If you like Castlevania games, this will probably be a great time. It grew on me as I continued playing it, and while I don't see myself playing through again, I had a good time with it. Even as someone who does not play Castlevania games in general.

There were certain aspects of the game that just weren't for me. They aren't necessarily bad, just... not for me.

1. The massive clutter of inventory items. Man I did not expect to be spending so much time in my inventory. It's nice that there's a variety of weapons (though honestly I only ever really used the whips), but to me having all these armor types and pieces just meant a lot of pickups I didn't care about. Equip when numbers higher. There are definitely trade offs more significant than that, but it wasn't stuff I really wanted to bother with (and I didn't really have to, since it's not awfully hard.

2. The massive clutter of crafting systems. My god did I not imagine that a metroidvania needed the tedium of crafting random bits and pieces. There's a food crafting system that feels bizarrely out of place while at the same time completely useless and practically mandatory. Eating a new food for the first time raises your stats permanently, which means if you don't bother making food, you're missing out on potentially huge stat benefits. At the same time, it was literally just a chore I was doing every once in a while, since there's never a reason not to, but I also wasn't going to bother grinding materials because, again, the game isn't that hard.

3. Just how opaque some of the progression pieces are. Again, not bad, really, just definitely not for me. I looked up two major progression pieces and cheesed one before looking up how you're actually intended to do it. Remember that notable property of a single random room from 8 hours of gameplay ago? I certainly didn't.


On the other hand, like I said before, I overall enjoyed the game. I didn't experiment with all it has to offer, but the magical abilities have an overwhelming variety. Maybe a little overboard, since it was hard for me to justify experimenting much when I had a setup that worked for me and I wasn't about to optimize my setup or anything when the game isn't too hard.

The movement is fun, even if a lot of it isn't explained much - backdashing can be cancelled by crouch, so you can speedily bounce backwards through spaces with backdash cancels (but that's never explained); you can do a dive kick eventually (but that's never explained); and you can cancel an attack's endlag with a backdash (which I think is a loading screen tip). Landing with many weapons also cancels all endlag, meaning you can do tiny hops for all your attacks to massively increase your damage and maneuverability. These are all super fun, some of the most fun aspects of the game for me.

Because the movement is fairly fun, the combat is entertaining too. It's nothing I would call groundbreaking, but it executes on its style quite well. There isn't a huge amount of enemy variety, but I'd say there's enough, and while not all of the bosses were super interesting, there were a handful that were really unusual and unexpected in a really good way.

Overall, I would recommend this to fans of the genre. It's not going to win over a lot of new people who aren't convinced by castlevania-like games or metroidvanias in general, but it's worth playing if those games are something you're already fond of.

If you like Castlevania games, this will probably be a great time. It grew on me as I continued playing it, and while I don't see myself playing through again, I had a good time with it. Even as someone who does not play Castlevania games in general. There were certain aspects of the game that just weren't for me. They aren't necessarily bad, just... not for me. 1. The massive clutter of inventory items. Man I did not expect to be spending so much time in my inventory. It's nice that there's a variety of weapons (though honestly I only ever really used the whips), but to me having all these armor types and pieces just meant a lot of pickups I didn't care about. Equip when numbers higher. There are definitely trade offs more significant than that, but it wasn't stuff I really wanted to bother with (and I didn't really have to, since it's not awfully hard. 2. The massive clutter of crafting systems. My god did I not imagine that a metroidvania needed the tedium of crafting random bits and pieces. There's a food crafting system that feels bizarrely out of place while at the same time completely useless and practically mandatory. Eating a new food for the first time raises your stats permanently, which means if you don't bother making food, you're missing out on potentially huge stat benefits. At the same time, it was literally just a chore I was doing every once in a while, since there's never a reason not to, but I also wasn't going to bother grinding materials because, again, the game isn't that hard. 3. Just how opaque some of the progression pieces are. Again, not bad, really, just definitely not for me. I looked up two major progression pieces and cheesed one before looking up how you're actually intended to do it. Remember that notable property of a single random room from 8 hours of gameplay ago? I certainly didn't. On the other hand, like I said before, I overall enjoyed the game. I didn't experiment with all it has to offer, but the magical abilities have an overwhelming variety. Maybe a little overboard, since it was hard for me to justify experimenting much when I had a setup that worked for me and I wasn't about to optimize my setup or anything when the game isn't too hard. The movement is fun, even if a lot of it isn't explained much - backdashing can be cancelled by crouch, so you can speedily bounce backwards through spaces with backdash cancels (but that's never explained); you can do a dive kick eventually (but that's never explained); and you can cancel an attack's endlag with a backdash (which I think is a loading screen tip). Landing with many weapons also cancels all endlag, meaning you can do tiny hops for all your attacks to massively increase your damage and maneuverability. These are all super fun, some of the most fun aspects of the game for me. Because the movement is fairly fun, the combat is entertaining too. It's nothing I would call groundbreaking, but it executes on its style quite well. There isn't a huge amount of enemy variety, but I'd say there's enough, and while not all of the bosses were super interesting, there were a handful that were really unusual and unexpected in a really good way. Overall, I would recommend this to fans of the genre. It's not going to win over a lot of new people who aren't convinced by castlevania-like games or metroidvanias in general, but it's worth playing if those games are something you're already fond of.