Recent reviews by lopedo

There are two things I look for in platformers. 1: Common sense in design. 2: Good controls.

I can happily report that this game has and excels at both. New mechanics are introduced at a steady pace and never overstay their welcome. The quantity of mechanics is relatively small, but the quality is exceptional. Every inch of this game is well thought out and put together in a way that feels exciting and new, yet cozy and familiar at the same time.

Good controls are snappy, fluid, and engaging. I played this with an Xbox 360 controller and did a few levels on keyboard, and the game plays amazing on both. Walking, jumping, platforming, bouncing on spikes, everything feels as it should. There is no forward momentum so when you stop, you stop. This feels right in this game and is not jarring to me.

In the time shown, I have completed the main levels. I did not collect every collectible, and there is a bit more to do after the main levels are over.

Overall, I feel like I stole it at this price. The game is intelligently designed, fun to play and all around a very solid effort by the folks involved. Highly recommended.

Unfair combat (in single player). Enemies knock you down once and you are stun locked in the animation until death. Not only that, but the enemies have no tell for when they are about to attack. So you end up just rolling around and hitting them... but you can't stunlock them either, not really, so you just pray they die before you do. You can level up to increase your damage... by beating the same level over and over and over and over.... and over....

Grindy, jank mess of a game.

If you've played Hades 1 or 2 and want more Hades, go play Hades 1 or 2.

That's not my biggest complaint. My biggest complaint is that this game is about 2.5 hours long, with NOTHING to do after except grind meta progression and fight the enemies who now have higher HP, deal more damage... and some earthquakes happen in the room. 4 biomes (the first two were in the many playtests and demo), the bosses never change. No real story or dialogue. Just inflated enemy HP values.

And that wouldn't be so bad... if what was offered was more than a clone of a better game... done worse.

Criminally underrated gem of a platformer game here!

The gameplay is simply smooth and very well done. This isn't so much of a precision platformer as it is an action packed one. You start in a town and chat with some locals. Each town is on a different Island, think Worlds from Mario Bros. One local gives you a unique ability that is only used for the levels of that world. Another one tells you the big bad is here and you should probably investigate. Then you have the person that gives you a clue on where a secret could be. And the other is a shop keeper which has items that help you along your way. These items are primarily new moves for your human AND demon form.

In human form, you can can cast some longer range spells. In demon form, you can air juggle enemies while casting spells and feel great doing it. The combat is simple to understand, fun to execute and exciting to see unfold. No complaints.

So what are you doing when you aren't fighting? Well, you have a map. Each map has a number of levels on it, and you select one and head on in. There is a task to find 7 Green Coins per world. What do these do? Well, outside of regular gold (with which you buy skills with at the shop), you can spend these coins for extra health or mana (one mana= one cast). OR.... you can use the coins to *spoiler spoiler spoiler*. Either way, net positive results.

The level design itself is very well done across the board, and this is probably my biggest love for this game. The secrets, these secret coins, are all tucked away in some neat little corners. HOWEVER, this game does not get it wrong. In so many platformers I spend more time looking for the damn secrets than I do actually enjoying playing the level and the game. In this one, however, secret walls are marked. You have to be vigilant, it is possible to miss them, very possible in fact. But if you pay attention to what you are doing you will see the mark, experience the little challenge, get your secret coin and be on your way to the next part of the stage.

There are bosses here, too! There is no jank during these fights. Everything is crafted around your move set and the special ability per world. So far, I have explored 3 worlds, and every ability that you get as the human form AND the demon form have been extremely fun to use.

I hope people give this game a chance and experience what it has to offer. It really is designed well from top to bottom. A clear vision with great execution in a neat package for a more than reasonable price. Buy this.

I guess I'll leave a detailed review here since none of the ones available as of this writing seem to talk much about the game. Alright, here we go, time to satisfy my hero complex!

