bunch of lums. I'm glad they made getting the lum trophies a lot more forgiving in this game, though it's offset by the sheer amount of teensies you have to look for. Unsurprisingly, the Origins levels are particularly bad when it comes to the increase in teensies per level.

The one thing is, as some people have mentioned before, it's sort of sad that the only levels you really get punished for dying in are the music levels. It sort of softens the challenge that this game gives you.

Also, if you played on the Wii U like I did as a kid, the levels with the floating frog were pretty rough because you had to use the touch screen on the gamepad to move stuff while running at the same time. I don't know if it's the same on Switch, but definitely do not play this game on the Wii U.

I only got all the Teensies and trophies, i find it pretty abhorrent that in order to 100% this game you have to grind out 1 million lums. Absurd, but as my completionism wanes I can give a pass to it and say "If someone wants to do that, they can I guess."

Good game. Makes Origins obsolete entirely. Actually lived up to how much I enjoyed it when I was younger.

Update:
After playing through 50 or so hours of Elden Ring, this game is still the best "souls-like" I've played yet. I think there's something to be said specifically about interactivity with enemies in video games.

I didn't really realize until I thought about it over a long period but the actual reason why this game works so ridiculously well is because of how interactive each of the enemies are. Instead of simply slamming a big sword down onto or shooting a magic bolt into a boss and they take hit point damage and maybe stagger a little like in Elden Ring, the bosses in this game actually react to your offense and to your defense. Instead of rolling through attacks that, in reality, should've hit you but you are actually in a pocket dimension when you roll I guess, you are forced into either repositioning at the perfect time or to deflect the attack.

The prosthetics and different skills you unlock further the interactibility even more. Using firecrackers disrupts humans for about one swing, giving you a little breathing room, but with bosses like Blazing Bull it genuinely frightens them, opening them up for multiple hits. Lady Butterfly falls down from the air when you throw a shuriken at her. You can literally throw pots of oil at bosses then set them aflame with your flamethrower prosthetic, opening them to more posture damage, but this doesn't really work against spirit bosses, which you need Divine Confetti to actually do damage to (a dynamic that also plays into the lore of the game, implementing storytelling into the gameplay). The Armored Warrior forces you into kicking him off the bridge to kill him because Sekiro's sword cannot pierce through his armor.

These are only a few examples of the immense amount of thought put into this game's dynamics in combat that really give it an edge over quite literally any other game in the genre, and it's the reason why, despite all of the reused enemies, I've decided to give it a perfect rating. I hope to see the day where this sort of design is commonplace in games. It makes the combat in this game feel alive, and makes even the best games in the same genre feel stiff.
:End Update

cannot believe how good this game makes you feel as you get better and better at the combat, which is extremely well designed as well.

but the amount of recycled content here sort of tarnishes the experience in some ways. ashina castle is used 3 times with damaged variations, hirata estate is used twice, the corrupted monk bosses are very similar even with slightly different movesets, headless ape is quite literally just a copy paste of the second phase of guardian ape just with an annoying second monkey. for minibosses, there are 3(4) drunkards, 2 centipedes, 2 bulls, 2 elite ninjas, 3 general-types, 3 shichimen, and 5 headless (2 underwater and 3 on land). just seems like such a lack of variety, and it especially shows when you replay the game 4 times for each ending.

that being said, game is still amazing with regards to everything else.

The thing that really hurt this game was the 4-6 hour long intro before the open world is actually an open world. Aside that and the somewhat slippery controls in comparison to previous installments, this game is just solid across the board. Nothing particularly special, but some good moments sprinkled throughout. Any scene with Connor and Haytham was really good.

I'm unsure if it's the remaster that made the cutscenes and character models inconsistent and sometimes jarring (I never played the original), but a lot of things sort of don't look right. Though I understand this is still a time where the game engine tech wasn't nearly as good as it is now.

I did all the side content aside from the "complete this list of stuff you have to do" type content (Full Sync, hunting challenges, etc.) and a lot of it was actually a good addition to the game. A lot of improvements to make the ideas from previous games more fluid and less tedious (for example, assassination contracts for nameless targets are now given in bulk so you can just run around Boston stabbing all the targets and running away without cutscenes or anything.)

Solid. I can understand why people may get tired of Ubisoft pulling the same game over and over again pretty much, but they're never necessarily bad, just derivative, and while that may be a problem, it doesn't necessarily detract from the fact these games are passable anyways.

Ending was trash though. Probably the worst in the series so far. It's a worse cliffhanger than the first game even.

A lot of cool ideas in this DLC, but the main pitfall is that the combat is so heavily emphasized in it that you sort of get sick of it completely by the end of it, even though it is fairly short. Pretty much no side content, none worth doing anyway.

The issue with the combat specifically is that you don't just have to fight a group in front of you if you get into combat, for some reason every bluecoat within a 50m radius suddenly knows that you're there and you're stuck fighting for around 3 minutes, and the enemies are the same enemies always, not even changed from the base game.

The powers you get help, but because they are reliant on your health it really depends on the risk vs. reward of using it to get out of a situation. Usually you'll use them to run, cuz you don't want to do the combat.

The visuals are very interesting here, you really do get the feeling of brutality in the atmosphere and the presentation of locations you've already seen in the base game, and Washington's "construction project" is a fairly entertaining addition to New York.

Story is fine. Decent ending. Decent missions. Good concept. No idea why Jefferson was in this and not the base game, but I digress. I still think the base game is better in that there's a good variety of gameplay and side missions, but this is a decent enough addition to the game anyways.