Rat souls! Rat souls Rat souls!
A 2D action RPG that is brief on runtime (for the genre...7-8 hours) and features super compelling soulsy action as well as a gorgeously presented narrative with narration by The Witcher's Doug Cockle. Looks like a storybook in motion...there were a few times where the camera was zoomed in and I thought I was still in a cutscene until I realized my character wasn't doing anything.
Super fun combat, good pattern recognition bosses. A smidge of metroidvania but it's more to make the world readable than to be an actual search-action game.
It falters in a bunch of small areas rather than in any one particular major aspect. Issues include:
-Forces you to backtrack somewhat regularly, though thankfully the map is small
-You sometimes have to save more often than you want to because the game will make you do every encounter and watch every cutscene without skipping every time you die. There would be times where I beat a few enemies and watched a cutscene, and then spent a minute backtracking so I wouldn't have to watch it again
-A bit of slowdown and a few crashes on Switch
-The story may expand somewhat in the DLC, but I was kind of disappointed that the villains lacked much in the way of depth. The frogs were basically orc-style "we are the evil race who does evil things." The rest of the story is SO well done that this one bit sticks out
-Some very obvious forced side quest padding
Even still, had a great time. The sequel has immediately jumped up to one of my most anticipated games, and I fully recommend this to anyone who likes their soulsy metroidvanias and wants something a little different.
A 2D action RPG that is brief on runtime (for the genre...7-8 hours) and features super compelling soulsy action as well as a gorgeously presented narrative with narration by The Witcher's Doug Cockle. Looks like a storybook in motion...there were a few times where the camera was zoomed in and I thought I was still in a cutscene until I realized my character wasn't doing anything.
Super fun combat, good pattern recognition bosses. A smidge of metroidvania but it's more to make the world readable than to be an actual search-action game.
It falters in a bunch of small areas rather than in any one particular major aspect. Issues include:
-Forces you to backtrack somewhat regularly, though thankfully the map is small
-You sometimes have to save more often than you want to because the game will make you do every encounter and watch every cutscene without skipping every time you die. There would be times where I beat a few enemies and watched a cutscene, and then spent a minute backtracking so I wouldn't have to watch it again
-A bit of slowdown and a few crashes on Switch
-The story may expand somewhat in the DLC, but I was kind of disappointed that the villains lacked much in the way of depth. The frogs were basically orc-style "we are the evil race who does evil things." The rest of the story is SO well done that this one bit sticks out
-Some very obvious forced side quest padding
Even still, had a great time. The sequel has immediately jumped up to one of my most anticipated games, and I fully recommend this to anyone who likes their soulsy metroidvanias and wants something a little different.