So straight up, the game isn't terrible, but it is very confused. It doesn't know if it wants to be a visual novel, a rhythm game, a board game or a fighting game. The problem here isn't necessarily that in itself, but rather that it doesn't do ANY of those particularly well. It also soft locks mid battle for no reason sometimes.

Every stage starts off the same. You start on a tile with a "scope out" tile next to you, and a question mark. There are 3 characters in the game, you can't choose which one you play as, they each take turns. Every actions on the Monopoly like board switches your character. So, back to the tiles. Every character has 3 "SP" bars under their name. These SP points are used to do various things on tiles, such as the "scouting tile". It does, the "scouting tile" that is, what it says. You can uncover question mark tiles. With me so far? Why... in the blue hell... would I use an SP point to uncover the question mark tile at the start of the level? I mean, no matter what it is, I HAVE to go to it. So.. okay, I save it for later.

Well, here's our second problem now. Most tiles do nothing at all but move you forward. Then, eventually, after a minute of nothing at all, you come across a branching path. Okay, so now, use the "scouting tile"... to realize that there are tiles that you can't access unless you overkill an enemy with a super move and do enough damage with said move to break the lock on the tiles. Whew. So now, you're meticulously not to kill enemies too fast, just so you can kill them a certain way. And then you do... and realize that the locked tile is nothing, and leads to nowhere. Amazing.

During the Monopoly board part of the game, you encounter various shops and slots machines. The slot machines, depending on which character lands on the tile, either give you HP items to purchase to restore health, or "coins" or cassette tapes". The coins are used to level up your characters, the tapes are used to boost your slot machine success rates... which start out at a 40something% success rate. Whew.

Still with me? Alright. So, you continue to mash your arrow keys to uncover these tiles. Most of the time, you lose health by stepping onto a trap that you can do nothing about. Sometimes you have no choice BUT to step onto a trap. You lose 10-20% HP on all characters because the game just wants you to. Amazing!

As you are trying to figure out why the game design is so... poor... you notice that moving from tile to tile is very stiff and unresponsive. You mash your arrow keys right and left, and, well, sometimes it registers, sometimes it doesn't. It's all very awkward and uncomfortable. Think of the Monopoly board as a menu, and stiff, boring, unresponsive menu. Oh, did I mention that everything you buy in the shops as far as upgrades go (coins, tapes) should be just given to you at the end of the level? Why, you ask? Well, because you ALWAYS have enough to purchase it, so it's a waste of time actually doing so, especially with how stiff the menus are in the shop itself.

So when you're not clunking around the tiles, more often than not stepping on nothing and otherwise reading a visual novel about... whatever.... you are fighting. And the fighting itself is actually sort of okay for a few minutes! This is not a rhythm music game. This is a timing game. The enemies have animations to tell you what's about to happen, and you have to perfect block or dodge to avoid damage, while also mashing space bar to a... QTE like bar... to get perfect hits, which builds meter so you can mash the R key... to do a super... with no timing.

Honestly, I'm trying to explain how this game works, and my head hurts. There is nothing complicated about this game at all, yet reading my own review back I'm just like "wow". The design in this game makes 0 sense. From the clunky menus, to making you go buy things that the game should just award if you complete the level..... oh....

So to finish a stage, you need to make it to a tile that has "documents", then to another tile to turn them in. Since nothing here is RNG, you can literally finish stages without interacting with any of the above. You can skip the entire game.... by just remembering where the end of the mission is.....

There are more things to say about the mechanics of the game, but I think I've given enough overview. Overall, this is a fun (for a time) combat system hindered by unresponsive menus, obvious design flaws, things that make no sense, and sometimes mid combat the game just stops responding until you force close and restart.

If you don't want to wait 24 hours for you 10 bucks back after you refund (as I'm doing), don't buy this.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to say no on this one. I played the demo, the playtest, and while I was looking forward to the game it is a pretty big disappointment to me.

