Review Pogee 4/5 · Mar 29, 2023
A beautiful looking beat em up.
This game is quite a gem. Its visual presentation is stellar and it also plays quite well.
The game truly is gorgeous, especially if you are a fan of Asian aesthetics as myself. Every level had a bit different setting so I kept playing just to see what nice landscape comes next. The graphics looks a bit similar to Firewatch …
This game is quite a gem. Its visual presentation is stellar and it also plays quite well.
The game truly is gorgeous, especially if you are a fan of Asian aesthetics as myself. Every level had a bit different setting so I kept playing just to see what nice landscape comes next. The graphics looks a bit similar to Firewatch - at least the color palette - so you know that it is gorgeous.
When it comes to gameplay it is also not bad. The game offers many upgrades through your progression, including weapons and stat upgrades. You also gain some new abilities along the way that spice up the combat. Otherwise it is quite a standard beat em up. The gameplay can get a bit repetitive as there isn't much variety in enemy types. There are various enemies with different levels of armour/damage or a bit different set of attacks, but none of them (except necromancer) force you to fundamental change your strategy when fighting them. Boss fights are especially disappointing because they have the same problem. They are just another enemy with more damage and slightly different attack pattern.
The game features several difficulty levels. The "normal" difficulty was a bit easy for me, while one level harder felt quite nice. But this harder difficulty also disabled all the check points in the level which was a bit too punishing. So I remained playing on normal difficulty, which made many levels a breeze to beat. Nonetheless it was fun to crush all the enemies.
I also played in local coop mode. I always love when the games are fully designed to be beaten with your buddy alongside you. Coop experience was mostly smooth although the camera just focuses player 1 which is fine for the most part. However there was a particular level where that posed a serious problem and player 2 kept falling out of the view port.
The story is ridiculous. I have no idea what is it about but essentially you are the good guy and there are several bad guys that you need to beat. The problem is that such basic concept gets way too complicated in this game's narration, without really giving a good reason for that. Lucky the story is not essential to enjoy in this game. I must also compliment the voice acting which was quite good.
Overall I give this game a thumbs up. I had a great time beating up enemies and I recommend it for all couch multiplayer enthusiasts. And also the graphics are truly beautiful.
