Lobotomized Hotline Miami.
OTXO feels like a game that overcomplicates itself from its source material and misses the points that made the Hotline Miami games enjoyable while not committing fully to its roguelike design, resulting in a confused game that lacks cohesion.
The music is great and the game has some nice fancy visual effects. The particles, the environmental debris, the lighting, the shadows, and the ragdoll physics all add a lot to the game's feel and visual feedback. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the overall presentation. The monochrome visuals resulted in a very dull and samey-looking environment, which was a lot of the appeal I felt with Hotline Miami where each level had a distinct color palette that made them immediately recognizable even beyond the level design. Not to mention visual clarity is also lessened as the white bullets just blend in more with the monochrome backgrounds.
The problem also extends beyond the presentation, as the procedural generation of the levels despite the handcrafted rooms just results in everything feeling uniform and derivative. It's usually just a bunch of rooms on the left side and right side of the map, and a big open hallway in the middle. This also doesn't flow very well and clashes with some of the more enjoyable aspects of Hotline Miami, which is to try and fully combo the entire level as you figure out the best pathway in getting through the enemies in succession.
The whole scoring aspect is pretty much gimped too. You do still want to keep up high combos for the coins so you can get more abilities, but with the way things work, it's more reliant on having a lucky seed of RNG rather than mastery of the levels and mechanics. Outside this, it's a lot less exciting and inconsistent to score, which again is a shame since I felt this is one of Hotline Miami's main sources of fun.
Then we get to one of the biggest offenders which is the whole health system. I feel a lot of the flow and intensity of Hotline Miami came from the almost-always-one-hit-kill system. OXTO opting for varying damage and health makes sense for a roguelike, but it still clashes a lot with the overall feeling of the combat which undeniably does still take a lot from Hotline Miami. All the guns sound fantastic and punchy, but it's such a disconnect when they take 2 to 3 hits to kill someone, and there's a lot less feeling of danger when your character also can tank bullets for the most part. Some weapons can one-hit kill, which extends to the fact that the game ultimately even contradicts itself with the mechanic that allows you to remove weapons from rotation, and only select the ones you want. Thus you have the option of keeping only the weapons that can one-hit kill and negating the whole damage system in the first place.
The roguelike design overall just doesn't work with Hotline Miami's style, since another large part of what made Hotline Miami work is the quick inconsequential punishment of death where you can just instantly restart, and learn the level like a time-based puzzle where memorization and then execution comes into play. In OTXO, when you die you start from the beginning, and you're more reliant on getting good RNG with abilities that can help you or layouts that aren't too much of a mess. I did finish this game thrice, with a run that didn't involve using abilities, but most of it devolved into abusing mechanics like the bullet time and dodge rolls. Especially as you get further into a run where all the enemies have different modifiers and they all get stacked haphazardly with no real design in mind how they placed.
This then extends to the other poorly thought-out element, which is the boss fights. They're neat on paper, but poor in execution. Except for one samurai-themed boss, most of it comes down to spamming the dodge roll and waiting for your bullet time to cool down, while avoiding the same three or four attack patterns over and over again because the bosses are bullet sponges.
There's an unlockable 'Impossible Mode' that makes it feel closer to the original Hotline Miami games, with damage raised across the board, which translates to all guns pretty much being one-hit kills and survivable by two to three through lucky shaves. I wish the game was designed with this mode in mind as it resolves the bullet sponge problem with the bosses and retains the fast exciting pace of Hotline Miami. The rest of the problems are still here, but this is where I had most of my enjoyment.
I feel like this game would have been better overall if it's just a linear campaign with a dozen levels or so with an upgrade system slapped onto it. There are some neat elements with the systems here, but they just don't work well together. As a Hotline Miami clone, it lacks a lot of the original game's flow and intensity. As a roguelike, it lacks a lot of the extra systems and mechanics most roguelike games have, including permanent upgrades. Outside some modifiers and the ability to unlock guns and select which of them spawn during a run, there's little progression within the systems themselves.
If you're itching for a top-down shooter with some roguelike elements and a Hotline Miami flavoring, and you're willing to look past the shortcomings, this game is mostly fine. But if you just want more Hotline Miami in general, there's a whole bunch of well-made and creative campaigns, levels, and mods out there in the modding scene, even in HM2's Workshop alone. Not to mention the massive overhaul packs and standalone projects. And if you want a roguelike in general, there is a whole sea of them nowadays that also pretty much does a lot of its dedicated systems better.
