A game I have very deep respect for. Loaded with passion and creativity but it's never enough to compensate for some aspects which needed more testing. Core concepts such as the dash slash move are scarcely tested in an interesting way, and can be largely ignored for the duration of the game. Many bosses can be absolutely destroyed by pogoing above them and quickly ducking out of the way. The platforming that takes up so much dead space between bosses is at best, mildly entertaining and at worst - well, just dead space. By the end of the "Demo" section of the game I was thoroughly excited to see the rest of it, but the illusion of scale and adventure ends up being just that. It's hard to be satisfied in attaining a new health piece when enemy damage scales compared to how much health you have left - defeating the very purpose. It's hard to be satisfied in getting a new charm when few of them are better than the one or two you found half a game ago. The crux of these problems comes down to balancing in the long term. It's very evident that the strengths of this game lie in its boss fights and it knows that very well. It would've been nice if it could've played better into that, and played down the metroidvania aspects that simply distract from it all. Overall - should you get this game? Absolutely. Please, please do. Because more than anything, I want to see what this developer is capable of after a small bit of self reflection, and a small bit of refining.

The "campaign" is a true case of mustard-on-ice cream, but the arena mode is very solid and is really all that'll ever come to mind when I think about this game. For all intents and purposes, the arena is the main game or at least can be treated as such, and it's hard not to think of it that way with a combat system as rich as this one. The real killer for the system tho is how absurdly easy it is to rack up an infinite airborne combo that no enemy can knock you out of. This complaint is bigger than it sounds for people who aren't really into character action, and smaller than it sounds for people who are. On the one hand, it allows for basically any enemy to be effortlessly killed once you have them launched to a reasonable height (barring some that can break free), and it renders point/combo challenges essentially meaningless as the last enemy in an engagement can be infinitely juggled midair for the aforementioned points or combo score. On the other hand, the challenges are essentially meaningless outside of the board game mode, and there are a good few enemies that can break your midair combo, that is until you get out of their vertical range, at which point it can already have been called a reasonably interesting challenge. On the other other hand (that I keep in my back pocket in case of emergencies), this is super dependent on the engagement, and a good deal of encounters don't have such enemies. Outside of that, the gameplay is extremely solid, with a wonderful selection of ground and air moves that are satisfying and intuitive to master and chain together. Weapons are mostly balanced and distinct, some are arguably more satisfying than others but the fact remains that they, as all the best weapons do, bounce and combo off one another in interesting and varied ways. The enemy design is extremely tight as well, though some enemy variants look unfortunately similar in silhouette. A bit of a shame, as each enemy does have a defined and important role in a combat engagement which itself is great, though it would've been greater if you could more easily tell them apart. Regardless, certain enemies demand certain attack or evasion strategies, some force you off the ground, some force you out of the air, some should probably be parried and, well, yes good they're good I think I've made my point. Overall, if this game doubled down on the action bits and had a defined action campaign - rather than a bizarre rouguelite board game campaign - it could've been excellent, and it almost pains me a bit to say that it isn't. But at the same time I'm reasonably happy with what we got.

I love the concept of the game and it can be rather satisfying at points, but areas are disappointingly samey (aside from highly contextual gimmicks) and the basic gameplay is just that, basic, to the point where it kills my drive to go on very often. These factors make starting a new run after death a miserable endeavor instead of the new beginning that it is in many other roguelikes.
What I've said so far probably sounds much more negative than my rating does, but I must emphasize how wonderfully novel the concept is and how engrossing it can be when your resources are running dry and you make a clutch, last moment escape. There's a huge amount of untapped potential here, though having more in depth moment to moment gameplay would risk fracturing the game too hard in an Aztez-like situation, but at the very least more interesting level generation and more deliberately constructed level pieces could've gone a long way.

Slightly prefer to the original - I don't have any problems with the OG's level design, but I never quite appreciated it as much as many people seem to. The more wacky, sometimes gimmicky levels of Doom II, while obviously less tight (and occasionally just... not good), always had me at least excited to see what would come up next. Many new enemies seem redundant on paper, but the sheer added variety (and chads like archvile) are worth it to me. Doom was satisfying but I can't honestly say I'd play it for mechanics alone. This is the sort of game where novelty is worth it, and it's often enough done well - or at least inoffensively, with some obvious exceptions