Ever heard of Villanous? The Cartoon Network short series based on a silly group of villains running an agency to become the biggest brand of villany? Well, Nefarious gives the same vibes.

It has an fantastic premise: take the archetypes of different gaming villains and mesh them together into a single experience, where you have a character that in one level controls a giant robotnik-like mecha, in the next a giant EVIL spaceship, and then turns into literal Kefka from Final Fantasy 6.

It is an amazing idea that lead to a great sets of gimmicks.
The issue is that... I wish the game did more with it. Instead, most of this title is based on a series of platforming challenges, too reminiscent to a choppy Megaman clone, with a slow and often tedious approach. Most of the time the cooler set pieces make up for the slower sections and platforming challenges, and the cartoony cast and writing adds a lot of charm to the experience, but overall I feel it needed some major improvements in terms of levels designs and flow of the game.

The bosses are also really creative, with the exception of the final boss that is legitimaly a slugfest to go throught.

I wish the best for these developers, and I am glad that this character was able to show up again (apparently was a villain in another indie title from other devs, which is great), but overall as their first big game.... I was hoping for a bit more. SOrry about that!

Reviewed on Apr 20, 2024


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