A short precision platformer with Metroidvania elements (exploration and ability gating). It uses some smart and effective design decisions to bolster platforming enjoyment -- mainly found in the locations where you learn abilities.

I really love this aspect of the game more than anything, as games will typically give you a new ability, give you a couple quick example moments where you might use your ability or might cleverly find a way around it and then call it a day and assume you've learned and understood the mechanic well. Lootbox Lyfe strips you of all of your other abilities aside from movement and basic jump when you enter one of these new locations, then asks you to use the one new ability it grants you in order to get through numerous perilous situations via a checkpoint / respawning system.

The checkpoint / respawn system is all over the place, but it really works for that one particular area, as you find yourself running a veritable gauntlet of death to ensure that you're going to use your abilities properly, take advantage of the mechanics as well as possible, AND ONLY THEN will it set you free and let you have fun mixing in the other abilities, so there's no worry that you're going to suddenly forget about an ability you have later.

Beyond that, progression through the game is largely without enemies (just hazards -- some of which can also be used to make progress) and Lootbox Lyfe asks you to simply explore, have fun, and work out where to find the next progression area on your own terms. You could call it relaxing if it wasn't for smashing yourself on spikes numerous times or drowning, or any other myriad ways of death. Still, it doesn't feel like enjoyment is inhibited by respawns, as that "try and try again" mentality actually feels pretty fun overall.

For $4.99 normally, I'd say it's worth a purchase at full price, but it does go on sale for upwards of 50% off, so if you're skeptical of precision platformers enough that five bucks seems risky, just wait for a sale on your appropriate platform (I played it on Steam, unsure if it's available in other formats).

Just going to quote what I told a friend about this:

I just played one of the most awful-and-yet-somehow-fun games ever. Magus for the PS3. The engine it runs in is awful, the dialogue trees are awful, the UI design is awful, the controls are awful, the enemy design is awful, the level design is awful -- and yet it's so easy that mowing enemies down is kind of amusing anyway. Especially when they start to charge you, then change their mind and stand in front of a jar and ponder their life existence for a bit.

"I wanted to kill you, but maybe there's something more to all of this than -- wait, you're just going to shoot me? Guess I'll die!"

Not much to say. I think most AC games have the same overall vibe with me -- they're just kind of okay-to-mildly-enjoyable. And usually after a number of hours, I'm over it and ready to move on to something else because the open world feel for these games doesn't draw me in like some others do.

I will give this game credit for being probably the most accessible game I've ever played based on the options and difficulty choices that I saw when firing it up. They really tried to account for the needs of a lot of people, and that's pretty cool.

But yeah...just another okay experience that I can't really weigh on beyond that. About the only comment I can specifically make of note is that breaking boxes with Eivor was kind of a pain in the ass because I'd whiff all the time. It felt strange, like Eivor was just spastically swinging at nothing in particular (probably was).

But yeah, that's how babies are made.

After the initial charm of giving this game a quick glance, a deeper dive (first three areas) into it left me feeling kinda mixed about things.

What's good:
-- I'm not sure if it's going for an 8-bit or 16-bit feel, but it feels like it falls somewhere in between. Regardless, it's a nice aesthetic, for what it's worth.

-- The bosses. They're not particularly complex, but they require a bit of thinking on your toes and are rather fun when the game doesn't get in the way of that fun.

-- The soundtrack. This is a mixed-good situation, in that the music is pretty enjoyable at first...but also extremely short and feels repetitive for the time you spend in each individual area.
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Maybe I should have referred to that as "What's mixed:" instead. The game does have charm to it, but there are a number of caveats worth knowing, especially for Metroidvania purists.

First, the game operates on a hub world concept with portals that take you to each area and unlock after completing other areas. You can revisit these areas for secrets from the hub world, but you're basically playing a level in each instance and then going back to it later, a la the Mega Man X series.

There are abilities that allow you to access new sections of those areas of the game you traverse, but since everything is done at the hub world, as far as I can tell, gating isn't a prominent feature. Granted, there are some passages I can't pass through yet as of beating the first three areas and at least one additional floor, but I've got a strong feeling that accessing all of these sections is gated simply behind completing the necessary previous areas (and not getting specific abilities).

There is a person in the hub world that will sell you abilities in exchange for skill coins -- which you can find by exploring the portal areas thoroughly. I'm pretty sure some skill coins are gated by a couple of these abilities, so you're kinda spending coins to reach more coins if that's the case.

