Recent reviews by Jupiter Ivan

Flawed. That's the best way I can describe this game. Tried it because of the free weekend, so my experience come from just under two hours of playtime. I just couldn't get into it. Which is a darn shame, because I think what's here is genuinely promising, but I struggle to say my experience was "fun".

My Thoughts
- Exploring the dungeons is satisfying. Probably the best aspect of the game.

- Combat is frustrating. Unless something just didn't click and I missed something important, melee is super annoying. Enemies rate of attack means you just cannot retaliate within an appropriate time frame if you're blocking. Blocking (depending on the shield) still results in you losing health - an extremely valuable resource that you can't easily refill.

- Ranged combat fairs a bit better, but not by much. Magic is great albeit limited due to mana. Bows don't seem to do much damage and the enemies close the distance before you can finish them most time because ---

- Walk back speed is horrendous. In order to effectively make distance from enemies you need to quick turn and move away . . . It works I suppose, but it doesn't make for a very engaging video game to shoot a monster a couple time, book it to another room, turn around, shoot it a few more times, turn around, etc etc.

- Instant death in any video game isn't fun. Boulders, Trolls, Mimics. Dying immediately without anyway to easily prevent it isn't cool. Trolls, I get it, fine, maybe I shouldn't mess with the big monster. Mimics? One time it was a locked chest that I shot with a fireball and the second was just a normal chest i could interact with. If there were tells, I'm not sure what they were. My immediate thought was "Oh, locked chests must have a chance to be mimics" but I suppose I was wrong about that. Chalk this one up to me not having enough info on them. Boulders . . . Boulders on the other hand. Very dumb. Yes, they come from holes in the ceiling. Yes, there's audio when they're rolling. And therein lies the problem. There's audio, but it doesn't seem to be directional. Sounds like it's right on you regardless of where it's coming from. Resulting in panic and, if you're not quick . . . death.

- Overabundance of cursed items. Kinda makes the loot in your dungeon crawler seem kind of worthless. And some items are just straight up traps. Amulet of strangulation isn't listed as a cursed item, but . . . it literally chokes you to death. Sure maybe I should have pieced that one together . . . but it's not cursed . . . but it actually is . . . I hope you at least see the problem here. Makes me wonder if there's other wonderful player traps like this in the game. Shame I'll never find out.

Maybe it's just me, but I find more mechanically fair rogue-likes fun. Games like Risk of Rain and Enter the Gungeon. Games that reward skilled gameplay rather that solely relying on luck. I realize this game has been out for a looong while and general reception of this game seems t be fairly positive so my criticisms might fall on deaf ears, but I felt compelled to voice my grievances regardless.

All this to say I haven't tried multiplayer either. Maybe I'll convince a friend or two to try it for the weekend and see how that goes, but as it stands, just by my experience thus far, this game has potential. If you like games that bust your balls with an aluminum baseball bat, by all means, have at it. But if you get even remotely frustrated by unfair design I recommend passing on this one.

An amazing 2D platformer! A must have for anyone that enjoys games like Megaman and Castlevania!