2-hour refund deadline review.
- There's a serious disconnect between platforming and combat elements: jumping can't dodge most attacks and dodge-rolling is useless in platforming sections. The game immediately feels cluttered as a result, I have to constantly switch between 'platformer mode' and 'fighting mode' in my mind.
- Fighting multiple enemies at the same time is near impossible, but most of the areas are still densely packed with bad guys. There aren't many ranged attacks early on, so it's hard to put distance between you and any enemies. The camera doesn't help- at times it's hard to see what's to the right of your character, let alone behind you.
- Enemies deal too much damage. I'm usually dying before I even realize how much danger I'm in- there's a lot of attacks that kill you in one or two hits.
- Since the game is so punishing, it's hard to engage with the main mechanic- shells. There are good ideas here: Light shells are good at dodge-rolling while heavy shells are good at blocking attacks. Blocking is a little bit easier than dodging, but shells break if you block with them too often, so you'll need to regularly change shells if you prefer blocking to dodging. The problem is that I never consciously thought about these mechanics while playing the game because the difficulty curve always felt several steps ahead of me: what does it matter if I dodge or block an attack if failing either instantly kills me?
- I got stuck on random level geometry once and had to restart the game.
- Everything besides the gameplay is pretty good. The character designs are decent, I like the variety of shell designs, even within the small part of the game I actually played. Moving around the game's environments is pretty fun.