Recent reviews by UDany

Given that Haak places itself as a contender in a well established genre, my first question goin into it was if it could add anything, specially given how most mvs have become rather formulaic lately.

And boy does it deliver, it brings the best of what has made the genre a hallmark of my gaming library, whilst adding it's own spin and making it feel engaging from beginning to end! I must say, narrative and level design really stood out to me, they really nailed both!

Narrative
Given it's a Chinese game, how much would be lost in translation is always a factor (I say this a mandarin learner and an audio drama fan who knows how hard the language is to translate)

And I'm glad to say it not only survives the language barrier, it's enhanced by it, the deeply Chinese characteristics shine through the world building and dialogue making the world feel somewhat foreign whilst still very relatable.

The world they built has plenty of npcs and lore to bring it alive, and the main story is sided with many side quests that are anything but filler, as they work as an ensemble to create the setting.

Mechanics/Controls
The game has a good mechanical progression, with many unlockable skills and upgrades that add a lot of versatility, this is probably one of the most diverse movesets I've seen.

The controls are fine, but just that. They could use some fine tuning, input queuing is finicky and I've found myself frustrated at times that the commands I inputed produced a different result then I feel they should've.

Game Design
The levels are is very well designed, I rarely felt bored by the puzzles, and unlocking each map felt really pleasurable. Backtracking is present while at the same time not dragging you down by unlocking faster routes through the map as you progress. There's a lot of freedom in how you traverse the maps and there are multiple ways to get to places, meaning there's not a single viable order to unlock the game's upgrades!

Don't let the fact it's composed of separate maps fool you, this design actually feels great as it wouldn't be uncommon for you to have to cross large sections of the map when backtracking in classic mvs, and in Haak you can instead go straight to the area you need from the world map. At the same time, they're all interconnected and it really takes travelling back and forth between them to unlock everything, so it's best of both worlds imho.

Another highlight is how they put you in charge of gauging the difficulty through a special currency you earn when you die. The game basically asks: Do you want to beat it the hard-core way? Be my guest, but if you don't you can have these buffs to take the edge off. It's a specially welcome mechanic when you're stuck in a boss fight (looking at you smaurai!)

Art
The pixel graphics are beautiful with very good seemingly hand drawn animations, the lightning effects really help sell the mood the game goes for and everything seems to have been built with a great level of care.

The sound design is ok if a bit on-the-nose and becomes repetitive eventually (specially as your dashing tirelessly on the second half), but nothing dialing it down on the settings won't fix.

Music is beautiful when it's there, but often too short and sparsely used, it can get repetitive over time in some areas because of the short loops.

Variety is where the indie aspect of the game is most notable, every area is built with a limited tileset meaning within a few minutes you've seen 90% of the variety of scenery for that area, the mobs also get reused a lot.

Honorable mention: Although there's no full voice over, the voiced tidbits here and there add a great deal of depth to the interactions with the key npcs, and the fact they mix several languages makes it feel very unique, I really loved this attention to detail <3

All in all a great game that I hope will be the first of many!

Solid metroidvania with an interesting plot, well worth the time ♥

The game is beautifully crafted, but the developers need something stuck up their *** for how hard prevent you from progressing through an overly punishing system, whereas you could loose all the rewards from a boss fight that took hours to finish because your controller disconnected... ♥♥♥♥ YOU

WOW! What more can I say?

Dandara is a breath of fresh air in the metroidvania genre, with novel gameplay it opens up entire new challenges awaiting to be taken head on.

It successfully balances the line between keeping you on the edge and being overly punishing, the enemies and puzzles feel very diverse and the bosses feel very different from one another forcing you to never fall into a confort zone and it's story is presented in bites that are just enough to keep you curious and wanting for the next one.

Overall, an extremely engaging experience, can't recommend this one enough ♥

YES, YES!
Brilliant narrative, certainly worth it!

Melhor jogo de luta pra jogar com amigos no PC. Extremamente viciante, possui uma mecânica intuitiva que permite que qualquer um aprenda os básicos em alguns minutos, e profunda o suficiente pra que você sempre possa aprimorar suas habilidades. O modo história é bem fiel �  original e possui vários momentos lindos, vale a pena pra qualquer fã.