Despite being one of the most popular and influential games of all time, somehow, Doom 2 is still severely underrated.

Someone who agrees is Danbo, fellow Doom lover and developer of the shmup Blue Revolver. In his old article (https://blog.danbo.vg/post/50094276897/the-most-misunderstood-game-of-all-time) he explains:

"While Doom was no doubt the product of a bunch of nerds doing what they love, the game offers a more intelligent gameplay palette than just about any other pure FPS in the world...Doom perfection is achieved where the visceral meets the intelligent."

Everyone knows the obvious: the timeless joy of the Super Shotgun, the surreal demonic aesthetic, the beloved metal MIDIs that rip off Metallica and Slayer, and so on. But there's an iceberg of elements below the surface that oft go overlooked by those uninitiated in deeper Dooming ways. To bring up just a few examples:

The famous BFG is a brilliant, quirky weapon that operates like some bizarre hybrid of a delayed-fire rocket launcher and shotgun. The ball does a good chunk of damage, but the real firepower is in the spread of 40 invisible tracers that shoot out from you a bit after the ball explodes, in the direction you initially fired. You can fire at packs of enemies to spread out the damage for crowd control, or get right up next to something to put all the tracers on it for massive destruction (both incredibly useful and incredibly dangerous against Cyberdemons). You can fire the BFG at long range, do other things (run around, switch weapons), then move into position for the tracers as the ball makes impact. You can hide behind cover, shoot the ball into a wall, then quickly peek outside cover to forgo the ball damage in favor of safety. You can even shoot, realize that you're in a bad position, and retreat, wasting ammo but possibly saving your life.

Switching weapons is both critical to success and surprisingly slow, especially if you compare with Doom's modern entries. But this adds commitment, that deep shard of the action game's soul, in a way that ties into the ever-present ammo system. Say you pump two Super Shotgun blasts into a Revenant, and are confident that it's a hair away from death. You can switch to the Chaingun to fire a quick burst, which is highly ammo-efficient, but takes time and leaves you vulnerable. You can stick with the Super Shotgun, which trades ammo for safety and speed. You can even use the Rocket Launcher to put heavy damage on another foe while killing the first with splash damage, but this opens the door for the classic-yet-catastrophic rocket to your own face. id could have easily made the weapon switch speed near-instant, but whether by intention or happenstance, they didn't, and the game is better for it.

I could go on and on about all the nuances that add to the game, but there are two critical elements that set Doom apart from every other FPS. The first is its emphasis on space control. Take the humble Pinky, for instance: low health and it's bites are easily dodged, so not much threat, right? Well, put Doomguy in a room with fifty of them (Doom 2 MAP08: Tricks and Traps for instance) and the assessment rapidly changes. If you're not careful, you'll be surrounded on all sides, and while killing a few may be easy, others will quickly rush into the gaps to further constrict you. Controlling territory with movement and smart (or copious) use of ammo is critical to survival. Now imagine how much the situation would evolve with just a single Archvile added to the mix!

The other aspect, almost completely unique to Doom as far as I know, is monster infighting and its importance. Baiting one monster type to attack another will cause it to switch aggro and retaliate. Purposefully leaving some monsters alive to tear each other apart can save you tons of ammo, but also presents a huge risk, as the resulting fight is more chaotic and dangerous.

A great example is the slime pit in Alien Vendetta's MAP14: Overwhelming Odds. The whole pit is filled with Pinkies, and the only way to exit the pit is a lift opposite the switch you need to hit. But hitting the switch releases two Cyberdemons, who can easily kill you if you get trapped, but can also easily dispatch the Pinkies and save you lots of ammo. How many Pinkies do you kill to get to the lift safely, vs. how many do you leave alive for the Cyberdemons? A little later, you need to return to the pit to activate another switch, which releases a massive cloud of Cacodemons. Do you kill the Cyberdemons before hitting the switch, while the field is nice and clear, but go it alone against the Cacos? Or do you leave the Cyberdemons to thin out the horde, then risk fighting them with random Cacos floating around? Or maybe you only kill one Cyberdemon to split the difference? I've tried all of these strategies, and each has its own strengths, weaknesses, and gameplay flow.

It's truly astonishing to me how much id managed to get right so early on. The fundamentals here are rock-solid, and the blend of fast paced action, using enemies against each other, heavy resource management, and a thick coating of atmosphere for good measure prefigures Resident Evil 4 by a decade. All the dynamic layers of decision-making I yearn for in action games are here, weaving into each other in wonderful interplay. Split-second decisions and execution are, as always, a matter of life and death, but also affect your health and ammo, which leaks into the next encounters. Making too hasty of a retreat at the wrong time can cost you precious territory and create openings for monsters to stake out unfavorable positions, the consequences of which might not be felt until later in the fight. The overall route you devise for tackling a map can vastly change how the onslaught plays out, both in terms of what gear you have access to and what mix of monsters are active.

It should be an obvious conclusion by now that the map has a massive impact on gameplay, especially if you are pistol starting. (sidenote: you should absolutely pistol start levels, lower the difficulty if you have to) Placement of monsters, weapons, resources, and geometry will make or break the experience. and the true mapping virtuoso has a commanding sense of how to arrange these elements to create gripping scenarios that challenge, terrify, surprise, and delight.

Danbo again:

"It’s not artificial intelligence you fight when you’re locked in a room full of Barons of Hell and Revenants and voicelessly asked to pick a side in the resulting infighting (It’ll take more ammo to finish off the barons, but revenants are more likely to give you a nasty right hook or slap you with a rocket in the process) - it’s human intelligence."

Doom 1 and 2's base maps, given the time and constraints id was working under, are an admirable work and good bit of fun, and have undoubtedly served as a crucial creative jumping-off point for the community. But they weren't able to reveal the true brilliance of the game's design: it would be the Casali brothers' Plutonia Experiment, distributed commercially in Final Doom by id a couple years after Doom 2, that began to show off how careful arrangement could bring out the best (and most deadly) in each monster.

As Doomworld's Not Jabba puts it, in their epic history Roots of Doom Mapping (https://www.doomworld.com/25years/the-roots-of-doom-mapping/):

"The Casali brothers laid so much groundwork that all combat-oriented mapping has been a series of footnotes to Plutonia."

