Recent reviews by Mr_Android

The theme, art, and vibe of the game are great. All the sketchy hand drawn animations of all the enemies and their general design look great, the little manga-esque cutscenes are cool, and the dark sci-fi story with it's spiritual undertones are well done. The zones feel unique and the map makes okay use of the metroidvania powers you gain to explore them.

The gameplay mechanics are all clearly borrowed from other games (not a bad thing!), very souls inspired, with Health Restore charges refreshed at rest points, XP/Money dropped on death and having to retrieve it. The parrying felt very similar to Sekiro with Air Parries being the game's Mikiro Counter equivalent. The Jades system is a straight copy of Hollowknight charms, and air parry as a combat tool and exploration mechanic are straight from Rogue Legacy.

The exploration/puzzle solving is pretty weak, it's very hard to get lost, and there's exactly 2 secrets to solve in the game. I also found the platforming to be really basic, there's a couple platforming sections but they are no harder than like a modern mario game.

The combat is the thing they put the most attention into, but personally it felt bad more times than it felt good. There's so many frustrating decisions about it, It just doesn't feel polished. The fact you have to face the direction you parry, and the way dashing through enemies works is just really frustrating. If you don't clear the enemy when dashing through it you'll push their sprite in front of you, so if you are trying to dash through to block left, but don't clear then you open your back to the enemy. This is all made worse because there's no iframes and if you get hit without parrying you get knocked down, which stops you from parrying unless you dash to get up, so you just get wombo combo'd if you parry late, or get hit in the back. The final fight of the game was the best designed, and made good use of the abilities, but struggled with the same problems as all the other fights. I kept getting hit in ways that felt "unfair", like being sucked into attacks even after I cleared them with a dodge, or them sliding under my air parry but still hitting me somehow.

I want to like this game more, because the devs clearly put so much effort into it, but I think the combat being as frustrating as it was leaves it at a 7.5 out of 10 for me. I recommend it for anyone looking for a metroidvania with a fresh theme and style, many familiar gameplay mechanics, and doesn't mind wrestling with an annoying combat experience.

I want to recommend this game, because I can feel all the love and effort that went into it. But at it's current price it's hard for me to recommend a 3 hour experience for 25 dollars, and with no post-game run modifiers there's no replay value outside of achievement hunting which just isn't my bag.

If you are a Yacht Club Games super fan and are looking for a very short, very linear, action platformer rogue-lite in the style of Shovel Knight then this is the game for you. If you're looking for something to sink your teeth into, this isn't going to be it.

A Skyrim clone that starts strong with the unique idea of being a written person with a written background and on a written path, but ultimately falls to tedium because the world and it's rules are boring and uninteresting. The main quest keeps deviating away from things I was interested in doing, and unlike Skyrim I can't just go do a story arc I find more interesting somewhere else in the world.