Children of Morta is a good game. Nothing that's gonna stick with me for the rest of my life, but I just had a real fun time blasting through it.
There's always something new or interesting it throws your way to keep the Diablo-like combat of fast-paced mob and cooldown management from feeling rote, whether it's a scripted encounter with just enough flavor text to motivate you, a locked challenge room with increasingly harder waves of enemies, or a bunch of wild powerups and skills that can alter your playstyle. The boss fights have also all been interesting mechanically, even though my experience with the final boss was hilariously anticlimactic. I steamrolled it in one shot, and I even fucked up picking the character i wanted to use for it!
I like the small moments sprinkled in between dungeon runs too, as they added some much needed character to the cast and just the overall narrative, which is bog-standard fantasy. I do wish there were more scenes that had specific family members interact with each other and really have their archetypal personalities clash. I think that would have made the whole "family is important" theme resonate much stronger.
So yeah, if you're looking for an action game with gorgeous 2D pixel animation, tight and responsive controls for fluid yet weighty combat, options for varied playstyles that each feel simple yet satisfying to engage with, all wrapped up in a moderately challenging and very forgiving rogue-lite package that you can knock out in a week (or maybe two very long sessions if you're a power player), I highly recommend Children of Morta.
There's always something new or interesting it throws your way to keep the Diablo-like combat of fast-paced mob and cooldown management from feeling rote, whether it's a scripted encounter with just enough flavor text to motivate you, a locked challenge room with increasingly harder waves of enemies, or a bunch of wild powerups and skills that can alter your playstyle. The boss fights have also all been interesting mechanically, even though my experience with the final boss was hilariously anticlimactic. I steamrolled it in one shot, and I even fucked up picking the character i wanted to use for it!
I like the small moments sprinkled in between dungeon runs too, as they added some much needed character to the cast and just the overall narrative, which is bog-standard fantasy. I do wish there were more scenes that had specific family members interact with each other and really have their archetypal personalities clash. I think that would have made the whole "family is important" theme resonate much stronger.
So yeah, if you're looking for an action game with gorgeous 2D pixel animation, tight and responsive controls for fluid yet weighty combat, options for varied playstyles that each feel simple yet satisfying to engage with, all wrapped up in a moderately challenging and very forgiving rogue-lite package that you can knock out in a week (or maybe two very long sessions if you're a power player), I highly recommend Children of Morta.