One other thing I want to mention is the knife-throwing system. You get some little daggers that you can throw up to three of at a time and they recharge after a short bit, allowing you to throw them again. Throwing is axis-directional, so you can throw diagonally...but you'll walk if you do. The answer to doing that is to hold the Circle/B button (the button that throws your knives) and then you can aim directionally with a cursor without moving. This takes a bit of extra time to set up, making it impractical for a lot of on-the-fly finesse you could normally do if the game allowed you 360 degree free-aiming with the Right Analog Stick instead (not sure how this would apply for keyboard users, but you're missing out on a lot of potential trickery by only allowing for up to 8 specific points).

What's put me off a bit is the level design. In certain places, it's fine and the loads of secret treasures hidden in walls (and hidden passages) is a nice touch, but making the pathing for moving through these areas smoothly and cohesively doesn't seem like something that was at the forefront of the level designer's mind. It's not always intuitive as to whether you need to backtrack in other areas or not and some areas are just unpleasant to deal with in general.

Example 1:

After the initial area and getting to the hub world, you open up two more areas to check out (beating these opens up another one). In the latter two areas, the castle-like one has secret areas that give you access to keys and it's not immediately apparent if you need to drag these keys further back if you don't explore carefully. In reality, there's three colored keys (bronze, silver, gold) that open appropriate doors, but the bronze door is way back in the start room, the silver door is right below the silver key (but the key is cleverly hidden), and the gold one requires you to go forward to near the end of the level. The thing is, if you get the bronze key, you might beeline for the silver key door because it just looks kinda gray, like it's suggesting you need to insert any given key if you weren't paying attention to the color of key shown for the initial door. When you die, your keys get returned to where they previously were, though this also isn't apparent...so I may have gone forward, beaten a mini-boss, then picked up the gold key and thought it was the bronze key because the color is close enough that I doubted myself on what I was initially carrying.

This isn't ultimately a big deal because you don't need ANY of the keys, but there's no way to be certain that the silver door doesn't lead to a boss room, so I ended up carrying the bronze key WAY across the map for no reason. And going back to reach each sub-area/section and come back from them is kind of a pain -- it's more convoluted than some major backtracking you get in more standardized Metroidvanias.

Example 2: The swamp level is just frustrating design all around. There are lots of things that LOOK like platforms but aren't, which leads to a lot of jumping and whiffing and landing far below and redoing all your jumping because everything else so far had seemed so obvious in terms of what was or wasn't solid ground.

Moreover, the swamp area asks you to go swimming down below the water level and gives you an oxygen level. How do you recover it? Either by reaching the surface...or waiting on bubbles to sprout from small spots. These bubbles alternate between ones that are too small to do anything and ones that refill your oxygen completely. They're plentiful enough, but they slow down gameplay and feel like the worst parts of Labyrinth Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog. There's also a lot of intentional backtracking through this area with a bunch of spikes (spiked brambles) under the swamp, and some hazards that will try and push you into the spikes. This means you spend A LOT of time just sitting around and waiting to rush through a hazard while avoiding spikes, only to sit around and wait for an air bubble so you can repeat the process. It's just padding time needlessly in what is actually a pretty short level at this point in the game compared to the castle area or the initial area.
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Long story short, the game seems like it has potential to be fun, but it's something that -- at least for me -- is only playable in short bursts because it hamstrings itself in ways that keeps me from engaging in that fun factor -- why is there even a life system? Authenticity? The game doesn't feel distinctly NES or SNES-era, so it misses that entirely!

At 15 bucks, I'd say wait for a sub-10 sale, but I should note again that I've only played through three areas, so there may actually be a lot of content I haven't seen that makes it worth your time. Your mileage may vary, and if you're a diehard fan of these kinds of games, you're probably going to check it out anyway.

Only played through the first major boss so far and it seems like a decent game.

Visually, it's fine -- rather reminiscent of NES-era graphics.

Music is alright, at first -- until you start noticing the awkward point where a music track for a level loops and then experience it multiple times in said level. It's a bit jarring.

Enemies are generic fare and mostly consist of stuff that moves back and forth or moves toward you slowly.

Platforming is fair and reasonable, with a decent number of save points to restore your progress at if you get wrecked in some of the following rooms.

