Recent reviews by tryptech

Unfortunately not for me. I would leave a neutral review if I could, but I'm not exactly positive on the game, so negative it is.

Backed this game on Kickstarter. Music is good, art is good.

I hate the side swapping thing. Makes reading the chart annoying.
I went an 36 minutes before I meaningfully got to any rhythm game because the game started me out in the story by default.
I spent an hour before quitting out and I realized that there was a separate arcade mode.
I couldn't change controls or change annoying post-processing effects and other accessibility options until I quit to the title screen.
For some reason my strikeline and my beat bars are black so they might as well be non-existent.
I'm dumb. But there are enough things that nag me about this game that feel fundamentally unchanged from the demo years ago, that I don't feel incentivized to get used to how the gameplay is presented and play everything.

Art is the best thing about the game. Music gets repetitive fast. Lack of polish in the UI/UX. Card economy feels poorly balanced. Rough at the moment with most changes to the roguelike deckbuilder formula being there just to be different. For $4 it's fine, but the gameplay loop doesn't do enough to differentiate over Slay the Spire.

11/25 Update: Dodge rates "adjusted". Still a useless ability. Okayu is a very flawed character. Fuwamoco is busted. There is a fundamental lack of care to making this a fully fleshed-out well-balanced deck builder. If you have any experience with the genre, avoid this.

Go check the dev's other games. Actual slop. I'm sorry for whatever artists worked on this.

12/9 Update: An attempt was made to make Okayu better, more starting energy, and damage "scaling". Unfortunately scaling is very slow and will not keep up on later levels, and all damage mitigation for her is still functionally a coin toss. Still not recommended.

Definitively NOT a Metroidvania

Man I Love Kronii

As of v1.0.1, the game is tolerable. At the very least I can say I finished it 100%. In context of other platformers, this game is very barebones. Enemy design is basic. Level design is one-note. The few platforming gimmicks that are there are obnoxious and highlights the lack of telegraphing/communication on anything. This extends to the bosses and extra "Challenge" levels as well. You just memorize what to do and where similar to classic NES platformers in order to clear a stage.

I particularly dislike the water wheel, there's just enough jank in how it moves to make it annoying to use. The Bloops that come out of the water at such a low angle without any sort of telegraphing make
any water areas also extremely annoying.

My frustrations from v1.0 still existed, they've just been toned down enough to not make me want to uninstall the game. Unfortunately, given the target audience of Hololive fans and how diverse that fanbase is, this game is probably still too difficult to be accessible to a good chunk of the target demographic.

Ultimately a simple, boring, uninspired game. If you want to kill 2 hours there's worse ways to do it, but if you like more polish in your platformers, you can skip this.

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That this is your first game shows. Whether intentional or not, you have to treat the jumps like they're kaizo. Platforms disappear when you touch them, not when you land on them. Jumps that ask you to be at the edge of platform to make jump. You don't even have to leave the high ledge to beat the first Ankimo. Maybe if you like kaizos there's some enjoyment here, otherwise it plays like and is tuned like an old NES platformer. If that style of difficulty isn't your cup of tea, you can stop before finishing level 1.

it's okay

Push button to music. Very good.

It's F2P, so it'll satisfy the 10 year old with no Switch. But it ain't no Smash. It's as good as Brawlhalla at best and that game isn't fun.

Edit October 6th: Game is dead; majority of the dev team got laid off. Don't bother.

Edit July 18th: Three characters to start now, 1100 in-game cash to start, good change. Not the best, but it's something. Game still is fundamentally flawed so don't bother unless you want to attempt to be on top of the meta for notSmash and fail against former Smash players.

This game frustrates me, an excessive amount. I played closed alpha, thought it was promising but super janky. Played til the start of closed beta, still felt there were so many mechanical issues I have with this game where I would feel at home with on SSBM or SSBPM so I stopped.

Artstyle is that same bland, generic, Overwatch-y look that's so pervasive nowadays. Sound effects used to be garbage, are now somewhat better, but still just BLARE over everything else. Music gets boring real fast. Animations don't transition well, a lot of choppiness in play. Hitboxes are weird for a number of moves, but fundamentally won't get addressed. None of these assets have any emotional connotation from being in other classic games so no free pass there. A number of things have changed from when I last played in the closed beta leading up to Early Access, but none of it has fundamentally changed how this game looks, sounds, and feels to me. The best I can say is the 2D splash art is good, but that's visually the best thing in the current package.

I mained Ashani in my time before EA. She generally did very well during playtests. Patches nerfed Ashani, understandable, but fundamentally the Melee transition characters Kidd (Fox) and Zhurong (Marth) can play so very similarly to their 17-year-old metas yet Ashani (Falcon) kit is so fundamentally different that she can't be considered a transitionary character at all and doesn't have the same toolkit to deal with those strategies. It gets very aggrivating after a while. If you want a comparison, Ashani is to EA Icons, what Chain Blades are to post-alpha Dauntless. Falcon mains, avoid like the plague.

To sum up my thoughts on the other characters:
Why would you give Marth a projectile?
Why are we still basically carbon-copying Fox/Falco?
PM Ganon with Dedede recovery, and a counter
Anime Gunslinger doesn't feel very anime
Duos play like Mario/Kirby that changes between killing off side or off top
The new busted character of the month is busted

and everyone for some reason can recover from a decent ways away, except Ashani.

If playing Melee or PM is like running a marathon, Icons is like running the same marathon, with weights, through the mud, and your shoes get stuck every 2-3 steps. Game just doesn't feel smooth. Everything feels forced, like I have to fight the controller to do what I want. There's a supposed "buffer" on both online and offline play to keep them feeling the same, but it honestly feels like hot trash. Every other fighting game feels fine to me online, Melee and PM feel fine with 0 buffer, and I'd even prefer Dolphin Netplay to the buffer here.

EA Monitization plans are currently a nightmare. Neither the subreddit and the AMA on r/smashbros don't inspire any confidence that a "reasonable" amount of time grinding could unlock all characters. If you don't like playing not-Falcon and not-PM-Ganon, I hope your luck is good, or you got some cash to burn, otherwise you're in for a ride.

I can provide details on my time in the alpha/beta and the bit that I've played in Early Access, but I would honestly tell you to play any of the other smash-likes (or platform fighters, whatever you want to call them). Of the free ones, SSF2 is your best bet. Of the paid ones, Rivals and Slap City have that high-paced combat from Melee and PM done pretty well. Plus, Slap City doesn't have this "streaming esports" stick up its ass, so it has a bit of fun, but keeps the tech in Melee and PM, makes them significantly easier on inputs, and provides a smoother gamefeel than Icons.

If you still want to play this game, at least the netcode is decent. I would love to see this game get significantly better, but I wouldn't keep hopes up.

Perfect? No. Fun? Yes.