I really didn't enjoy this one as much as I wanted to.
For a metroidvania, there's very little incentive to actually explore. 90% of the items I found were just hats with purely cosmetic use. The different areas weren't too eye catching either, and having an almost monochrome pallette didn't help it.
The thing that drew me in was the kunai swinging. It's the most interesting mechanic, and when it worked, I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the level design rarely takes advantage of it. More often than not you'll find yourself in Hollow Knight-esque tight subterranean corridors, unable to freely swing around and gain momentum. That said, the devs did put effort into designing paths to swing through even in these tight levels, but the lack of focus makes me think there's a lot of missed potential. Imo, this game would have been way better as a linear action platformer. The slower metroidvania pace doesn't do it much good.
Combat's rather mediocre. You have your main meele katana and gain some ranged sub weapons as you go on. The problem here mostly lies with the enemy design, it's rather uninteresting save a few exceptions. Your katana swings resemble Hollow Knight again, but they don't feel nearly as tight. I also gotta mention that enemy placement is very cheap, I would end up tanking many hits because I landed onto an enemy that I couldn't see was there.
Lastly, many people may not care, but this game has some really lackluster world building. I didn't really expect a good story, but the opening cinematic made me think maybe there would be something interesting, and the rest of the game simply destroyed that notion. I know it probably isn't a priority, but in my case it almost made me want to drop the game.
I gotta say tho, the game's ending sequence is pretty cool. It deffinitely was the only part of the whole game's narrative that managed to engage me, even if it doesn't really make much more sense than the rest.
For a metroidvania, there's very little incentive to actually explore. 90% of the items I found were just hats with purely cosmetic use. The different areas weren't too eye catching either, and having an almost monochrome pallette didn't help it.
The thing that drew me in was the kunai swinging. It's the most interesting mechanic, and when it worked, I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the level design rarely takes advantage of it. More often than not you'll find yourself in Hollow Knight-esque tight subterranean corridors, unable to freely swing around and gain momentum. That said, the devs did put effort into designing paths to swing through even in these tight levels, but the lack of focus makes me think there's a lot of missed potential. Imo, this game would have been way better as a linear action platformer. The slower metroidvania pace doesn't do it much good.
Combat's rather mediocre. You have your main meele katana and gain some ranged sub weapons as you go on. The problem here mostly lies with the enemy design, it's rather uninteresting save a few exceptions. Your katana swings resemble Hollow Knight again, but they don't feel nearly as tight. I also gotta mention that enemy placement is very cheap, I would end up tanking many hits because I landed onto an enemy that I couldn't see was there.
Lastly, many people may not care, but this game has some really lackluster world building. I didn't really expect a good story, but the opening cinematic made me think maybe there would be something interesting, and the rest of the game simply destroyed that notion. I know it probably isn't a priority, but in my case it almost made me want to drop the game.
I gotta say tho, the game's ending sequence is pretty cool. It deffinitely was the only part of the whole game's narrative that managed to engage me, even if it doesn't really make much more sense than the rest.