Starting off with positives, because there’s a reason I played through four of these in the span of a week. I liked how often the level design looped back into itself, and the health and magic upgrades do a lot to make the levels feel more branching than they actually are. There’s also something innately satisfying about its combat, gleefully gory presentation keeps these games exciting even when it’s monotonous. In form, not that different from the other entries, but it’s the finer details that make this game a miserable slog compared to the others. I’m sure the menu telling you to drop down to easy mode after dying so much was intended as a taunt, but it doesn’t work when 95% of the deaths are from shitty platforming. Combat encounters get incredibly tedious past the halfway point, they just keep throwing more and more damage sponges at you. It may not be entirely fair for criticizing this for peaking early with the hydra fight, considering the big setpieces weren’t a mainstay compared to the others, but it bothers me immensely that after the hydra you spend most of the game dealing with goons. While I can’t be too harsh for providing a solid foundation, I can safely say this is the entry I’m the least interested in returning to.