Booooy do I wish this game were better.
Let's start with what I liked. The characters are charming and fun, the story is solid and well executed (if somewhat predictable), the OST is great, and the art and visuals are also fantastic. I really loved the game's world, aesthetics and music. The visuals are particularly surprising to me, with a really well done style and great animations, much better than what I expected from the game honestly. The game is also fully voice acted, including the few NPCs around the city and while the voice acting is far from perfect, I thought it was great for the main characters and antagonists (except Yinu's voice but she was funny to hear).
However, all of those things are quickly screwed over by absolutely atrocious gameplay. Particularly in co-op, which seems to be a complete afterthought, despite the game having two protagonists from the get go. You would THINK it was primarily made as a co-op game, but the camera is abysmal and there's constant bugs and glitches related to co-op specifically.
Co-op issues aside, gameplay just does not feel very good. Bosses vary, some being pretty good (the first and final bosses, for example) and a couple being straight up garbage (Sayu and Eve have a clusterfuck of nonsense going on which LOOKS really cool but always made me feel every other hit I took was kinda bullshit). Only one boss truly stood out as actually great and that was Yinu, who is the game's peak but is just the third boss out of 6. I loved her fight, it plays the best and had my favorite song in the game. But Yinu aside, bosses are more or less carried by the spectacle of their fights, because the gameplay is not really good.
Shout out to a side boss called DK West, though, who has a different gameplay style altogether where you just avoid enemies in 3 lanes for a while. Those sections played well. I also have "DK WEST DK WEST, HE IS OUE MAN, HE IS THE BEST" drilled into my head.
I primarily played the game as Zuke while my co-op partner used Mayday, so I'll mostly talk about him. He feels like shit. His special attacks (mods) are nearly useless save for one, his combos are slower and clunkier than they should and his range sucks. May seems better, but I only played her during the finale because the game straight up made me play as her only and dropped co-op, making Zuke stand around doing nothing. Another sign od the game being a buggy mess and co-op being an afterthought. Zuke was available, he just couldn't move due to possibly a glitch, basically. One way or another, the timing for a lot of things doesn't really feel like it's based on music, hitting things feels like shit and sometimes it was hard to even know WHAT hit you and WHY, due to thing like such as shoddy hitboxes. The rhythm elements were hit or miss, with Yinu making the absolute best use of them, which is one reason why her fight was so enjoyable.
Oh yeah and before I forget, before most bosses there's an "approach" stage full of trash mobs. These fucking suck. The trash mobs are annoying as hell and the stages are repetitive at best. If it was up to me, I would have these cut entirely, because they just feel like an annoyance to get through.
All these gameplay flaws aside, the game is also just buggy and glitchy as fuck. Though the game ran at a solid 1080p60fps on my PC (as it should, the visuals have great style but I can't imagine them being taxing at all). But bugs and glitches were CONSTANT. Sometimes our characters got stuck unable to move besides dodging, P2 frequently had her character glitch out in the hub world in multiple varied ways, a boss fight had me fall through the ground and get stuck in their final phase and even the credits fucked up giving us a blank black screen until I paused and unpaused which somehow fixed. There's all that and many more big and small bugs and glitches, the game is an absolute technical mess and I don't know if it's even being worked on still but I hope it is. But hey, at least I didn't get stuck with the 1010 boss causing a guaranteed crash like I heard. In fact, 0 crashes.
So yeah. All in all, this is a game that would at the very least be a solid 4.5/5 if it JUST played well. Everything EXCEPT the actual gameplay was very enjoyable. But the shoddy gameplay and the constant bugs and glitches really fuck it up. It's actually sad. I can't state it enough, everything else was so enjoyable that it actually made me and my co-op partner "tough it out" through the awful gameplay, so it's sad that it is just such a pain to play most of the time. I sincerely hope the dev team get to fix this game up and make it live up to its potential or that their next game turns out better.
Let's start with what I liked. The characters are charming and fun, the story is solid and well executed (if somewhat predictable), the OST is great, and the art and visuals are also fantastic. I really loved the game's world, aesthetics and music. The visuals are particularly surprising to me, with a really well done style and great animations, much better than what I expected from the game honestly. The game is also fully voice acted, including the few NPCs around the city and while the voice acting is far from perfect, I thought it was great for the main characters and antagonists (except Yinu's voice but she was funny to hear).
However, all of those things are quickly screwed over by absolutely atrocious gameplay. Particularly in co-op, which seems to be a complete afterthought, despite the game having two protagonists from the get go. You would THINK it was primarily made as a co-op game, but the camera is abysmal and there's constant bugs and glitches related to co-op specifically.
Co-op issues aside, gameplay just does not feel very good. Bosses vary, some being pretty good (the first and final bosses, for example) and a couple being straight up garbage (Sayu and Eve have a clusterfuck of nonsense going on which LOOKS really cool but always made me feel every other hit I took was kinda bullshit). Only one boss truly stood out as actually great and that was Yinu, who is the game's peak but is just the third boss out of 6. I loved her fight, it plays the best and had my favorite song in the game. But Yinu aside, bosses are more or less carried by the spectacle of their fights, because the gameplay is not really good.
Shout out to a side boss called DK West, though, who has a different gameplay style altogether where you just avoid enemies in 3 lanes for a while. Those sections played well. I also have "DK WEST DK WEST, HE IS OUE MAN, HE IS THE BEST" drilled into my head.
I primarily played the game as Zuke while my co-op partner used Mayday, so I'll mostly talk about him. He feels like shit. His special attacks (mods) are nearly useless save for one, his combos are slower and clunkier than they should and his range sucks. May seems better, but I only played her during the finale because the game straight up made me play as her only and dropped co-op, making Zuke stand around doing nothing. Another sign od the game being a buggy mess and co-op being an afterthought. Zuke was available, he just couldn't move due to possibly a glitch, basically. One way or another, the timing for a lot of things doesn't really feel like it's based on music, hitting things feels like shit and sometimes it was hard to even know WHAT hit you and WHY, due to thing like such as shoddy hitboxes. The rhythm elements were hit or miss, with Yinu making the absolute best use of them, which is one reason why her fight was so enjoyable.
Oh yeah and before I forget, before most bosses there's an "approach" stage full of trash mobs. These fucking suck. The trash mobs are annoying as hell and the stages are repetitive at best. If it was up to me, I would have these cut entirely, because they just feel like an annoyance to get through.
All these gameplay flaws aside, the game is also just buggy and glitchy as fuck. Though the game ran at a solid 1080p60fps on my PC (as it should, the visuals have great style but I can't imagine them being taxing at all). But bugs and glitches were CONSTANT. Sometimes our characters got stuck unable to move besides dodging, P2 frequently had her character glitch out in the hub world in multiple varied ways, a boss fight had me fall through the ground and get stuck in their final phase and even the credits fucked up giving us a blank black screen until I paused and unpaused which somehow fixed. There's all that and many more big and small bugs and glitches, the game is an absolute technical mess and I don't know if it's even being worked on still but I hope it is. But hey, at least I didn't get stuck with the 1010 boss causing a guaranteed crash like I heard. In fact, 0 crashes.
So yeah. All in all, this is a game that would at the very least be a solid 4.5/5 if it JUST played well. Everything EXCEPT the actual gameplay was very enjoyable. But the shoddy gameplay and the constant bugs and glitches really fuck it up. It's actually sad. I can't state it enough, everything else was so enjoyable that it actually made me and my co-op partner "tough it out" through the awful gameplay, so it's sad that it is just such a pain to play most of the time. I sincerely hope the dev team get to fix this game up and make it live up to its potential or that their next game turns out better.