The Doom 2 enemies in particular are some of the best ever made, and in Plutonia we can see that each contribute something unique. Hell Knights are balanced bruisers who eat space, health, and ammo in equal measure. Revenants are fragile, but their fast movespeed and homing missiles demand nimble footwork. Chaingunners fall over to stiff breezes, but call forth lead torrents within their sightlines. Mancubi and Arachnotrons lay down blankets of fire, but can be easily dodged close up and are especially prone to starting infights. Pain Elementals are harmless if you stop their Lost Souls from spawning, but sponge up piles of ammo if you let them roam free for too long. Archviles exert their tyrannical rule through long range, delayed-hitscan fire attacks, and they brutally punish inaction by resurrecting nearby fallen foes.

Since the release of Final Doom, Doom's almost 30-year-old community has been steadily building on this foundation, its continued vitality attributable to a complex mix of historical circumstance, id's openness to fan modifications (a stance I am immensely greatful for, and has been highly influential in PC gaming at large), and love of Doom. I confess that I have only begun to dip my toes into the vast world of custom maps, but the tremendous fun I've had so far, as well as the glowing reception for projects like Scythe 2, Valiant, Ancient Aliens, and Sunlust, has me eager to dive deeper. This is a community that most games would kill for, and the fact that it's gone largely overlooked, even by many fellow lovers of game mechanics, can only be described as utterly criminal.

An all-around great resource for learning more is MtPain27's Dean of Doom Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/MtPain27), where he reviews both new and old WADs level-by-level. His love of Doom is infectious, and he gives a great sense for the age, breadth, and brilliance of the mapping scene. Skilled players like Decino (https://www.youtube.com/c/decino) can also help show off the deeper aspects of gameplay, as well as engine quirks to add to your knowledge repertoire.

There are certainly some problems with the game (random damage and berserk with the chainsaw come to mind) but these are negligible when juxtaposed with the whole. I am utterly awed and humbled by what has been created here, and I don't see anything comparable emerging again. This is the type of game you could spend your whole life exploring and mastering.

Simply put: One of the greatest games of all time.

This is a weird one for me. I've enjoyed my time with Sunbreak, certainly more than with base Rise, and at first I was hooked, but sadly it's become clear that this isn't the pivot into smart, fast, ability-based combat I was hoping for, but instead just a repair crew led by a new director coming to fix base Rise's baffling mistakes. It's definitely the best 5th gen game, but a 5th gen game nonetheless, with all the baggage that entails, plus some new problems for good measure.

Most of this review will be negative, but the game as a whole is actually decent, hence my rating. I played it, I mildly enjoyed it, I would tentatively recommend it to others depending on their interest and the price point. I like Gunlance, good weapon. But the discussion around this series endlessly frustrates me, because it seems that flaws are either glossed over or only superficially addressed. You can find plenty of people online talking up Sunbreak's virtues, especially over Rise: the progression, difficulty, no Rampages, endgame systems, gear balance, crabs (damn I love the crabs), and so on. Flowery writing and nice sentiments have their place, but you can read that elsewhere. What I find lacking is deep, meaty analysis.

So I'll save us some time and just reach straight for the butcher's knife.

---

I will overlook a lot of bullshit if a game's fundamentals are high-quality, see DMC3, MHFU, etc. But sadly it's just not fully there for Sunbreak, despite all the improvements, and my gut says that there are some deep flaws here that are hard to ignore. If I had to pin it down in a few words, the combat feels too "passive" and "reactive"; it feels like my actions don't have much influence on the state of the monster beyond just dealing damage.

In most other action games (DMC, Ninja Gaiden, etc.), each individual enemy can be put into a variety of states, such as hitstunned, launched, grabbed, jumped on, etc. which all have different causes and effects. But monsters only have a few states: normal, flinch, exhausted, and immobilized. Immobilizing a monster generally isn't very interactive, and just serves as a reward for the player using some simple mechanic (KO, damage topple, wyvern ride, hunting helpers, ...). Exhaust is a similar story, albeit nice for varying the pace more organically. Flinching can interrupt monster attacks, but because monsters move around so much, keeping track of flinch thresholds is very difficult (moreso than older games) and only done at the highest levels of play. So most of your time will be spent with the monster moving and attacking while being unaffected by your actions.

In the past, Freedom Unite tackled this problem with monster AI. Monsters moved and attacked in predictable ways based on where you were standing, but their attacks were quite dangerous unless you were well-positioned in advance, so balancing offense and defense with an eye towards the future was key. These days this is mostly gone, as what the monster does is largely determined by raw RNG that you have little control over, excepting the specific fixed strings of moves that are coded into the AI. Furthermore, the monsters have so many moves and so much movement they can do from neutral, that it's not feasible to play around them in advance. These two factors combined essentially eliminate preemptive positioning beyond the canned "monster will do X -> Y -> Z, so prepare for Y and Z if you see X".

So your best bet in neutral is to stand somewhere midrange and do one of two things: wait for the monster to attack, then dodge and punish, or throw out big attacks and take trades. While this can be fun in its own right, especially when you experiment with aggressive ways to leverage openings within or after attacks, eventually it inches dangerously close to a call-and-response structure that gets old fast. Even the micropositioning that's long been a series staple, while still enjoyable to a degree, is dampened by the ridiculous tracking on many moves, which is there to hit players using the various extremely powerful defensive tools attached to wirebugs, and partially because higher framerates than 30 are glitched and increase tracking.

Because your attacks can't really affect the monster beyond dealing damage, and the micropositioning of hitboxes and movement is less emphasized, more pressure is put on balancing to differentiate moves. MH has never really been that good at balance, but in the past it's been serviceable, with the major exception of Generations Ultimate, where at least you can ignore most of it if you really want. While Sunbreak is probably better off balance-wise than GU (really not saying much), now the stakes are higher, with the core mechanics of Wirebugs and Switch Skills at play.

Wirebugs in general don't really feel like much of a resource to manage at all. This is partially because most of the cooldowns are low, so by the time you would need a bug, you almost always have it (unless you're wirefalling on every single hit). It's also partially because the tradeoffs between silkbinds aren't really there. Often there is either one silkbind that is obviously the best to spam (Hammer's Impact Crater, Switch Axe's counter, Charge Blade's Counter Peak Performance, etc.), or the desirable silkbinds (many of which have ridiculous defensive properties) are low cooldown as previously mentioned.

Wirefall, a mechanic with great potential for defensive decision-making, is severely hurt by this, as the intended cooldown tradeoff is mostly irrelevant compared to its power. This forced the developers to add:

- "Gotcha" followups that catch wirefall, which are trivially memorized and don't contribute to depth long-term.
- Combos that need wirefall to break out of, which feels less like a strategic decision to conserve wirebugs and more like being punished for getting caught at an unlucky time.
- Simply banning wirefall for certain attacks, which "works" but is rather clumsy and has no pattern that I could discern.

