Dandara's gravity-defying movement system is immediately dazzling, with quickly zipping from wall to ceiling being as satisfying as it looks. Despite ultimately being fairly restrictive and occasionally finicky, weaving in and out of enemy projectiles and letting off attacks of your own while needing to keep track of which parts of the terrain are safe to commit to since you're held in place until you jump somewhere else makes for a unique combat system that tests your speed and strategy in an unorthodox, engaging way.
As far as the actual game is concerned, though, the rest doesn't come together quite as smoothly. In terms of Metroidvanias, it commits pretty much every sin in the book: half your upgrades are just keys for locks without any meaningful utility, a lack of distinct landmarks causes rooms to blend together, and exploration isn't intuitive enough to prevent you from spending most of your playtime staring at the map screen.
Memorable level design is essential in this genre to help cement each area in your brain to remember for later, but Dandara struggles with this already only to then further obfuscate navigation by making many rooms rotate 90 degrees when you enter them. As a result, it becomes a nightmare to orientate yourself because suddenly the room is misaligned with the map, unless you press a dedicated button to also rotate the map 90 degrees and get a better understanding of the area, which will become irrelevant as soon as you enter the next room and it rotates back. Most chunks of the game are in self-contained segments which should've mitigated this but when large swathes of rooms have several different exits it only helps so much.
Even with these issues I did enjoy my time with Dandara, as the movement does a lot of heavy lifting and there's plenty of interesting combat scenarios (even if some of the endgame encounters can get a bit irritating). It's just unfortunate that the connective tissue tying it together doesn't come together in a fulfilling way and hampers something that could've been really special.
As far as the actual game is concerned, though, the rest doesn't come together quite as smoothly. In terms of Metroidvanias, it commits pretty much every sin in the book: half your upgrades are just keys for locks without any meaningful utility, a lack of distinct landmarks causes rooms to blend together, and exploration isn't intuitive enough to prevent you from spending most of your playtime staring at the map screen.
Memorable level design is essential in this genre to help cement each area in your brain to remember for later, but Dandara struggles with this already only to then further obfuscate navigation by making many rooms rotate 90 degrees when you enter them. As a result, it becomes a nightmare to orientate yourself because suddenly the room is misaligned with the map, unless you press a dedicated button to also rotate the map 90 degrees and get a better understanding of the area, which will become irrelevant as soon as you enter the next room and it rotates back. Most chunks of the game are in self-contained segments which should've mitigated this but when large swathes of rooms have several different exits it only helps so much.
Even with these issues I did enjoy my time with Dandara, as the movement does a lot of heavy lifting and there's plenty of interesting combat scenarios (even if some of the endgame encounters can get a bit irritating). It's just unfortunate that the connective tissue tying it together doesn't come together in a fulfilling way and hampers something that could've been really special.