This game made me realize how could I love vastly different genres such as On-rail shooters and Hack and Slash and my indecision and nitpickiness about shooters in general:
I love the feeling of studying my enemies, feeling like I am in sync with them. It is going to sound weird, but I always felt like I was making some sort of tribute to the animation team: Being so in love with your animations, that I follow and trace them by heart like I'm dancing to them, or drawing on them. And this game, in a deceptively simple manner, nails that feeling like few others.
In the melee department, just dodges and parries with an ample window contribute to the fantasy of perfectly predicting your foes, liberating orbs in the process that you can either use to replenish your bars or absorb them into your special charge attacks ala Ninja Gaiden. Animations have the right amount of Wind-up and release, without becoming forcibly unpredictable like in some Souls games.
But where I did not expect the game to shine as much was in the shooting mechanics. Enemies all have a weakspot (usually, the head) that grants extra damage, multiplied if shot during a parry window. What was more surprising, was the deduction of damage if that weak spot is partially covered by a pierceable object (such as a hand or a shield). And this is no accessory, because enemies will intentionally twitch and obfuscate their weak spot during their wind-up and recovery animations so that it is difficult to aim at them.
Making animations that are BOTH satisfying to time in a melee context and satisfying to follow with the reticle of a gun like you would in an action-era Resident Evil is an incredibly commending job for an indie studio, specially when shooting at weak spots is a mechanic that people rarely nail nowadays, both visually and importance wise.
Which is, precisely, why it saddens me that the later weapons of the game get so absurdly broken that the game becomes a matter of spamming parries and big attacks rather than the methodical approach of its first three bosses. This results in a still very fun later half of the game, but one you feel overpowered going through. I would have loved to approach the final excellently designed bosses with the same tension I approached the first three.
I love the feeling of studying my enemies, feeling like I am in sync with them. It is going to sound weird, but I always felt like I was making some sort of tribute to the animation team: Being so in love with your animations, that I follow and trace them by heart like I'm dancing to them, or drawing on them. And this game, in a deceptively simple manner, nails that feeling like few others.
In the melee department, just dodges and parries with an ample window contribute to the fantasy of perfectly predicting your foes, liberating orbs in the process that you can either use to replenish your bars or absorb them into your special charge attacks ala Ninja Gaiden. Animations have the right amount of Wind-up and release, without becoming forcibly unpredictable like in some Souls games.
But where I did not expect the game to shine as much was in the shooting mechanics. Enemies all have a weakspot (usually, the head) that grants extra damage, multiplied if shot during a parry window. What was more surprising, was the deduction of damage if that weak spot is partially covered by a pierceable object (such as a hand or a shield). And this is no accessory, because enemies will intentionally twitch and obfuscate their weak spot during their wind-up and recovery animations so that it is difficult to aim at them.
Making animations that are BOTH satisfying to time in a melee context and satisfying to follow with the reticle of a gun like you would in an action-era Resident Evil is an incredibly commending job for an indie studio, specially when shooting at weak spots is a mechanic that people rarely nail nowadays, both visually and importance wise.
Which is, precisely, why it saddens me that the later weapons of the game get so absurdly broken that the game becomes a matter of spamming parries and big attacks rather than the methodical approach of its first three bosses. This results in a still very fun later half of the game, but one you feel overpowered going through. I would have loved to approach the final excellently designed bosses with the same tension I approached the first three.