Recent reviews by rage097

An excellent game with a frankly ridiculous amount of content for the price, free DLC included. Loved the game so much I bought it twice, on steam and switch. The game is fun, addicting in the best way, and enjoyable challenging. The world is a joy to explore and instills a sort of paranoia about missing secrets in me, encouraging me to explore further and retread old areas. The game feels very fair, but still challenging, though the challenges posed by the Godmaster DLC are perhaps a bit too tough to lock some cool endings behind. The art and music are both gorgeous. The story is intriguing and I always found myself pleased when I uncovered another tidbit of it.

-Breakdown- Potential Spoilers below:
--Content: There's a lot of it. Frankly an extraordinary amount for a game with a price tag this low. Throw in the free DLC and , assuming you have the will to take on Godmaster, you're easily looking at 40+ hours of content. If I were to throw in a ballpark estimate for attaining 112% completion from first run to Godmaster completion, on top of getting all 3 base story endings, I would estimate roughly 55+ hours. If you're crazy enough to fill out the Hall of Gods or are like me and struggle with the pantheons, that number easily rises into the hundreds.
Additionally, very little of the content seems samey. Only the Godmaster stuff gets a bit old and that seems partially by its design as a challenge mode. I will say that replay value is iffy depending on who you are. If you like speedruns, there's plenty. Additionally Steel Soul mode is a fun feature for replay. Outside that, for those looking for reasons to play through again, there's not too much that cannot be done in one save. The game allows you to load back in to just before the final boss battle after getting an ending so there's little reason the play through the whole thing again for getting different endings. This is a very minor issue though. The content available in just one playthrough trivializes replay value to a significant degree.

--Gameplay: It's great. Combat is tight and responsive and I never really felt anything was unfair. Things definitely are difficult in many places, but it all boiled down to learning the tells and patterns and finding an adequate method to approaching the situation. The corpse-run mechanic feels somewhat unnecessary, but doesn't really hinder my enjoyment of the game in the slightest, and is very nicely attached to the lore. I do find it interesting that your Shade attacks you when you go to pick it up. I've never really seen that done before. Moreover, the fact that it will use the spells you learn when it attacks you took me way off the guard the first time, and is honestly a pretty neat moment.

The boss fights are all challenging for the first time, then become almost trivial after you learn the fight, which is awesome. I truly feel as though I've built a skill through fighting the different bosses and enemies in the game. Getting wrecked by Grimm dozens of times then being able to consistently first-try him is a great feeling.

My only real frustrations with the gameplay are platforming and mapping. Mapping is interesting and a necessary mechanic in the game's staggeringly large world. Though wandering blind and franatically looking for the Cartographer is a tad frustrating, as well as the initial lag in my ability to explore before I've bought the Quill and Compass. I think it would have been better for the Quill and Compass to have been included in the mapping system, since hunting down the Cartographer is both frustrating and fun in that it instills this sense of panic and uneasiness in exploring an unmapped area and thus has a nice function. The compass and quill seem to serve no function other than to delay my exploration by a little bit. Honestly this is very minor nitpick that I'm only really touching on since the rest of the game is so good.

The platforming is very good. It only gets frustrating during some of the platforming challenges. Some of the platforming mechanics are just shy of the perfection needed for getting through places like the White Palace or some of the other challenges, like the grub at the summit of the Queen's Gardens. I found it annoying that sometimes I'd slide down a wall and into spikes before the game registered my jump command after using the crystal heart ability. Outside of these specific moments though, it's very fun and rewarding.

--Art: The game is gorgeous and hand drawn. Everything is adorable when it needs to be and terrifying when it needs to be. The animations are gold and play well with the mechanics.

--Music and Sound: Frankly near perfection. The sound design is amazing. Everything has some neat voice line from Grimm's aged rasp, to Cornifer's humming, to Quirrel's perpetually amused and casual demeanor, to the Radiance's Horrific shriek, to Hornet adorably telling me to "git gud". The music is Awe-inspiring and I've lost track how many times I've listened to it. My only further wish was that it was live orchestration, and with Silksong's samples, it looks like I'm getting that wish! Grimm's theme during the pufferfish attack is the best theme, fight me.

--Story: The story is very nice. It may not be particularly moving emotionally, but it definitely sets a tone when paired with the music. It's a bit too vague for my tastes, but that's why we have mossbag on Youtube. I found my self in a mad dash to the relic seeker whenever I got one of his items in part because I knew he'd have some nice lore tidbit for me. I also like how the Dream Nail gives hints into some of the things that are going on in a way that's mostly easy to make connections with. Additionally, the musical storytelling is both subtle and enlightening. Putting together connections between character's solely on recurring motifs makes me feel like some sort of music detective and it's great.

--Controls: Since I loved this game so much I bought it twice, I was able to compare the keyboard controls versus the Nintendo Switch controls. I prefer the switch controls. The default keyboard controls required some rebinding for my preferences and I had some minor difficulties with certain actions. On the switch, I do not have those issues, but do sometimes have issues casting the right spells since they're based on the joystick direction.

Overall, if I were to give this game a rating, It'd rate it 9.5/10. It's almost perfect. A few very minor frustrations and areas where things could have been done better hold it back. I would absolutely reccomend this for anyone who likes metroidvanias, Somber music, Atmosphere and Tone (City of Tears is best at this), and a gameplay challenge.