Beat on Hardest, and that was a mistake. I did go back and play the 1st level on Easiest and found it much more enjoyable. Just not fun being a glass cannon that shoots wet noodles. The moves had way too much animation locking to the point where the quick slash, jump quick slash and jump downward slash were really the only worthwhile moves. The thrust takes a couple seconds before you do anything again and seems to have no advantage over the slash. It should have either done significantly more damage or broke guards. The ranged attack has a ridiculous several seconds of being locked in place while the projectile travels across the screen, pretty much guaranteeing that you will be hit while using it. Great that the game has a block button, and I rebound to L and R. The regular enemies were a pain in the ass to defeat and there were some tricky sections where I had to do a lot of save state scumming. I liked how you can slash bullets to destroy them, or block. I did not like how the gunner enemies would slowly bull through your attacks to still move closer and do contact damage. I found the best way to defeat them to be to rush them so they don't shoot, then either block or jump over them when they get too close. The rest of the enemies in the game were only in a single level. The worst by far were the little disc robots with lasers. Can't block the laser. Only way to beat them without taking huge damage was 3 jump downward slashes. The 2nd last level had a long corridor filled with lots of those robots and gunners, and was by far the most difficult part of the game. They were not even worth fighting because it was impossible to fight 2 of those enemies at the same time without dying. I just ran past them and ate the contact damage. The bosses were bad. It was obvious that they read the player's input and specifically counter what the player does; perfect blocks, jumps and hits. This was especially noticeable when doing something weird. The mini bosses were not like that and thus not bad, but the major ones that play out more like a fighting game were. It was a lot of fiddling around trying all kinds of moves and actions to find the one specific thing that will actually allow you to hit the boss. For Tattoo it was jump downward slashes to the head just before he attacked. For Chainsaw it was feinting a jump attack to make him jump, then doing a projectile attack that he will land on. For Kane it was more jump attacks. Dr. Blaze was the hardest boss and I actually died on the killing blow and still got credit for the win. I could him him in the air with a jump slash by staying at the perfect range, or jump downward slash behind him, but it was all risky. For Raptor it was duck slashing as he approached. The final boss was a more traditional action platformer boss and was not too bad, though I barely scraped by.

6.8/10