Well this was an interesting game.
It's a neat concept, and the writing is really fun and silly. The bosses were pretty awesome as well. Hard, but I always felt I was making progress and I was able to beat them before too long. There are also a fair number of secrets to find, and it was really satisfying finding them.
However, I think this game falters in two places. One, the entire draw of the game. While the match three part is an interesting concept, in practice you just have to constantly interrupt the platforming in order to clear out some blocks. It's not always that bad, but especially with the later and harder levels, it got frustrating to have to suddenly shift focus from really precise maneuvering and combat just to clear blocks.
The other part is the level design. It started off pretty good, but already by world 3 it was getting really frustrating. Hard, and not in a fun way. The game would put hard to kill enemies in hard to attack spots with death pits all around you. Not to mention that even with as much attack power as possible, most enemies still take at least 2 hits, if not between 4 and 9 hits. This makes combat areas really unfair and annoying when you have a ton of really tanky enemies to hit. Not to mention most of the times those combat segments are usually at the ends of rooms, so if you die, you have to do the whole room again! It's super tedious, annoying, and not very well designed. This game feels like the kaizo version of itself.
Also, your ranged weapons require some meter to be filled that you fill by doing puzzle stuff. But the problem is, if you lose a certain amount of HP, it nearly completely drains that bar. So it ends up being that you have to play extremely well in most places, otherwise you'll die. It's exhausting.
I still think it was an interesting experience. There is definitely still stuff to like about the gameplay, and the music & graphics were amazing, but I was struggling to force myself to finish the game by the end.
It's a neat concept, and the writing is really fun and silly. The bosses were pretty awesome as well. Hard, but I always felt I was making progress and I was able to beat them before too long. There are also a fair number of secrets to find, and it was really satisfying finding them.
However, I think this game falters in two places. One, the entire draw of the game. While the match three part is an interesting concept, in practice you just have to constantly interrupt the platforming in order to clear out some blocks. It's not always that bad, but especially with the later and harder levels, it got frustrating to have to suddenly shift focus from really precise maneuvering and combat just to clear blocks.
The other part is the level design. It started off pretty good, but already by world 3 it was getting really frustrating. Hard, and not in a fun way. The game would put hard to kill enemies in hard to attack spots with death pits all around you. Not to mention that even with as much attack power as possible, most enemies still take at least 2 hits, if not between 4 and 9 hits. This makes combat areas really unfair and annoying when you have a ton of really tanky enemies to hit. Not to mention most of the times those combat segments are usually at the ends of rooms, so if you die, you have to do the whole room again! It's super tedious, annoying, and not very well designed. This game feels like the kaizo version of itself.
Also, your ranged weapons require some meter to be filled that you fill by doing puzzle stuff. But the problem is, if you lose a certain amount of HP, it nearly completely drains that bar. So it ends up being that you have to play extremely well in most places, otherwise you'll die. It's exhausting.
I still think it was an interesting experience. There is definitely still stuff to like about the gameplay, and the music & graphics were amazing, but I was struggling to force myself to finish the game by the end.