I respect, and want to like, what is being done here, but it's just not very much fun and it doesn't do enough to pull you in and raise your interest before it starts being frustrating and boring. Every single enemy being a chore to fight just doesn't work for an open type of game, even if this is more linear than most metroidvanias and it does seem as if enemies stay dead at least for a while, but even so, I'm just struggling to get a good feel for the combat. It's supposed to be like a versus fighting game in a metroidvania setting, but it feels like none of my attacks connect and it feels like both I and the enemy just stand there facetaking hits on each other. The game doesn't really go over how to use the block or parry at all, even though it does have a little tutorial, and the various other mistakes coupled with floaty jumping just made me want to play something else instead.

The big other mistake for me is that the game does have a full map of each area in the code, because it's visible in your minimap, but it refuses to show that map to you and the map menu uses a different layout. Maybe you can unlock something that lets you see the actual map, because this game does seem to have cool items to find, but I'm not going to stick around to find out. I just can't get a grasp on the combat, it feels like I'm not learning and, more importantly, like I really don't want to.

They really ought to remake this or make a refined sequel or something, because the potential for a more technical and hardcore combat metroidvania is there. If I was still like 15, had all the time in the world and had low release count of the late 90s, I might've stuck with this one and found it to be a hidden gem, but in today's market and with my adult life, this is just going to be a pass.

Some neat graphical flourishes mixed with some fun pixel art mixed with ugly monsters...yeah, everything about this game is a mixed bag, for sure.

Music is catchy at first, but then loops very quickly and you start to get over it after hearing the loop for the fifth or sixth time in a row in a span of several minutes.

Combat and movement in general are where I really have an issue with it. This is a Metroidvania, but it wants me to punch/kickbox with enemies, but the actual actions look like specific animations cut from some fighting games that don't belong with any single character, let alone this one. There are times when she moves like Iori Yagami with certain strikes, then other times where she's doing light attacks that have a range of almost nothing...but none of the moves feel correct. Since you have MP in the form of Demonic Power, special moves require Demonic Power and often don't pop correctly when you initiate the commands for them (I can summon Devilboy with Up>Down>LP all day, but damn if it's not impossible to do Forward>Forward>LK or HK for some reason).

I mentioned the movement above, but I really need to touch on why it's uncomfortable as can be. You mostly just walk and jump places, but the jumping is a nightmare. When you jump, you move forward until you either 1) stop, 2) move backwards (and only minorly, at that), or 3) touch a wall. The first two are self-evident in their behaviors, but if you touch a wall, you cling to it and can jump off said wall in the opposite direction with increased height. This means triangle jumping is a thing, but this only sounds good in practice. In execution, level design has lots of ledges that you can't reach with your normal jump, so you end up hugging an edge instead of getting onto a platform, then flinging yourself in the opposite direction regardless of if that was your intent. Coupled with the fact that there's a lot of floating indestructible enemies that cause HUGE knockback and you find yourself spending a lot of time flying away from potential ledges and falling back onto the ground, only to wait several seconds to get back up, recover, and try again. This can culminate into spending minutes on the same "simple" jumps again just to cross a single room in some instances. Some room designs include multiple floors of distance so that if you are working across several ledges (sometimes using the Jump+HK to get a little extra air-time) and contact an enemy, you fall all the way back down one floor and have to climb back up to try again. It's frustrating, to say the least.

Fought one boss so far and it was basically throwing strikes at it while it sat in one spot for a bit, then moved to another spot, summoned some projectiles that followed a pattern that had no interest in your location, then rushed back and forth across the screen once before repeating the process. It had three phases, and the only thing that changed in each phase was how difficult it was to hit the boss without dealing with knockback. Since you only had ~10 seconds to get your hits in before the whole projectile phase came, one knockback basically cut out about half your time and meant you'd have to do some jumping to get back into place. Good luck with that.

The only other thing worth mentioning is that there are doors that gate you from exploration (not sure if any affect progression) and require you to deal a certain amount of damage to said doors in one shot in order to get through. The game uses a leveling system with stats and an equipment system that affects certain stats, so you're almost incentivized to exclusively dump all your points into ATK so you can potentially open those doors sooner. Kinda takes away some of the variety of the game when you're supposed to decide between a different build or useful items.

Not a bad game, but very uncomfortable to play with all its awkward control issues, for sure.