The first major boss was extremely underwhelming because Sydney doesn't have a whole lot of ways to attack or dodge at that point (read as: whip, jump and whip, or jump and avoid). I tried staying away from the boss and dodging the projectiles to get an opening to attack, but after dying a couple of times to projectiles or the purple lightning ball of death, I just went in with two healing flasks and brute forced the boss by tanking hits after dodging the very first projectile and just healing each time. If you mash fast enough, you can simply plow through the life total of a boss because it seems like the bosses have no invulnerability frames. I only had to heal once during that mash and then POOF! Dead boss.

It's a simple game thus far (just acquired a long range weapon/projectile, so finally an upgrade!), but it seems pretty much like a middle-of-the-road affair, but not in a bad way. Outside of the jarring music loops, the actual game is mildly entertaining. I'll write more whenever I get around to it again.

My short experience thus far with Witchcrafty:

-- Boot up game

-- Check out the controls and find out I can't rebind them, I'm sure we'll get used to them...attack on Circle, Dash on Triangle, Jump on X...sure, that's going to be fine!

-- Set my button display to PSX style instead of XB style...and find magical confusion in that all the prompts for the game (including in the main menu) are off by 90 degrees (Square prompt = X, X prompt = Circle, info points tell me to attack with X, dash with Circle, and interact with Square)

-- After you get out of the first few rooms, you're treated to what is a tutorial area...and the game neglects to tell you that you have a double-jump right off the bat when you need it in order to do the first tutorial room efficiently.

-- Did I mention that the area hazards actually look like background pieces of the game? Uh-oh.

-- I hit a mushroom. It hit me. I died and went back to...the start of the game and all the things I collected are gone. All of them? Really? Couldn't just drop me back there while letting me keep what I picked up? Eh, whatever.

-- Ouch! That hazard that looks like background still looks like background!

-- I hit mushroom. It doesn't hit me back. I am a true champion among witches.

-- I wander a couple more screens and get my third and fourth progress achievements in the same room and finally pick up magic.

-- Do I test magic? Nah, I put the game down and decide I'll come back later today.

On a brighter note, the limited amount of soundtrack I've gotten to experience is pretty good stuff.

UPDATE:

-- Continued the game (using CONTINUE!), only to find it started me all over again from the beginning, when it seemed like getting a major power-up should save the game. Whoops!

-- Made it back to where I was, went up one screen, found the Save Game location. Yay!

-- Found diverging paths, took the lower path because it looked like a logical loop that might let me get some useful stuff out of it.

-- Top path took me to water, which I quickly learned by falling into it is something your witch can't swim through, so I despawned, lost a heart, and respawned next to the water. Guess I'll try the downward path in the loop!

-- Bottom path involved some obnoxious projectile dodging, which seemed fine at first. Got to the bottom and went right, only to find a dead end because I didn't have the necessary power-up to make further progress. Game wants me to go back the way I came just to get back to that split right after the save point! I could just nuke myself, but then I'd lose all the crystals I collected, so I should work my way back, right?

-- Tried to work my way back and encountered a problem that several other Steam players commented on, in which jump inputs would sometimes just get eaten. In a place where I needed to double-jump to go back up and also jump-dodge enemy projectiles, jump inputs were being eaten over and over. I died, lost the crystals I had and got spawned back at the save game.

-- Submitted a request for a refund, because I don't want to make further progress, only to find myself starting to possibly enjoy the game and then have it really screw me with more jump inputs being dropped or maybe something even worse.

One star for the music and that's it. This game is a mess.

I'll have to mess with this more, because it's definitely not a bad game, but it's a mixed bag that I really struggle to play.

First, it's way too easy. Enemies meander aimlessly or sit in one place and fire stuff, bosses are cakewalks. I got hit once on the first boss because I didn't know that some of its projectiles actually targeted you (a separate one just sprays in three directions). Once that happened, I just prepared to roll as needed.

Second, the level design is kind of...eh? It's not bad per se, but there's a lot of open area with not a lot going on and it feels like someone just took goal points for a map area, then threw together some random terrain to try and make up a path to those points along the way and in the process, made very long paths that don't really diverge at all with secrets pretty much out in the open at all times.

Third, the game sometimes has some weird chop for me. Might be resolvable in fullscreen, but I don't really feel like going to windowed mode to play a game.

Finally...it's just not entertaining? Visually, it's a lovely game. Aurally, it might be good but music seems sparse at times (I thought it wasn't working at one point when I was wandering through a particular part of one map, but it was just intended silence, I guess).

