Recent reviews by Samasaki

I played the demo at PAX East in 2020 and I was dead set on playing this game all the way through just through the experience I had and how cool the representatives (devs?) were there. I kept up with it and played the demos, waiting the long four years they took to finally release it. When it finally did, I bought it day one and played five hours straight. That was release date. Today is December 20th. I still have five hours on this game.

I did not finish this game because it was boring. They had a winner in the gameplay, but, and I'm assuming, they delayed the game for the writing. The boring, abysmal writing. I can't even remember what the story is about because my brain doesn't want to remember how boring the story line was. What I do remember is almost every event in the game having some sort of cutaway or flashback to a scene that doesn't directly include Altheia. I had to keep asking myself "Why do I care?" every time another character came up on the screen because the characters have no charm like Castlevania characters do. They're just there to push the world story forward about how Altheia is "The One". I feel as if they used the game to built their own world, rather than use the world to build their game.

The combat is fun and the game is metroidvania-y with a little Souls-like. Unlock powers, progress the world, rinse and repeat. You get plenty of different attacks to play with, though you'll never need to (or get to) use them most of the time. The RPG system is good. You never feel like you are under leveled, but never feel overpowered. Instead of the linear upgrade path with a branch, it would've been smarter to have totally different branches instead. The healing system is a Souls-like system, which is fine, but unnecessary. The world enemies are boring, but the bosses are kind of fun, if not a little easy for an experienced player. The world itself is... uninspired and kind of annoying to traverse through. I did not have fun exploring. The city sucks.

My problem with the game is that it is overshadowed by the story forcing itself into the game without being interesting or charming. From what I've read, they ended the game in a (really bad) way that would set up for a sequel. I hope they realize they should focus on gameplay over writing.

I'm going to give this game another chance just to finish it, but I'm not holding my breath, nor will I recommend this game.

Definitely a game worth buying. For $14, you can't go wrong. If you like Metroidvanias, you'll like this easily. It is the second part of a series and plays like the GBA/DS era of Castlevanias. Though a bit simpler, it's still a great job for a one man dev team. My experiences are as follows;

Pros:
+ Great Metroidvania with a lot of inspiration
+ Different whip attacks and damage types in lieu of different weapons
+ A back dash and dodge (i-frame) function (though the latter has to be unlocked)
+ Classic Metroidvania map layout (BIG PLUS, you can put custom markers on the map)
+ Fun bosses
+ Cool, unique mobs
+ Hotfixes galore due to dev listening to players
+ Love the characters and how unapologetic Xandria is

Cons:
- Rough early game after prologue. Really rough.
- Enemies are pretty much tanks until the late game of EA
- Status ailments galore, two out of three being debilitating early game
-/= Enemies also have hit invulnerability for a very short time after being hit (not sure if it's a bug, but you can't whip an enemy being hurt by a spell)
- Some boss attacks are undodgeable depending on when it happens and your location (although it's fair)
- Falling more than a certain height will lock you in a landing animation that lasts a good while (which is not very high)

Neutral:
= Backtracking with new skills to explore
= Takes too much inspiration from Castlevania games
+/= Jump attack cancel is in, though unlocking attack chains forces you to back dash cancel if you get stuck in the animation on the ground. Chains do more damage, but often you don't have that luxury to stand there to do it.
= Stamina for movement skills (dive kick, back dash, slide, dodge)
= Unable to spam subweapon skills

I can't wait to see what Danny does with the game further. If the end credits teaser is something to abide by, then I'm very excited to see what the fully published game will be like. I also hope Atreu will be a playable character in the future!

Interesting game, but horrible in level design. The bosses are okay, but horribly uninspired. They're very annoying to get to, especially when you have limited lives throughout the whole stage. Odd choice in design, but I'm not a game dev. I'm just a Castlevania enjoyer. The biggest things I enjoyed were the bosses and the art work. For someone who made the game by themselves in almost it's entirety (everything but music), it's really decent.

I would recommend solely for experiencing the full story before playing the (probably better) sequel.

Wishlist the game and keep an eye on it, or buy it for less than $20 to support the developers to see what they can make. I don't have buyers regret, nor do I expect to in the future, but this game is in early Alpha and it looks like it's a slow road from here.

It's definitely fun, but I'm not sure if it's worth a $50 price tag. I'd wait for a sale if you aren't dying to play it.

Note that this game is NOT a co-op game. You can't really play with another person/people. It's more of a "play together by talking on discord and sometimes do a dungeon" kind of co-op.

Because this game is made and maintained by one person, I will not nitpick the small stuff. It's a fun game with a very friendly, helpful community. I would suggest just trying it out and asking for help to see if you like it.

Biggest Pro+; Infinite grind game to play if you like classic RPGs and numbers.

Biggest Con-; Dangerously time consuming. I've stacked 15 hours in 3 days by accident.

This game is quite literally a mix of Breath of the Wild, Terraria, and Factorio. If you like those games, you'll probably like this game.

But just remember, it's in Early Access. It's a lite version of what it's going to be. Wait for updates if you are wary, because this game is definitely worth $25.

The only complaint I have so far is that there are no video settings to customize, just resolutions. An odd way to go about it, but hopefully the next updates will give us options, because this game is VRAM heavy.

It's not a great game. Not only is the movement and speed of this game slow and clunky, the time to kill someone in this game takes so long that it's basically just a slug fest to see which full team can target one person to kill fast enough to get an advantage. Earl, the guy with a minigun, can't even kill someone with one of his three magazines, which spits upwards of 50 bullets. Even the skills don't make sense, because there are tons of skill that have specific numbers, (e..g. melee turns into 80 immediate damage and then 80 DoT) and then every other skill just says they can do something. There's no consistency in any of this. I think they purposely did not put any damage numbers for the guns/melee because then they would clearly see who would win in fights. If that was the case, don't put in numbers for any of the skills.

If the gameplay wasn't enough, there's no default communication system! No voice chat, no text, but there is a quick chat and ping system the former being unbound in your options menu and the latter not being part of the tutorial! And if THAT wasn't enough, there's no choice in making specific teams (in solo or >3 man queue), because you choose a character BEFORE you queue up! So that means if you want to be a specific kind of character, you MUST match with someone who doesn't pick your character. A brand new game just released and already has 2+ minutes of queue time depending on your character!

There's tons of garbage I can nitpick on, like AFK/DCs not having a bot to replace them, ridiculous prices for skins and awful optimization, but those are already really big points of what a game should know how to do. I do not recommend this game until they fix most of this.

tl;dr

Pros:
-Free game
-Interesting character designs

Cons:
-Nerf gun-like gameplay
-Slow paced movement
-No default comms system
-Pre-queue character selection

It's a fun game. But to make it clear, the fun part of this game is grinding and doing the damage. I would not recommend this game if you're just gonna choose one character and play the game once. Search for the DMFD discord to look for advice if you truly want to enjoy the game. A lot of the people there are very nice and helpful. Hot dog.