Also, OTXO's a stoopid name.
OTXO feels like a game that overcomplicates itself from its source material and misses the points that made the Hotline Miami games enjoyable while not committing fully to its roguelike design, resulting in a confused game that lacks cohesion.
The music is great and the game has some nice fancy visual effects. The particles, the environmental debris, the lighting, the shadows, and the ragdoll physics all add a lot to the game's feel and visual feedback. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the overall presentation. The monochrome visuals resulted in a very dull and samey-looking environment, which was a lot of the appeal I felt with Hotline Miami where each level had a distinct color palette that made them immediately recognizable even beyond the level design. Not to mention visual clarity is also lessened as the white bullets just blend in more with the monochrome backgrounds.
The problem also extends beyond the presentation, as the procedural generation of the levels despite the handcrafted rooms just results in everything feeling uniform and derivative. It's usually just a bunch of rooms on the left side and right side of the map, and a big open hallway in the middle. This also doesn't flow very well and clashes with some of the more enjoyable aspects of Hotline Miami, which is to try and fully combo the entire level as you figure out the best pathway in getting through the enemies in succession.
The whole scoring aspect is pretty much gimped too. You do still want to keep up high combos for the coins so you can get more abilities, but with the way things work, it's more reliant on having a lucky seed of RNG rather than mastery of the levels and mechanics. Outside this, it's a lot less exciting and inconsistent to score, which again is a shame since I felt this is one of Hotline Miami's main sources of fun.
Then we get to one of the biggest offenders which is the whole health system. I feel a lot of the flow and intensity of Hotline Miami came from the almost-always-one-hit-kill system. OXTO opting for varying damage and health makes sense for a roguelike, but it still clashes a lot with the overall feeling of the combat which undeniably does still take a lot from Hotline Miami. All the guns sound fantastic and punchy, but it's such a disconnect when they take 2 to 3 hits to kill someone, and there's a lot less feeling of danger when your character also can tank bullets for the most part. Some weapons can one-hit kill, which extends to the fact that the game ultimately even contradicts itself with the mechanic that allows you to remove weapons from rotation, and only select the ones you want. Thus you have the option of keeping only the weapons that can one-hit kill and negating the whole damage system in the first place.
The roguelike design overall just doesn't work with Hotline Miami's style, since another large part of what made Hotline Miami work is the quick inconsequential punishment of death where you can just instantly restart, and learn the level like a time-based puzzle where memorization and then execution comes into play. In OTXO, when you die you start from the beginning, and you're more reliant on getting good RNG with abilities that can help you or layouts that aren't too much of a mess. I did finish this game thrice, with a run that didn't involve using abilities, but most of it devolved into abusing mechanics like the bullet time and dodge rolls. Especially as you get further into a run where all the enemies have different modifiers and they all get stacked haphazardly with no real design in mind how they placed.
This then extends to the other poorly thought-out element, which is the boss fights. They're neat on paper, but poor in execution. Except for one samurai-themed boss, most of it comes down to spamming the dodge roll and waiting for your bullet time to cool down, while avoiding the same three or four attack patterns over and over again because the bosses are bullet sponges.
There's an unlockable 'Impossible Mode' that makes it feel closer to the original Hotline Miami games, with damage raised across the board, which translates to all guns pretty much being one-hit kills and survivable by two to three through lucky shaves. I wish the game was designed with this mode in mind as it resolves the bullet sponge problem with the bosses and retains the fast exciting pace of Hotline Miami. The rest of the problems are still here, but this is where I had most of my enjoyment.
I feel like this game would have been better overall if it's just a linear campaign with a dozen levels or so with an upgrade system slapped onto it. There are some neat elements with the systems here, but they just don't work well together. As a Hotline Miami clone, it lacks a lot of the original game's flow and intensity. As a roguelike, it lacks a lot of the extra systems and mechanics most roguelike games have, including permanent upgrades. Outside some modifiers and the ability to unlock guns and select which of them spawn during a run, there's little progression within the systems themselves.
If you're itching for a top-down shooter with some roguelike elements and a Hotline Miami flavoring, and you're willing to look past the shortcomings, this game is mostly fine. But if you just want more Hotline Miami in general, there's a whole bunch of well-made and creative campaigns, levels, and mods out there in the modding scene, even in HM2's Workshop alone. Not to mention the massive overhaul packs and standalone projects. And if you want a roguelike in general, there is a whole sea of them nowadays that also pretty much does a lot of its dedicated systems better.
Also, OTXO's a stoopid name.