For better implementations of resources like Wirebugs see Nioh 2 Anima meter, Unsouled meter/Ghost Orbs, probably many fighting games, and MHGU hunter arts.

Switch Skills are a little less egregious, and there are some gems like Greatsword's Surge Slash Combo and Gunlance's Blast Dash, but a lot of them are just bad compared to their alternatives, and not even situationally useful or significantly different to play, which really limits the impact of Switch Skill Swap beyond the skills that impact the swap action itself. It's sort of like if Nioh only had 1-2 stances per weapon but still had flux, it's neat I guess but falls short of its potential.

Why nobody brings this next point up continually baffles me: 5th gen MH feels substantially worse to control than older games. Movement feels slippery, and the animations smooth into each other in an unsatisfying way. One of the joys of classic MH was how weighty yet precise everything felt. Slamming your meticuously-aimed Greatsword into a monster's head, waiting just the right amount of split-seconds, then watching your hunter snap into motion to iframe the next attack was a fantastic feeling that never got old. But that's gone now, presumably for "realism"/"fluidity"/trailer footage. And it's not like this is some unsolvable problem; DMC, Ninja Gaiden, and Nioh are as least as fast-paced as Sunbreak but feel much better to control. This might sound like a nitpick, but this is the type of thing that gets stuck in your subconscious, silently influencing the texture of your experience.

Given that this series has adopted a Call of Duty style dev cycle, it's not terribly surprising that the systems around the fundamentals, even the newer additions, have accrued MMO-like bloat and internal tension. Just to name a few:

- Why are you allowed to ride the dog and sharpen during combat?
- Why would you ever use more than one ammo type for gun if you can just restock your best type?
- Why do the strongest healing items in the game have the fastest use animation?
- Why is the inventory limited at all if you can just restock?
- Why are there still tons of completely useless armor skills?
- Why does wyvern ride do so much damage yet has nothing to do with the regular combat systems?
- Why do weapons still have obviously garbage moves like GS upswing that are almost 20 years old?
- Why does auto-farm still need busywork maintenance?
- etc.

You basically have to self-restrict to work around these problems, which would be alright if there were only a few obvious things to ban, like Freedom Unite's traps and flashes or DMC/Bayo's consumable items. But here it's a mess because they're littered everywhere, mixed in with other mechanics, and difficult to identify for inexperienced players. It's like if there were a hundred DMC/Bayo items in the same category as the weapons. And plenty of them either exert broad influence on the game or can't be easily banned at all.

---

Let's be crystal clear on this point: the problem is NOT that Sunbreak isn't old MH. Old MH is useful as a point of comparison, because it faces many of the same critical design questions. But as the context around those questions changes, those existing answers need to be reevaluated.
I'm not asking for Freedom Unite 2, Freedom Unite already exists and I can play it right now. What I am asking for is a solid game.

Every so often I hear people say that Rise is "a bad MH game, but a good action game." Frankly I suspect the people saying this don't play other action games (except maybe Souls which is another can of worms). But they are "right" in one sense: MH doesn't have some special privilege that protects it from comparisons to games outside of its series.

Nioh 2 has tons of bosses, a stamina system, powerful abilities tied to a shared meter, a handful of weapon types,
and on the fly moveset switching. It executes nearly all of these better than Sunbreak. But that's because Team Ninja is an experienced studio whose reputation and livelihood depends on making solid, polished games, while Monster Hunter is a juggernaut series that's accrued plenty of inertia through loyalty, branding, and multiplayer, so the quality (or lack thereof) in its mechanics is mostly lost on the playerbase. I commend Monster Hunter's dev teams and management for maintaining a reasonable level of craftsmanship even in these conditions, but is missed potential really surprising when all the incentives are pushing against it?

At the end of the day, if you are looking for good 1v1 boss fights, Monster Hunter is still the best series by a big margin. The fundamentals of timing and positioning are still intact enough to have a good time running through the main story with your weapon(s) of choice, and many of the classic MH trappings are as fun as they've ever been. But, sadly, I'm not seeing this entry, or future ones if the series's recent history is anything to go by, as a game to deeply invest into and love.

Ah well, nothing lasts forever.

Copy/Paste of my review of it on Steam.


Finished on Master Soul.

Unsouled is a game that I think needed a bit more polish, but still delivers on a satisfying combat experience with a plethora of mechanics to dig your claws into. Theres a lot of minor and major nuance to every attack and move in your arsenal, which is massive. I would have liked to see more harder elite enemies and combinations of those, because many combat encounters can feel quite musou-esque with the amount of violence you dish out on waves of small enemies. The bosses are good and fun almost unanimously, though.

If you're someone who enjoys a difficult combat-focused game you'll probably enjoy this. The camera can be a bit too antagonistic, mind, and the see-through vision through walls doesn'tdo enough. Also I do wish there was a bit... more? Bosses weren't easy, but there was nothing that TRULY felt like it was pushing the system to its peak. Kamas was close, though.

Either way, fun game! Hope theres some dlc for it of some kind.

It's easy to write The Evil Within off as Shinji Mikami attempting to repeat his success with Resident Evil 4 on a new generation of hardware but I think that'd be selling TEW a bit short. Yes, it has a lot of surface level similarities to one of the greatest games of all time, but TEW has a much darker side to it. A more ruthless, unapologetic side.

One very appreciated similarity between TEW and RE4 is how utterly unforgiving it is. While some shooters will offer the occasional one-hit-kill hazard, TEW makes them a constant throughout the 10 hour long adventure and you're expected to die to them frequently. TEW does not tolerate mistakes, either in the player's execution or decision making. Checkpoints are common enough that failure rarely feels soul crushing but death is around every corner and on a first playthrough you'll constantly be on edge. I was second guessing my decisions far more often than in most third person shooters and I consider that a strong positive.

While RE4 uses its tank controls and lack of movement while aiming as a key part of its challenge, TEW offers a more conventional control scheme. Your player character, Sebastian Castellanos(badass name btw), can move freely while aiming and is much more nimble. To accommodate this, enemies are far more aggressive and slightly less predictable than in RE4. While this can occasionally lead to moments where an enemies acts in a wild manner that borders on unfair, I think it helps make the fights more dynamic. Maybe it's because I've played through RE4 over 50 times at this point and have only played TEW around 7 but I find it a lot harder to go into autopilot in TEW as I feel a lot more can go wrong for you at a given moment. It's a similar tense feeling to RE4 but a bit more manic.