From a gameplay perspective, combat and platforming is just swinging without any deeper effort and hopping over pits that just return you to the other side if you fall in, minus a bit of health. There's a sprint and roll option that both consume stamina, but stamina doesn't start refilling immediately -- this seems like an intention to increase difficulty and make the user ration their stamina carefully, but rolling is almost never necessary and once you start getting tired of the winding paths, you'll be sprinting, only to find that you'll eventually have to stop after short bursts to get stamina back so you can keep sprinting.

There's a few bugs I encountered, but they were very minor in nature and I don't feel like they really detracted much from the game, so I won't go into them with the exception of letting you know that if you play with a DS4 controller, it may not register your triggers correctly, so make sure not to set the Sprint or Heal commands to those buttons.

As of right now (June 16th, 2022), the game is on sale for 35% off and I'd say that if you're a Metroidvania fan, that might be a good price for jumping in to try it (20 normally, 13 on sale). I'll come back to it at some point to run through the rest of it, but it's just hard to get motivated when a game is so bland feeling and easy, even if it looks lovely.

This game has some excellent moments, but also coupled with some really wacky bugs and some unintuitive design choices.

First, the bad.

Controller bindings are awkward because Shot/Accept are mapped to the same button and Jump/Cancel are mapped to the same button. This might be awkward for keyboard players too, but I didn't play with a keyboard so that wasn't a thing for me.

After a while, I started having the game bug out in very strange ways. At one point, I went into a room in Area 4 and I think there was supposed to be a cutscene, but the door closed before I finished walking in and the screen just went black before depositing me in Area 5. While it was black, I got a message that didn't completely finish. After I was able to gain control again in Area 5, that same message repeated. After that, any items I picked up no longer contained text info, nor did any new logs I found.

In addition, the boost ability from the rocket sometimes spazzes out hard. This is horrible when you're going over scores of hazards at once and when combined with the very sparse set of checkpoints in some areas, this can be a nightmare.

Wait, but the checkpoints heal you, right? Nope. You can save your progress with AS LITTLE HEALTH AS YOU CAN POSSIBLY HAVE. Which means if you make a single save file and aren't paying attention and save with a sliver of health left, you better hope you get some energy farmed from some enemies in a nearby room, assuming you're not stuck between two hazard areas.

But let's talk about the good. The bosses are pretty fun, actually. Nothing spectacular, but they manage to require you to do some fancy footwork and use your booster in a lot of cases to avoid damage.

The weapon variety is okay, but I found myself mostly just sticking with two of the weapons I found because one was extremely accurate and one was extremely powerful -- in both cases, this was for bosses exclusively.

Why? Because of the one GREAT thing in this game. The drill weapon/power-up/gating ability. It's SO STRONG and most enemies don't damage you on contact. As a result, you can just hold the shoot button and run/boost right into enemies to annihilate them en masse. And sometimes there will be boatloads of enemies on the screen, so it's a spectacular feeling when they're trying to get distance between you and them so they can fire and you just boost right through them like the ultimate lancer machine. And since the game allows for eight-way aiming with your weapons, you can drill through the air while jumping and aim down and just glide right into enemies like the monster you always wanted to be. For all the grief I got from the rest of the game, smashing through hordes was wonderful and for that reason alone, this game deserves three stars.

Get it on sale and make sure to use that drill like a champ. It's god-tier fun.

It's...pretty basic. It's like a Metroidvania-lite that uses Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest as inspiration.

You do get extra abilities to overcome gating, but they're simply double jump and dash. You also get teleport, but that's more of an ability of convenience, since it lets you warp to a few signposts you find along the way.

Enemies don't do much beyond getting in the way. Bosses have pretty basic patterns and you probably won't die to them more than a couple times if you keep on your toes.

There's a leveling system with experience, but I didn't notice any change in health, defense, or attack when I leveled up. The leveling system works on doubling the previous XP total after each iteration, so getting past Level 6 (3200 XP, up from 1600) is unlikely unless you want to grind to not notice a further difference, since enemies pay about 3-4 exp per kill and you have to pick up the experience.

There are some mechanics that aren't specifically explained that you need in order to progress through some areas (hitting an enemy while in the air allows you to swing your weapon up to two more times in a special manner -- otherwise, swinging in the air is a one-time affair and you can't do it again until you hit the ground). I got stuck outside a boss room for close to ten minutes trying to make one jump that utilizes this mechanic (literally no other jumps in the game do).

