This game's neat!
It's concise and polished: a nice, bite-sized treat. The aesthetic is great, with gorgeously animated pixel art that gives life to this moody, brooding city. The ambiance is dark and foreboding, and quite memorable.
Gameplay-wise, it has a really tight combat system. There's only one weapon, with weighty, slightly delayed combat animations, that ask you to really get used to the timing. Enemies are quite engaging, and getting to know and play around their attack pattern is a fun challenge. The bosses, especially, have a nice rhythm to them, and the challenge is tailored to be engaging but never frustrating.
Exploration leaves a bit to be desired. While the world is gorgeous and well interconnected, with zones that can be tackled in a non-linear fashion, rewards for exploration are kind of disappointing. There are a few equippable items, with pretty unmemorable effects, and the standard HP/health flask upgrades. There are just a couple of movement powerups that unlock new areas of the map (metroidvania-style), which is few, even for the short runtime of the game (I'd say it lasts about 5 to 6 hours). One of those movement upgrades (arguably the main one) is tied to an equippable item that takes up one of your three slots, when it could have easily been bound to one of the at least four unused buttons on the controller. It's a nitpick, yeah, but it's a pet peeve of mine.
The map is quite small, and with very few side-objectives, you'll explore like 90% of it just by beelining the main quest.
Still, this is a nice little package, very recommended for somebody who wants to dip their toes in the metroidvania genre without committing to a huge game. It definitely goes for quality over quantity, which I can definitely respect.
It's concise and polished: a nice, bite-sized treat. The aesthetic is great, with gorgeously animated pixel art that gives life to this moody, brooding city. The ambiance is dark and foreboding, and quite memorable.
Gameplay-wise, it has a really tight combat system. There's only one weapon, with weighty, slightly delayed combat animations, that ask you to really get used to the timing. Enemies are quite engaging, and getting to know and play around their attack pattern is a fun challenge. The bosses, especially, have a nice rhythm to them, and the challenge is tailored to be engaging but never frustrating.
Exploration leaves a bit to be desired. While the world is gorgeous and well interconnected, with zones that can be tackled in a non-linear fashion, rewards for exploration are kind of disappointing. There are a few equippable items, with pretty unmemorable effects, and the standard HP/health flask upgrades. There are just a couple of movement powerups that unlock new areas of the map (metroidvania-style), which is few, even for the short runtime of the game (I'd say it lasts about 5 to 6 hours). One of those movement upgrades (arguably the main one) is tied to an equippable item that takes up one of your three slots, when it could have easily been bound to one of the at least four unused buttons on the controller. It's a nitpick, yeah, but it's a pet peeve of mine.
The map is quite small, and with very few side-objectives, you'll explore like 90% of it just by beelining the main quest.
Still, this is a nice little package, very recommended for somebody who wants to dip their toes in the metroidvania genre without committing to a huge game. It definitely goes for quality over quantity, which I can definitely respect.