While RE4 feels very focused on it's set of escalating challenges, TEW is a lot more scatterbrained. Every few chapters introduces not only new enemies and obstacles, but entirely different pacing and context for the frights you face. One chapter will have you being cold and calculated while the next will put you into a mad frenzy. This all makes it hard to judge TEW as a whole because the game's quality can change on a dime depending on what kind of scenario it throws you into but overall I think the variety and ruthlessness makes for an engaging and memorable game. Perhaps it's the at times brutal difficulty and demand for you to learn on the fly that made TEW a bit of a dud to critics and casual players but like many games of its kind I recommend you give it a shot and don't immediately write it off as a cheap RE4 knock-off. It may not reach the same pristine quality of Leon's most acclaimed outing but it still manages to stand on its own, even if it can be a bit jank at times.

Played for ~60 hours, SSS rank on hardest available difficulty for all levels. Runs here.

Really, really solid piece of work, especially for a game with 2/3rds of its planned content still forthcoming. Considering the game is free, there is no reason not to try it if you're an action game fan.

Magenta Horizon holds a deep reverence for two of the most fundamental pillars of action games: positioning and dynamism. Hollow Knight's influence on the movement (and the game in general) is obvious, but the addition of a diagonal dive and a hook attack that pulls you through enemies makes things significantly more interesting than simply jumping and pogoing around. DMC-like strings with various useful properties also add much-needed nuance and agency to the ground combat. The tension between safety/mobility in the air and options/damage potential on the ground informs almost every decision you make, and you'll find yourself constantly evaluating which is better suited for the moment.

A varied and volatile enemy roster puts this into context, and each disrupts you in different ways with melee attacks, speed, projectiles, or sheer size. The small helicopters are a favorite of mine: their simple attacks aren't much threat, but their spinning propellers will hit you on contact, making aerial getaways from more oppressive enemies deceptively challenging. Arenas filling up with hordes of different foes, all acting independently, gives rise to the delightful controlled chaos that so many of the action game greats are known for. Bosses are also pleasantly dynamic, with varied attack patterns and a Souls/Monster Hunter-style stagger system to keep things fresh. Once you beat the middle difficulty, give the highest a shot, it's where the game truly shines. Each encounter is completely redone, with tough enemies from the last stage suddenly appearing in the very first. Some of the best and most creative fights are found here, as the dev starts to go wild with cramped arenas, oppressive environmental hazards, enemy spawning setups, and synergistic compositions.

Each of the subweapons in the game are distinct, and have multiple situationally useful properties rather than explicitly hard countering anything. Creating the spike in midair will slam you to the ground (invaluable for movement), and the boomerang can be aimed in different trajectories to deal general damage over a wide area or stagger fliers quickly. Some even combine with each other: for example, timing your spike to skewer a boomerang creates a stationary spinning blade that deals massive DPS to anything in reach. A la Alien Soldier, each weapon can be assigned to one or more of 8 possible slots, and each slot has its own meter. The frightening levels of lethality you can achieve by maximizing this brings combat to a blistering speed, especially in later stages where tough arenas reward clean speedkilling.

Artwork and music are both obvious standouts that anyone can appreciate, and lend the game a distinct character. Pinks and purples cover otherworldly vistas, and the enemy menagerie is both delightfully creative and a treat to watch in motion. The progressive metal soundtrack is also fantastic, one of the best in recent memory.

There are definitely still some kinks to be worked out. As a new player, especially one without high-level action game experience, the initial experience is extremely overwhelming with the amount of options and movement you have. Almost nothing can be canceled out of, which works great as a design decision but feels punishing early on. UI needs some polish, and can feel cheap and awkward to navigate. Early level design is both needlessly confusing to traverse (especially since there's no map) and doesn't stand out much in terms of creative fights. Luckily, both of these improve as you get further in. Bugs pop up every so often since the game's still in heavy development, but in my experience these rarely affected gameplay. You can report any you find to the dev and he'll usually fix it quickly. The necklace system (equippables with playstyle-altering buffs) simply doesn't have enough options yet to provide meaningful tradeoffs. The game is also a bit light on content currently, as expected, but what's there is high quality.

Overall, I'm extremely impressed at the level of achievement here so far, especially in the context of a solo dev project. I can't wait to see where the project goes next, I only see things getting better from here.

TLDR just go play it, it's free. https://maddison-baek.itch.io/magenta-horizon

"If a stupid pothead with barely enough time spent enjoying this game like me can do it on Level-Die, I have no idea what is wrong with certain people whose job it is to inform the gaming public."

This quote was in the description of a video that was meant as a response to IGN's now infamous review of this game by a user named Saurian, 14 years ago. All there was to the video was a demonstration of the user's skill with the combat system. (You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyfbtSyX3mc)

Everyone knows of IGN's infamous 3/10 review. Before I knew of God Hand, I knew of that image that compared this game's 3.0 score to Imagine Party Babyz 7.5 score, which was meant to show the sheer incompetence of IGN. Now for me, I'm a little more laid back when I see mainstream game reviewers' scores since the majority of them are written by independent writers which may not reflect the whole staff's opinion, yet is put onto review aggregate websites as the companies score, rather than the independent writer. Chris Roper, the man who wrote the God Hand review, didn't even do the review for Imagine Party Babyz, but people look at both reviews as it was written by one entity, which I feel is a major problem with mainstream game reviewing outlets as a whole.

That being said though, Chris Roper's review is still awful, the whole thing is written with a clear level of frustration towards the game, to the point where it becomes condescending, but that doesn't mean there aren't valid points within the review. It's got weird tank controls that feel out of place for a 3rd person action beat 'em up. The level design revolves around basic geometry and shapes and textures look very low-res (The cage that's used for the Chihuahua race isn't even textured), the game uses random elements for spawning items and even spawning demons from dead enemies, and the game doesn't refill health upon entering new sections in a stage.

I think what caused such backlash from game critics for God Hand was its time of release. God Hand was a late 2006 PS2 release, and the PS2 gen saw what was considered the golden age of character action games. We got Devil May Cry 1 & 3, Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Resident Evil 4, God of War, among other games. Comparing to all of those games that released within that time frame, God Hand's tank controls and basic level design looked outdated and primitive. The budget for this game was most likely 5 dollars and was used so Shinji Mikami could get lunch for the single day it was developed.

Here's the thing though: None of that fucking matters.

Never before have I played a game that didn't give a single flying shit about looking pretty or adding in less samey enemy types or making the game easier to give it more appeal. God Hand sacrificed all of those things to make it the game it is: a game about constantly testing the player.