Also 100%ed this in theory, but one of the achievements didn't unlock, so good times.

My 100% completion run took 2.5 hours with having to pause several times to do some stuff. Whether 2ish hours for 8 bucks is a good deal might vary for people. I'd say for how mediocre this feels, you might do well to wait for a sale. It's not a bad game, but I personally don't think it's a good game, either.

I haven't beaten this yet, but I've played a number of runs and despite how basic it is, there's something really appealing and fun about it.

Weapon Hacker is a very basic rogue-based Metroidvania. Kinda like A Robot Named Fight, but not nearly as complex in nature.

Monsters are very basic in behavior and do what you expect from a lot of typical monsters -- walk back and forth, fire things at you, make a beeline straight for you, or sit somewhere and do something like spew painful garbage you don't want to get hit by.

I've only encountered a couple bosses (I usually die before then), but they seem to be amalgamations of other monsters you encounter. One example is a this pair of giant parasite-looking things that have a bunch of common homing enemies inside them that they let loose while they personally wander toward you and home in on you. It's supposed to be an attempt to overwhelm you with so many homing enemies at once (and it can do that).

The weapons are where the fun really shines. Because it's procedurally generated, the world in each instance has different kinds of modifiers for your weapons that you might need in order to make progress. Coupled along with general shot modifiers you might find for your blaster, you get treated to some really fun times when experimenting with combinations, especially if you find extra charges for your weapon slot.

Basically, every shot-type has a battery cost, as does the modifiers you can stack on the weapon. The more battery charges you find, the more modifiers you get to stack and you can do some obscene things with stacking modifiers together. There are also items that give temporary bonuses to your weapon for a bit (the Repeater Rush is great for bosses because it just triples your weapon speed for about seven seconds).

Most of my dying so far has been to my own poor decisions or just not paying attention in general. I never felt like I got cheesed by any of my deaths, and some of the personal upgrades REALLY encourage exploration -- the lava shield lets you be immune to lava, as an example. How's that for encouragement?

Since I haven't actually gotten to the end of a run successfully, I can't tell you how much overall replayability or general time can be spent with the game, but at 10 bucks full price for it, I think it's probably a worthwhile investment, but you wouldn't hurt yourself to wait for a sale, since there's no achievements and the rogue-ish nature could be frustrating for some.

I just want to add a couple points now that the game is finally out of Early Access.

-- Having all the assigned button presses in your UI demonstrating what your weapons or skills are is great...it's kind of a Souls Standard. But listing healing as a button press and then not letting the player know that it's a button HOLD is kind of a big deal...especially when it's 1. also tied to ammo reload as a button press and 2. has to be HELD THE ENTIRE TIME YOU'RE HEALING OR IT AUTOMATICALLY STOPS.

-- 3D one-hit-kill traps in a 2D environment are stupid if you don't make it easily definable for the player to know WHEN the trap is lethal. In the case of swinging pendulums that are supposed to be cutting from the back of the screen and past it to the front, the answer is WHILE THEY'RE IN THE BACKGROUND. Which is a really weird answer, considering where they are, but I may also be salty from losing a boatload of currency to jumping at a time that seemed reasonable, only to die. Add in the fact that you're jumping between ledges over one-hit-kill pits and it doesn't make the platforming concept better, especially when it's not a platforming game as much as a combat game. Go figure.

I might come back to this again at some point but it's definitely going in the backlog. It's one of those soulslike games that tries to be intentionally vague and mysterious, but just comes off as unintuitive and frustrating. When it's fun, it's fun, and when it's not, it's the other 50% of the time and it's not hard to see why adding up the global achievements for all eight endings equates to runs being finished only 2.3% of the time.

Original review follows.
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Things I like:

-- You have a double jump and in conjunction with your sword swing upward or forward, you can basically get a triple jump or an air dash, so mobility is awesome in some respects.

-- That's really it. Everything else is serviceable.

I think the worst thing going for this game (it's still in Early Access, I believe, but coming out of it soon?) is that there's a random health and ammo drop system in play. You can spend your currency on ammo, but you can also just shoot a bunch and hope some ammo drops. You can attack carefully and play a very slow game, but you can also just be aggressive and hope some health drops.

