Okay so that title sounds really bad but let me say, the game's not bad. It's not particularly great, but if you like metroidvanias then it's fine. I got this because it was 2$ on the Winter Sale so, like, yeah.
The positives:
- It controls well.
- The graphics are great. The backgrounds are actually really beautiful, but I never noticed until I focused on them, which is good because it means they're also not distracting!
- Mostly fun combat, bosses are simple (they literally all have exactly 3 moves lol) and sometimes were annoying but were mostly alright
Not a bad way to spend 8 hours but not exactly impactful.
So, the negatives, as I wrote in my title...
Ugh, I have played too many metroidvanias that have no idea how to do backtracking. This game is one of the worst offenders. You know the sort of backtracking where it's like, first of all there's no fast travel, and then there's like, some breakable wall 20 screens into an area, and the backtracking is "hey, once you get the ability to break walls, go through all 20 of those screens again (you don't have any new movement or combat abilities so it takes just as long as the first time) and then break that wall and there's 1/4th of a heart piece behind it, now go all the way back"
There's never anything satisfying when you backtrack, it's not like Hollow Knight where you go back somewhere and break a previously unbreakable wall and oh my god it led to this whole new mini-area or a new boss or a new ability or - no, it just always leads to 1/4 of a heart, or a treasure chest with 30 coins. (Which you could farm in 5 minutes anyway) And they make you do this a lot. Unless you buy a return-home item, every time you finish an area you've gotta go all the way back through it the opposite way.
So, this game's main gimmick is it's character switching system:
You have 3 characters, and you swap between them instantly with a button press.
Character A:
Standard Gun, can shoot breakable blocks, climb from bars, and roll.
Character B:
Shoots bombs that bounce along the floor. Can push large blocks or explode the ground beneath you. (These never come up in combat and are basically just key abilities to get to new areas ocasionally)
Character C:
Slow, short-range shotgun blast. Can double jump and dash.
So, your instincts might already be hinting at this for you, but character C is who you want to be playing as 99% of the time. Yeah, their weapon is the worst one, but double jump is not just useful but is necessary for most rooms.
So in practice, this system just means you are playing as the double jumper most of the time, then any time you reach a bar to climb or a tiny space to roll through, you swap over to that character, then swap right back. Block-pusher character is never useful for traversal except if there's enemies below you since his weapon shoots downward.
It essentially just adds busywork, it makes it so that when you're going through the area you have to constantly stop and be like "uh, okay, which character has the roll? okay, switch to them... oh, can't double jump now unless i switch back..."
Mostly though, it just... doesn't add anything? It's just a restriction. Nothing would've been lost if you could just... always double jump once you get the ability, if you could always roll, if you could always climb from ceiling bars. The game would've just been smoother to play. The system only serves to slow you down and annoy you because you forgot you have to switch to a specific character to make this jump and now you fell into spikes!
There are no unique abilities that affect gameplay anyway. I listed them all above, half of them are just pushing/shooting blocks or getting past gaps/tight corridors. Hence why I say it's all half-baked.