God Hand's most notorious mechanic is the dynamic difficulty system. Similar to Resident Evil 4, the game will make enemy AI more aggressive, do new moves, or even group up in pairs more depending on what level you are at (it goes from Lvl 1, 2, 3, Die) but unlike RE4, God Hand doesn't hide it in the background. It's constantly in your face at the bottom left-hand screen at all times, letting the player know what level they are at and when they'll get to the next one. When playing the game for the first few hours, you'll most likely stay around the level 1-2 area, but later on, when you get more accustomed to the game's mechanics, you might start staying around the level 3 and level Die area, even if the game starts throwing more challenging enemy types at you.

That's when I realized something special about God Hand. It subtlety fixes one of the biggest hurdles in the action game genre: Ranking systems. Most action games have a system where at the end of each level, it tallies how well you did on certain aspect like time, combos, and even collecting currency and gives the player an award adjusted to how well they did (be it a higher letter or a shinier trophy.). While these are meant to encourage repeat playthroughs, they can also be frustrating to newer players, as they are constantly being told they aren't doing good enough, despite action games being about learning mechanics and repeating those levels to get better at them. You aren't encouraged to know what to look out for on each level to even get a good rank for your first time either, which that in itself causes more confusion or frustration to newer players.

God Hand instead takes those ranking systems and discards them, and rather than tally you at the end of a level, you are being shown just exactly how good you are doing, and at the end of each stage you are rewarded with more money based on how many enemies you killed at the rank you were in, rather than giving you a trophy that's only meant for bragging rights. I believe this is what makes God Hand so inherently fun on the face of it. It's not only a great action game with tightly designed combat, enemies, and bosses, but also a game that actively encourages the player to get better at it. I first feared that moment I hit level 3, but as the game went on, I kept wanting to get on level Die. Weaving effortlessly through your enemies punches and counter-attacking crowds of enemies with your sweep kicks, or launching them in the air and hitting them with a Shoryuken to a kick in the face sending them flying. Your adrenaline starts pumping as you see that meter go higher and higher. You think you are getting good at God Hand, and it's starting to take its gloves off for you, the player. But you start to feel like a god yourself. You feel like you can punch a hole through concrete, the game's challenge is just so exciting... and then it kicks your ass! You feel like you've been brutalized. I've had this happen to me with each death, but never once I did I ever get tired of this game. I kept going at it, because every time I hit level Die and survived those encounters, I never felt a more satisfying feeling in a video game.

I think about the quote I introduced in the first paragraph a lot, because despite God Hand being one of the most challenging games I've ever played, it is also a game I think anyone can enjoy, and I'm very glad I got to play it myself. It's compromised in so many areas, but what it does right left me with one of the most satisfying and memorable action games I've ever played. So, from the bottom of my heart: Play God Hand... it's probably better than Imagine Party Babyz.

Joseph Anderson made an excellent video on this game, so for the sake of brevity I'll just refer you to it, while adding some short comments of my own below. Video here

The first 20-30 hours really are magical, and the force of that experience can't be denied. Seeing fantastic new areas and enemies, taking in the massive scope of the world, getting lost somewhere unfamiliar, spotting some distant location on the horizon and realizing you can actually go there, if you can figure out a path. It evokes Dark Souls 1's best moments, and I wouldn't begrudge anyone for loving the game from this alone.

The legacy dungeon design is characteristically impressive but still feels like a regression in some aspects. The sheer size and complexity of many dungeons is breathtaking, the ambition really shines through here. Jumping lets you traverse the environment in lots of creative and organic ways, and interacts well with the aforementioned complexity. Unfortunately however, nothing here really comes close to DS1 classics like Sen's Fortress in terms of considered design. The Stake of Marika is a fantastic addition, but its potential is largely wasted, as instead of leaning into it to make bonfires more scarce and important, bonfires appear at the same or higher frequency than previous games. For some reason fast travel is allowed within legacy dungeons, which kills a lot of the tension of exploration and the risk of losing souls. Shortcuts feel less important and traps feel less deadly.

It's also far too easy to run past everything in the open world with the horse, with only a few exceptions. A hostile landscape with enemies and hazards at every turn should not feel like a walk in the park to traverse. It was only after making a second character that I realized how badly this murders the replayability. Fast travel serves as yet another bandaid fix here, reprising its usual modern FromSoft role.

For all the game's virtues, the feeling I'm left with at the end is bitterness, which is probably why this is still on my mind. I'm bitter that I can sense an awareness of the typical open world pitfalls but somehow the game still falls into them. I'm bitter that I can't trust FromSoft to learn from its mistakes here, especially in the combat. I'm bitter that the enjoyable level design almost feels squandered by the other elements. I'm bitter that the daring spirit of Demon's Souls, the willingness to wildly experiment and defy expectations, has floated away like a soul leaving a corpse. But most of all I'm bitter that the game really does reach the lofty heights of Dark Souls 1 at times. It climbs the mountain, ascending higher than even the old mentor, until, with a confidence bordering on absentmindedness, it loses its grip and plummets down, down, down into the abyss.

"…But even so, one day the flames will fade, and only Dark will remain. And even a legend such as thineself can do nothing to stop that." - Hawkeye Gough

While it's undoubtedly an impressive achievement on many levels, I just didn't like Elden Ring as much as previous From games - of which I have played a great many, going all the way back to the early 2000s. The introduction of the open world has unfortunately diluted what I valued and exacerbated pre-existing problems to the extent that I actively rushed through the second half of my 80 hour playthrough.

It's all down to level design essentially. Dark Souls and Bloodborne for me were elevated by the sparks of brilliance inherent in their world design and path building, those moments of discovery overcoming my dislike of other game elements - the repetitive nature of boss runbacks, grinding for levels, and so on. This, coupled to a linearity of goals within a context where multiple paths offer district experiences was what drove me onwards.

And this is where ER's design philosophy runs counter to what I enjoy. The introduction of the open world means the addition of plenty of filler content generated from templates; outside of the main legacy dungeons, you are going to have seen most of what the game has to show you before you leave Limgrave, but you better be hyped to fight the same mini-bosses multiple times, because that's what's on offer. This review is an excellent summary of some of my issues, with some mechanical spoilers: https://backloggd.com/u/Woodaba/review/337912/

I've seen many comments praising the side content to the effect of: "if the critical path is too hard or not fun, you can go and do other content until you're ready to take it on". I'm sorry, but that's not how I want to spend my time, making progress by repeatedly seeing the same enemies and areas while grinding out levels and upgrade materials. The joy for me lies in advancing the story and world state, and if I'm not doing that, it feels like time ill spent.

