bought the game to support the devs. I really want to give a neutral rating, but will give a positive one anyways.

Combat mechanics in this game is not suitable for a 2d action side scroller. Combos are not combos actually. hit stun is non existent. especially when different type of enemies swarm the screen, everything gets messy. not a test of skill.

only legit way to kill a "single" shot gun guy is rolling after sneaking two hits. combat does not flow.

pixel art and music are good. humor was on point. yet the clunky combat overshadows everything.

Anomaly Gagent

I bought this game because of it's overwhelmingly positive review score and the recent winter sale bundled with TEVI, and frankly, I'm disappointed with this game. I finished the regular game mode, and do not feel like either playing the new game plus or continuing with the rogue agent mode. My main issue is that for as much as I like the art style and the ideas in the game, they aren't actually fun to play. The plot is fairly convoluted and that's fine. The graphics are nice and the sound track is pretty great. It's fun to listen to, but now that I'm out of it, there's nothing that really stuck in my head either. The main focus of the game is the combat and I feel like it falls kind of flat. Something is off with the pacing and tempo of the combat. It's not a button masher, because enemies don't really suffer hit stun. You have a parry, with a short recovery that can stun enemies and reflect bullets. While useful when there are only a few enemies, often times there are many that you can't really CC effectively. You can dodge roll, and honestly that seems to be what you are doing constantly because especially several enemies have unblockable attacks, kind of eliminating the usefulness of parrying. The main way to deal with crowds are the anomaly powers you gradually unlock after each stage. For a powerful ability that seems to be designed to be the main source of taking out large groups of enemies, it's odd to me that you have no i frames and can get hit stunned out of using it and die. Among all the enemies, there are often stage traps or mechanics that further complicate the issue. In some ways, they can be effective as they also hurt enemies, but often it didn't always feel intuitive or rewarding. There are a few guns that can serve to deal heavier damage, but the button to fire and pick up guns are the same. If you two different guns on top of each other you can find yourself cycling instead of firing. And, the guns disappear after a few seconds, making it feel that you have to really just spam them if you want to use them. I do want to like the game, but just a lot of things feel off and it's hard to describe. There is a real lack of weight to certain moves and a limited number of moves that you will see over and over and over again. Also with the fairly large health pools and even regular enemies, when you land certain harder to hit combos, it feels kind of lackluster. Visually, a lot of the attacks look but it gets quickly repetitive landing the same 3-4 hit sequence over and over on the same 5-6 enemies. Like I said, It is neat, but unfortunately it doesn't really make a lasting mark.