A fantastic core gunplay mechanic weighed down by so many counterintuitive roguelike elements. Gameplay wise, my main issue was the ever present lack of information found throughout. Weapons are pretty straightforward to figure out but items and abilities have sparse descriptions that provide little to no indication as to what they actually do. This wouldn't be a problem, as you can simply pick up the item and figure out for yourself, but the game limits you to only one item of each type (head, boots, shield, armor) per slot, meaning if you find something new on a good run, you'll be discouraged from taking anything new once you know what you're comfortable with. This theme extends to the modifiers found on higher difficulties, some of which seem wildly out of place in any roguelike, such as entire stages not spawning loot or items due to a random modifier, which of course is barely relayed to the player with no explanation. Even the selectable characters have no indication of their significant differences on the selection screen. On top of all of this, the game is obnoxiously painted, with each stage being essentially monochrome. While this is likely in the interest of player visibility, it succeeds in making the randomized dungeons entirely boring to look at on repeat runs.

I had a blast for my first few hours, and won twice in one sitting, on easy and hard mode respectively. As I attempted further runs, I only got more fed up with the game and found it difficult to appreciate the core mechanic in light of all the smaller annoyances built around it.

This game is so unique and I love it for that.

It is also hard; like anything past the second level will kick your arse, hard.
You can make the rhythm aspect more forgiving if you struggle with it.
I personally made the rhythm timing more strict because I am a drummer and even I found this challenging at times.

This game lives and dies on how fun you find grinding out runs and dying and trying again, over and over again. If that doesn't sound fun to you, you probably won't enjoy this game no matter how neat you find the rhythm aspect.

The good:
- The base rhytmic mechanics can really get you into a good feeling groove of shooting a reloading.

- A good variety of guns and items that can really change up how you play each run.

- The giant bird shopkeepers. I honestly just had a great time every time I found a shop, because I knew that even if I didn't always find good items, I'd at least always find good vibes.

The bad:
- Keeping rhythm while dodging the projectiles of the small enemies that shoot from everywhere (including behind you) felt often frustrating.

- The game felt like it missed polish. For example, the default character on the character selection screen strikes a cool pose that really pumps me up to play the game; but after unlocking a few other ones, I noticed that they were all just standing around idly...

- The color scheme of the game makes it difficult to see what is going on. I found that enemy projectiles are often hard to parse. And on the later levels, I often spent a bit of time on each room just to find the statues that are needed to upgrade your stats, as they really blended into the environment.

- The game also had a balancing issue that I find in a lot of roguelikes. I have a really hard time advancing in most runs, but then I come across some op item that get me to breeze through the whole game, and I don't feel like I mastered anything.