Note: it is a quirk of my personality that I can't stand being bored. I despise repetition and want constant novelty, especially in entertainment. Conversely, I'm also compelled to investigate and seek out what content is available, because not seeing everything I could is deeply unpleasant and unsettling to me - an orientation that open world design with its emphasis on rote box ticking activities interacts with very poorly. This might go some way towards explaining why I had the reactions I did.

At this point, you're probably asking why I'm not mentioning the combat or boss design, which is by all accounts unparalleled. The sad fact is that those things are secondary contributors to my enjoyment, and while I enjoyed working out an effective build and set of strategies, I just can't find it in me to value those systems as much as many obviously do. That said, I found the bosses in Bloodborne far more compelling to face. I also didn't enjoy that I felt funnelled down a particular build path and towards exploiting a small number of mechanics to beat late game bosses—and it's evident by the number of players leaving coop signs with very similar gear that this isn't just a me issue.

So what did I enjoy, and why did I spend so much time finishing this game? Well, it does have some beautiful enemy and location designs, mostly along the critical path. The story itself is thematically linked to the earlier Souls games, but adds just enough unfamiliar elements to sustain my interest through to the finale. Positioning and patience in combat remains tactical and interesting moment-to-moment, and the number of cheap deaths seemed lower this time around.

There are numerous quality of life improvements that were appreciated: for instance, pointing out NPCs on the map is essential in a game with so many small quests in such a large area it would otherwise be impossible to keep track. Having access to NPC summons that mimic coop multiplayer is great, although you're prevented from using them outside boss arenas, a decision that I heartily disagree with.

In summation, this is not the game I would suggest if you were interested in this Miyazaki-verse everyone's been talking about, or if you're interested in an "open world done right", as I've heard it described. Instead, it's an experience that caters to players who love a hard combat experience with a varied array of builds and weapons, and are willing to commit a lot of time to adapting to a flexible if unforgiving set of rules.

If that sounds like you, more power to you, I hope you loved this game. I just... didn't. Perhaps the next one will be an Armored Core, and I'll be the one singing its praises while the world collectively shrugs it off, who knows?

The reputation of the Souls Series has long been its downfall. Dark Souls 2, with its global death tracker prominently displayed at the beginning of the game, delighted in making encounters artificially difficult by adding a multiplier to the enemies one would face at a time. Dark Souls 3, having seen that players took to rolling through attacks to avoid them, added immense amounts of unnatural delay to all boss attacks to punish players for dodging prematurely. All of this felt too meta to thoroughly enjoy an experience. Instead of an organic challenge galvanizing the player, the omnipresence of an unseen hand ensuring a needless difficulty discouraged them.

It was only Sekiro and Bloodborne, two games unfettered with a similar name to their predecessors, that managed to iterate on an increasingly stale formula in a satisfying manner. The latter leaned into fast paced aggression following the all-time slow pace of DS2, what with its lack of shield options and healing-by-damage-dealt mechanics. Sekiro turned the entire combat system on its head by introducing the slightest amount of depth. This was not only evident in the parrying system but also the variety of combat arts one could unlock. These games weren’t without flaws, but they felt more like a studio expressing itself rather than one needing to deliver on the promise of the baggage that comes with “Souls”.

Which is all to say that I had high expectations for Elden Ring. Despite the mechanical similarities this wasn’t a Souls game and thus From Software would have more freedom to craft whatever experience they wanted to deliver to players. Unfortunately they seemed to intentionally aim for derivative, and the parts of the game that displayed innovation floundered.

I think the problems here can be sorted into two boxes: Old and New.

The old problems I wrote about earlier: there are still too many multiboss encounters. Exacerbating the issue is that the bosses in question were clearly not designed to gel with one another a la Ornstein and Smough or double Maneaters (the rare times pre-DS2 games played this card). This is easy to see based on the fact that without fail players will encounter half of a multiboss fight elsewhere in the game, sometimes even paired with a different partner.

These bosses, solitary or otherwise, are still full attack delay out of nowhere. Imagine cutting into your steak as you eat dinner. You spear it with your fork, raise your knife, wait the customary 3.5 seconds, then cut in. Ridiculous, no? Imagining the steak strafing around you as you rotate in place during those 3.5 seconds only serves to weaken this metaphor, but hopefully you see my point on how unnatural this all feels.

It’s almost paradoxical in a way. If bosses take forever to attack, then it should make fighting two of them at once more manageable. This is true, but it misses the point. The problem here is never the difficulty, it’s the feeling one gets from the encounter. Organic vs artificial. Natural vs unnatural. The more these scales tip towards their latter ends, the less patience the player has to tackle a challenge put before them regardless of its difficulty.

These topics have been written about for years since prior From games have released, but luckily Elden Ring also provides plenty of new topics for discourse insofar as missteps.

The largest issue, perhaps with the entire game, is how the open world impacts the player experience. I have never seen a game that demands as much self-regulation on the part of the player as this one. Almost any challenge one comes across can be circumvented and returned to later at a higher level. And I want to be clear, I’m not speaking of grinding. That was always an option for lower skilled players in previous games.

No, one can go encounter new novel experiences, level up naturally, and then return to a previous roadblock hours later. While this might sound like a positive to some, it only serves to undercut what could have been a carefully designed difficulty curve in a more linear game. What makes this so problematic is the fun delta between something that is challenging and something that isn’t.

Combat remains relatively shallow in Elden Ring, and when one applies that shallow combat to an easy to defeat enemy, the triviality of the experience can only result in boredom.

I spent plenty of early hours pushing myself through the Caelid area of the game, one I now know is meant for somewhat higher level players, such that by the time I reached the Liurnia area I demolished everything. The magic academy? I don’t think I died once in my time there. It took some time before my level reacclimated to my surroundings, but the threat of sabotaging my own experience was always there. The fun I had in Caelid came at the expense of my fun in Liurnia.

This all comes down to agency and information. I believe that this is a high agency, low information game. You can go anywhere, but many of the game’s systems and objectives are hidden from you. For someone who loves adventure games, this is the dream. But it absolutely does not gel with the need for challenging gameplay and the game’s RPG mechanics. And it is all caused by the decision to go open world.

What does the open world offer? Surely not the agency I just spoke of; that was still present in spades in the much more linear Dark Souls. But it does offer discovery and diversity, both of which are quite meaningful.

Part of the fun of Elden Ring is the social aspect. Chatting with friends, conversations would often follow a pattern of:

“You know this thing I found 20 hours ago?”
“What the fuck no?? I never found that. What is it?”