There's a lot of inconsistency in getting these drops to happen, so you're sometimes taking risks you shouldn't be taking under the notion that you might get the drops you need and then finding yourself sorely disappointed. There are health checkpoints along the way through areas, as well as bonfire-like travel locations that you can rest at, so making these mini-health drops just seems to encourage unnecessary recklessness (at least with me, as I didn't start taking hits until I started seeing plentiful health drops, only to suddenly find myself getting NONE when I actually needed them).

Maybe that's a me problem, but it strikes me as odd when the game seems to encourage being careful the rest of the time.

Also, lots of ways to accidentally kill yourself (pits included) in a 2D game that encourages exploration, so fun times there.

Leveling up is basically spending currency you get in the actual exploration areas and leveling up your health or your energy. Your energy just gives you more uses of your powers and your health is...your health. Actual damage is only upgraded via weapon drops you find, as far as I can tell. In all my exploring early on, I got a boatload of the same guns as drops and one actually better gun from about a hundred or more enemies.

It's not a bad game. It's just not overly exciting and I feel like it could tweak a few things to make it more enjoyable. Also, the music makes me want to take a nap, so maybe not the best thing for a game where I need to stay alert so I don't die.

Less than half the people who have played it have beaten the first acolyte, according to global achievements on Steam. Believe me when I tell you that it isn't because of difficulty.

If anything, Morbid feels too easy. It also feels strangely empty, despite all the enemies that are around. There's NPCs with quests, but at least in the first several areas, they're extremely sparse.

There's no map access while wandering past shrines and trying to find your next shrines. And that's really all it feels like you're doing early on. There's a number of shrines and you can fast travel between them once you find them, but you can't even "level up" until you beat the first acolyte, but leveling up is also just raising the power of blessings you get (which initially, you get three and can only equip two at a time -- I don't know if this increases or not).

I beat a miniboss at one point and got a big-boy sword and equipped it immediately, since I noticed it only swung 15% slower for speed than the one I was using. I took ONE hit from that miniboss, only because I needed to see what an attack from it looked like. After that, I just used the Heavy Attack to one-shot most enemies and poured all my runes into that big-boy sword. Fought the first acolyte and he did some damage by running into me a bunch of times, but he never hit me with a single swing. Just heavy slash from above or below, roll further up or down away from him and rinse and repeat until we call it a day.

That's the biggest problem I've run into so far -- enemies do a decent job of covering their bases on the horizontal axis, but if you attack them from above or below and just remember to save enough stamina to roll at least once, you're never getting hit. It doesn't even feel skillful when I evade them -- I just feel like I'm being rude and not actually engaging them in battles they clearly want.

I'll definitely continue it at some point, but it's rather underwhelming as far as games in my backlog go.

Not much to add to what I previously wrote. I discovered that apparently, achievements were locked behind not playing with a controller for some particular reason. Playing with the DS4? No achievements. Playing with KB+M? Everything's "fine"!

Speaking of fine, you know what's really not fine? Not allowing a player to go back to the Main Menu with any controls whatsoever and requiring them to just quit by using the Windows key to get out of the game. I know I managed to quit before using a controller, but because of how long it's been, I'm starting to wonder if I just saved and was allowed to quit because I was at a save point or if I just gave up and Windows keyed out that time, too.

Either way, this game's a mess and on top of that, the visual style is badness with awful outlining, lackluster creature designs, and some of the laziest naming conventions ever for creatures.

But hey, at least you can take massive damage from enemies that are a lower level than you even when their attacks are ineffective against your typing! Nothing wrong with that at all!

But really, I'm lowering this to one star.

Prior review below.

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With the full release of this game, I finally got to try my hand at it again.

-- Achievements don't unlock for the most part (I got the super-effective achievement, but haven't gotten one for visiting the item shop or even for getting my starter mon, among other things)

-- The controller doesn't work with half of the selection options (DS4 controller). Menu highlights are darkened, lightened, or minorly-animated changes to the choice boxes, and sometimes what's highlighted still doesn't actually work when I use the controller on it, forcing me to swap to mouse temporarily. For a game that only lets you do stuff ONCE in each room, having only the CANCEL button work to leave the room is kind of bad.

-- There's no visual display for how your mons are doing. I can see the HP and AP of the enemy mons, but I can only check mine between fights in the menu. Which means it's really tough to figure out if I need to use a healing item or an AP-restorative or to plan out my moves to make the most use of my AP in any given battle.

I've only based this rating off the first twenty minutes or so of playing, but with these kinds of issues, it's hard not to fault a game pretty harshly.