First, let's talk about dodging. You have a double dodge on a small cool down. This is your i-frame. At first, it is pretty simple to tell what the enemies are doing. As you get to chapter 2 (out of currently 4), you get stronger by gaining more abilities. Well, those abilities make so many effects happen on the screen that you can no longer tell what the hell is going on. So dodging enemy attacks becomes a matter of spamming dodge, mashing attack, and praying. It's annoying to get hit by things you don't see coming, but this problem is compounded by....

.... tanky enemies. And I mean, super, super tanky. And this is just base, normal difficulty. All of the enemies from chapter 2 onward have a BOATLOAD of HP. Unless you are using DOTS (poison, fire, etc), the enemies will live FOREVER and you will find yourself constantly mashing and dashing against normal mobs. And don't get me started on elites, who sometimes get stunlocked, sometimes they don't, whether you break their armor or not. It's inconsistent, it's annoying.

Speaking of enemy behavior, 99.9% of things coming at you are AOES. Basic mob guy with sword? Big AOE circle attack. Giant boss? Even bigger AOE attack! Five elite enemies and one mob guy? AOE AOE AOE AOE. Can we just not have one enemy that uses a sword as a sword? Does every 0.5 seconds need to be yet ANOTHER big red circle to dodge? I guess not... because after chapter 2, I can't even see most of the red circles.

Then we have the progression, and it's grindy. You can unlock incremental power but honestly, with how frustrating the game is to play, I don't really want to grind it. At all.

Look, my favorite genre is rogue-lite. My favorite games are Curse of The Dead Gods, The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon. Those games you could grind forever, but you can also complete them with your starting stats if you are skilled enough. This game just throws sh*t at the wall to see what sticks, but it's very unbalanced in favor of DOT damage, meaning you HAVE to get the correct RNG to stand a chance against extremely tanky, annoying AOE casting enemies.

Can I beat it? Yeah. But it isn't fun to do so, and for that I'm leaving this negative review.

I bought this game 2 days ago. Look at my play time, Alright, now go buy it.

Seriously though, if you enjoy beat 'em ups, you will enjoy this game. There is enough depth in the combat to make it fun. All of the classes are fun to use, and all of the missions are able to be played and completed solo. I'm a solo player but I know that if you invite your Steam friends you can play in co-op, though as of now, match making doesn't work for normal missions, but does work for the main ones.

There is a lot to do and there is some target farming if you're into that. You can also simply mash X to win in the early/mid game, but you'll have to put together some light and heavy strings and air combos to progress later on. There are no complicated inputs. It's things like light, light, heavy, jump, light, heavy, heavy.

The RPG and leveling aspects of the game make sense. It's very pretty to look at. The Umbra (your little companion, which you can find different ones), are all very cute although functionally some are more useful than others at the moment, but they all have a place. These creatures have a cool down ranging from 30-60 seconds and offer different things when you cast them.

Your skills are tied to your weapon, which each class has a number of, while your class itself has an ability as well. These are all cool and useful... except for Sentinel, which can block and parry.... but not most attacks. :D The devs are aware of this and are actively working with the community to figure out a better place for parrying, I think.

There will be wipes, so keep that in mind. But if you're playing a beat 'em up and complaining about having to repeat things, well.... it takes all kinds to make the world go around.

Wonderfully designed, thoroughly fun, never frustrating but always a challenge. The rewind feature is handy if you aren't great at precision platformers.

Highly recommend.

Adorable, charming, fun and well designed all around. The map is awesome and easy to understand while the puzzles are fun little brain teasers that will make you think. And oh, if you want to explore, the map doesn't show the hidden super cool stuff, so there's that too!

I could write an essay about the things this game does right, but instead, I'm just gonna say buy it and find out for yourself.

The enemy HP value is too high. I beat it on normal mode, but towards the end I was more annoyed that I was playing. It's just sponge after sponge after sponge, and don't get me started on the bosses.