And that latter surprise was both genuine and matched with an equally strong sense of interest. In an era of games that don’t do much to endear themselves to players outside of a visceral yet fleeting sense of “fun”, Elden Ring’s sense of discovery is sorely appreciated. It also plays into a feeling of diversity between any two players’ experience.

Looking at things in context, I’m happy Elden Ring’s open world exists to differentiate it from the other games in the “series”. They are all dangerously close to being identical, so any identifying characteristics are appreciated. But the decision to marry that open world with these gameplay mechanics was a misfire. This is yet another reason From shouldn’t shackle themselves to “light attack, heavy attack, roll”.

A new game engine would not necessitate a strict monitoring of a difficulty curve that could be undercut so easily. And it would surely be more interesting.

All the same, I can see why they’ve stuck to this. It is fun to fight big bosses while rolling around and punishing their weak points. It’s thrilling when you run out of healing items and the boss is almost dead. But sticking with what works isn’t how one makes a masterpiece, and it’s not how one commands respect for one’s art.

I feel compelled to issue an immediate correction: this isn’t “one’s” art. This game was made by a duo of directors: Miyazaki and someone I will only acknowledge as “the Dark Souls 2 guy”. My enjoyment of this game decreased noticeably once I learned this, as the more confounding areas and encounters of the game suddenly had an explanation behind their presence. The game was tainted.

I’ve been very harsh on Elden Ring, but only because I believe the floor on Souls games to be relatively high. My rating is still a 4/5; I still put 170 hours into it between my 1.25 playthroughs. I’m still playing it. I don’t need to tell you exactly why this game works. But when a series is this successful and this committed to reusing concepts, it’s much more important to note what isn’t working rather than what is.

One final note: there has been a lot of discussion on difficulty options in this series. “Should they be added?” etc. The clear answer is that they’ve had an easy mode since the original Dark Souls: summoning. They’ve had final resorts for people who are stuck: grinding. And now with Elden Ring they have another option for those of blunted progress: ignoring the problem altogether for several hours. Any calls for a mode labeled “easy” are willfully ignorant of the options available to them. And if these options aren’t enough, you can always load up a different game.

Pretty good. 4/5.

In the documentary Inside Nioh 2, director Fumihiko Yasuda said his primary hope for this duology was that it “will be remembered in the (...) action genre.” I hope so too, because Nioh 2 isn’t just an almost ideal sequel that doubles down on everything that made the first game great, it’s a straight up achievement when it comes to fluidity in combat systems.

Nioh 1 was already good in terms of feeling fluid - the flux system intuitively ties together maintenance of your ki (i.e. stamina), switching weapons and weapons' stances in a way that makes your moveset feel wholistic instead of compartmentalised, and is in general one of those things that makes me think "video games are cool." But Nioh 2's addition of soul cores really takes this to another level. Collecting enemies' soul cores lets you use an attack of theirs yourself, and you can instantly cancel any animation into one of these attacks at any time at the cost of a resource called anima. It's hard to stress just how many possibilities this opens up: you can cancel out of otherwise laggy attacks to be on the assault at all times, dodge or jump in a pinch even when you've run out of ki and string together attacks that you otherwise wouldn't have been able to. Because of all this, weapons which felt relatively limited in the first game (namely axes) also finally feel up to snuff with their peers in terms of options. If all that weren't enough, there are dozens of soul cores to find and endless ways to modify their properties - needless to say build variety is once again off the charts, but to an even greater degree than in the first game. It's absolutely unreal how well everything in Nioh 2 flows together with the addition of this system; it makes so many mechanics constantly feed into each other while trusting you to play a constant balancing act between two separate resources, almost like a game within a game. There's tons to consider in the moment-to-moment and to experiment with.

This is accentuated by the new Dark Realm zones, another addition I'm a big fan of. These spoopy areas not only provide a unique buff to each enemy and boss, which helps the already strong variety between them all, but the buffs they get apply to your versions of their attacks too. Enemies playing by the same rules you do was always one of Nioh's strong points, mainly thanks to the fact that they suffer the same penalties for running out of ki as the player, and this takes that even further - now instead of just sharing a common weakness, you get to enjoy a taste of their power too.

On that note, the Devil Trigger equivalent this time around (Yokai Shift) also feels far less disconnected from the rest of your attacks than that of first game. You can seamlessly switch in and out of it if used in range of an enemy who's run out of ki or if you counter one of their most dangerous attacks (signalled with a red flash), which never stops feeling satisfying to pull off.

What I'm basically saying is that Nioh 2 is mad smooth, but there are other things to like about it too. Every boss has at least one mechanic that's unique to them, which changes the way you approach each of them in a natural way and only very rarely evokes the dreaded g-word (g*mmicky). Returning characters' personalities are more fleshed out. Presentation has seen a serious step up with a lot more fantastical vistas to enjoy (seriously, there's no comparison between Nioh 2's final boss vs. the first game's). Levels tend to have more alternate paths to progress through. The music's now dynamic and changes according to how many enemies you're fighting or with boss phases, which makes it stand out a lot more. And the new character creator's also a strong candidate for the best ever.

I'd also be remiss not to mention how well this game handles its different difficulties; this particular area is where you can really feel Team Ninja's action game chops shine through. Difficulties give enemies & bosses new attacks, switch around which attacks of theirs can or can't be countered, change the completion rewards of every mission in the game, add unique status effects to bosses and mini-bosses, add more build options, new tiers of loot and probably other things I'm forgetting. I'm on my fifth playthrough and it still feels fresh thanks to all this stuff.

If you're into Japanese history, Nioh 2 also uses tidbits of historical trivia in ways that are bananas. My favourite is that the real life Magara Naotaka is said to have continued fighting after losing one of his arms in battle, and his unique boss mechanic in this game is that he regrows a demonic arm which you can temporarily break. Off the top of my head, Toyotomi Hideyoshi's also shown to construct an entire castle in one night, which is how Sunomata Castle was allegedly built according to contemporary reports; what some people mistake for poor pacing is actually attention to detail on Team Ninja's part. A sizeable amount of the weapons & armour sets you can equip are actually real as well - I kind of wish every country had an equivalent of Nioh for this reason, because these are all such cool ways to show off your country's history.

Overall, Nioh 2 isn't quite a perfect sequel (I personally wish it hadn't gotten rid of weapons rebounding off walls, for example), but all things considered? It's close enough. Yasuda is a director to keep an eye on for sure.

After 168 hours of playtime (the same amount of time it took to master and complete almost four times Dark Souls 3) I finally achieved everything I wanted to accomplish on the first playthrough of Elden Ring.

