The first episode is brutal on well done difficulty for a first play, but the other episodes were perfect. I tried out lightly broiled too on a replay, though it's a lot fewer enemies and you can almost ignore cultists. I think the game is just one of those that becomes even better on replay, so you know what to expect with cultists (and knowing that crouch helps a lot). Lots of these levels were so great that I reloaded the save to play through them again since most of them can also be completed in different ways or with funny jump boots. I didn't really dislike any of them, but there were a couple of spots that tried to change my mind.

Like every other build engine game, there are tons of explosions on the level and with your weapons. Here every weapon has an alt-fire, and they even added another element of fire for half of your weapons, with a lot of enemies weak to it as well. It was nice to still use the flare gun to 2 shot butchers who normally resist your shotgun, snipe cultists, or just alt-fire a cluster of them. I think this might be the best set of weapons I've used in a shooter, and the multi-use weapons help with that. They even added a lot of death animations depending on what type of weapon you used to kill each enemy. It really seems like they put in a lot of effort to make the weapons stand out. 

It has pretty simple combat, and for most of the time, it is very hard to die (a certain mechanic is so easy to abuse with virtually no downsides). Near the end, you'll actually need to dodge attacks on bosses, but I really wish this had happened sooner. The upgrade you get at that point is very fun to use, but unfortunately, you get very little time to play with it. Maybe it needed a hard mode from the start (or at all) with this option just to make you try all game? I really liked everything about the ending/finale sequence.

The normal enemies aren't very special, and you can pretty much sum them up as fodder. You end up getting a lot of abilities throughout the game and different armours that change your element damage while giving you another mobility upgrade. All of these movement upgrades were nice, but I was hoping to see more emphasis on platforming sections. They feel great to zoom around with, and swapping between them depending on the terrain was really smooth. It goes without saying, but the music and pixel art were amazing.

In the end, it was a solid and simple metroidvania that made me more excited to play their next game, Mariachi Legends.

I need to say what a great idea the King's Lead was. They took the boring mausoleum gameplay from the base game, added the level reward of coins to it, and created five unique encounters as a sort of puzzle boss! After you beat each one individually, you can also challenge them all in a row. It's a bit disappointing that your health regenerates after each fight, since I wish they could have tossed in something extra for doing it with one life, like a filter or something similar. They already added a reward for just beating every fight in the entire game with Ms. Chalice, so I figured they would have also done that oh well. 

The chess gauntlet is just one of the new exciting things on Inkwell Isle IV. The other is a puzzle that leads to a secret boss. Pretty unique of a boss, but I wish we could rematch them or rank them like the others. After beating that boss, one of the new items from the DLC gets upgraded into a cursed relic. This takes your charm slot, puts you at 1 HP, and gives you a random shot each time you press the button or dash. If you beat a certain value of bosses with it equipped, it gets upgraded into a very powerful divine relic. Yeah, it is pretty broken with the amount of benefits it gives, but I love how you get it and build towards it. I really liked how they added so much to this DLC other than just boss levels, despite selling it for very cheap.

On top of these, there are also six new boss levels, some of which are some of the most creative fights in the game. You can also play as Ms. Chalice in place of your charm slot, but she has so many benefits that I really think she just breaks the DLC, let alone the whole game. She gets a dash parry, an invincible roll, a double jump, extra health, and one of her supers even gives you more chances of taking damage. You also get a few new items and shots, making the game a lot easier, which I understand is a choice, but it really seems like having both Ms. Chalice and these new items was not needed at all. It kind of sucks there's still an issue with trying to get just three parry moves in general, like Mortimer...

It's always nice when a game lives up to your expectations. The music is great, all the bosses are satisfying to fight, and the difficulty is just right. My only nitpick would be parries and requiring them for perfects.

There are just a few inconsistent situations, especially if you're trying to go for A+/S ranks. Regular A+ doesn't matter, as I could understand the lower HP makes it awkward to balance, but there were some times on expert which annoyed me. Lots of bosses will have so many little chances to parry, and some of these even come down to RNG patterns, which will end up with you needing to stall while hoping you can still make the timer. Others have lots of parry chances in the fight, but they sometimes don't count, or if they do count, you can't fill up your meter more than once. Shout out to Beppi when I realized for some reason the rollercoaster nose counts as a parry when I just assumed since it was easily repeatable it wouldn't count like Ribby & Croaks yet somehow Bon Bon's wheels count but Sally Stageplay's meteor doesn't???

It really makes me want to finish the rest of the Mega Man games and play Gunstar Heroes for the dice gimmick.

After getting over how long maps could be compared to other games, it became a good time. It might be harder to hit 100% of your shots, but you get so much ammo that it doesn't really matter. As long as you understand you're supposed to use the shotgun as practically a melee weapon, it clicks with you. I love how hidden some of these keys are, being almost more obscure than secrets in other games, and then in another map they have like 11 secrets, with half of them just being in random plain areas.

What a strange game that I unexpectedly loved! It's even got some strange quirks I wouldn't normally enjoy, like very fast respawning enemies and bonus stage portals that keep appearing (I've already cleared them but still find them in random spots in the level). Maybe the remaster and it not being on N64 are helping how I feel, but it felt great. Sure, there is some platforming, but it really didn't seem that bad to me, and it's much better than Doom platforming IMO. I fell off maybe once or twice here, compared to how bad I am at Doom.

Enemies here are pretty unique, even if they are basic mechanically, and it is always fun to watch two dinosaurs infight or a little beetle against a human or dinosaur. The levels themselves are large with some branching paths, and especially level 5 was amazing. Most of level 4 and all of level 5 take place in ruins or catacombs. Just delving deeper here and discovering all the pathways was very fun, and it all ends up looping perfectly in 5! Each level has three keys to find, an item to build an ultimate weapon, and some unmarked secrets. Getting the keys is so funny every time because it looks like you're going to drink from them when you hold them up. I will admit the ammo issue is a bit annoying, like how you needed to deplete secondary ammo to use the normal ammo, especially when I kept finding a lot of normal ones. Though this doesn't end up mattering too much in the midgame when you have tons of weapons, and there are a lot here (13)! It seems like playing on hard is a bit weird too, with ammo drops being removed and more health on enemies (ruins them IMO), but you're so fast that I just ran away from some pointless enemies.

Anyway, this game was really good, and I hope Turok 2 is even better. It also seems like I would love Powerslave, since it shares a few similarities.