Even though I enjoyed it a lot I feel like the game has some issues that unfortunately affect the overall experience quite badly.
Most of the bosses are repeated several tenths of times (I think I've beaten something like 20 crucible knights both as bosses and regular enemies), some of them can be easily cheesed and I've noticed a big ramp up in difficulty towards the end where the game doesn't gradually increase the toughness of the enemies but just throws at you the most unfair, one-shotting, bullshitting bosses all at once.

The meta is fundamentally broken by the bleeding and freezing mechanics, especially in the multiplayer section where it isn't rare to find tank builds with tower shields and bleeding rapiers beating other players with much more complex or, on paper, stronger builds.

The exploration can be quite jarring at times because of the extreme repetition of certain areas or for the trivials methods of exploration intended by the developers.

On the other hand the gameplay feels amazing, apart from the problem which affects the buff mechanic, the fighting is the best as far as Soulsborne games go, every approach is viable, every weapon can be useful and the return of the dual wield mechanic from Dark Souls 2 combined with the brand new ashes of war makes you really want to experiment with the plethora of different equipments the game offers you and, consequently, with the different approaches every weapon can offer.

To wrap up, when I first booted up the game and for the first 20/30 hours I thought that this was not only the perfect souls game but MY personal definition of a perfect game, too bad that after stretching the play time for so long most of its flaws started to emerge.
Defineatly going for the 100% achievement-wise both on steam and when I'll eventually get it on PS4/5 but I don't think I will ever be able to master it to its fullest.
And of course I'm really looking forward for the DLC(s?) that I'm pretty sure will come out sooner or later.

I'll leave you for now Elden Ring but I'll be back someday.

P.S: Also, fuck Malenia.

This game is so awesome! There is so much that is amazing here, and playing this game made me happy. The final game will definetly be an instant purchase for me.Playing this game it is immediately obvious that the developer is a hardcore action game fan, and I think this game holds up with the other great action games I've played so far. I have only one complaint, and I'll leave it after my waves and waves of praise.
My favorite component is the soundtrack, which is just full of pure bangers. I love how the music transitions from exploration to combat, especially with the spike of more metal as a you get into a combat. I consistently listen to the ost for this game, and get boosted by it's energy. it is one of only two soundtracks I've purchased.
The base mechanics lead to an excellent combat system. The movement options are really nice. This has everything I enjoy about hollow knight combat, but with the addition of a couple exceptionally interesting moves and surprising amount of depth in variants for each verb to elevate this to a new level. I'll specifically call out two moves which are incredible and make this game standout a lot.
Dive attack: Having a diagonal downwards dive shakes things up a bunch. It takes a bit to get used too, but once you have a good feel for it {and there are some neat platforming sections that help you get used to it}, combat is injected with this incredible sense of motion. It serves as a great way to leave a pogoing in the air state, either to be incredibly aggressive or as a panicked escape. It also encourages more horizontal movement in general to complement an aerial strategy which makes combat more exciting.
Hook-dash: {a straight hook attack that dashes you through an enemy or obstacle on contact}. This move is a beautiful work of genius. It's shade dash's {from hollow knight} cooler sibling. There's quite a bit of skill to utilizing it because a few moments of wind up {to launch the hook}, so it's not an instant escape tool. Yet the nuances of this move make it loop back around to something that you can use slightly before you're in danger and need to move immediately. I love the momentum you get from using this, and again like the dive attack it encourages horizontal movement across the battle in a great way. Then on top of having this your character still has a normal dash that can also go through enemies, I like how this move takes more skill to use, and is a massive repositioning + evasive maneuver.
The best part is that the enemy design is fantastic and properly challenges and complements this move set. The above mentioned hook maneuver has certain enemies that are immune to it. Yet this is incredibly intuitive and always 100% obvious from visuals {long lads can not be hooked through, but any thin section of any enemy can always be hooked through}. Speaking of well-done visual design, there are helicopters in this game that just jaw droopingly genius in how their design naturally makes them immune to a certain type of attack {pogos}. Each enemy justifies their existence, and creates a certain type of pressure and challenge. Yet these enemies aren't used in isolation , but together in crazy and hectic battles where you have to manage the diversity and scale of problems from tons of enemies all at once. There's quite a few severe difficulty spikes, yet you feel awesome constantly and get huge rushes of satisfaction from managing to clear a chaotic arena or tough boss. The main gameplay here is so strong that I find myself sometimes just opening magenta horizon, doing a random stage, and quickly feeling awesome.
The visual style here is weird in a really exciting and awesome way. I specifically love the vibrant use of colors to create the strange setting. Too many games lack a nice use of color, and that along with some other personal taste has made generally uninterested in the type of setting this game has, but the art style of this game sells me on it. Instead of playing the game despite grotesque things that aren't really my vibe, I was excited to see what strange and twisted thing would be next. Some of the stages are sweet surprises that really standout too .
Now for my one complaint: the checkpoint system sucks and fills me with an indescribable rage. I hate constantly having to redo sections. It really deflates my enjoyment of the game to have to constantly go through battles again and again to get back to the actual part that I want to be playing after I die. The design of the system here is so ridiculous that I could often save time by just restarting the whole level and going for a more optimal checkpoint usage. Sometimes I'll get aggravated with the game and stop solely due to this, but I always return eventually excited to play. The boss battles are a highlight for me because you respawn right outside of the beginning of the fight. If I could play this game in a cheat mode where there were checkpoints before every fight I would be very happy.
Also to not end on negativity, I'll throw in some more lightning round praise
The ranged skills are cool, and there's tons of cool interactions and uses of them that I'm still discovering new stuff for after finishing act 1
The stage select is handy -> especially because you can select difficulty for playing that stage and also still have your characters unlocks
The hard post-game difficulty is interesting and well designed {so far it seems like too much for me but I am enjoying exploring it}
The bosses are chaotic and aggressive which makes them much more interesting than 50% of video game bosses. I can tell that the developer is a fellow GPZ {hollow knight boss} enjoyer.
Finally this game is incredibly impressive as a solo passion project. From studying game dev I'm intimately aware of so many pain points and have a big appreciation for the difficulty of creating a game. So by default I have a respect for any solo game, but this holds up to my actual favorites on top of that, so it is even more impressive. To be honest I idolize the developer a bit, and put them on the same pedestal of all the other monumental developers and games which inspire me to work to get to that level. [Also it should be noted that they are a cool person who I enjoy talking too, and supporting this game is incredibly emotionally satisfying]