It's always worth celebrating innovation, but making something derivative can have its own benefits. Being able to analyze existing ideas and refine them can help push a genre forward and give fans an experience they can easily understand and enjoy. Katana Zero amazes me because it is entirely derivative, yet completely unpolished. It's as if the developers set out to copy games that they haven’t actually played. You have the brisk, ultraviolent action from Hotline Miami without the quick restarting that prevented it from getting frustrating. You have enemy layouts which reward fluid movement like in Ninja Gaiden, but the level design has you doubling back and breaking the pace. You have a slo-mo gauge that should require intelligent usage like Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry, but it simply regenerates on a timer. This creates a system where you feel like you should be competing levels in a cinematically violent flow, but you keep tripping over hurdles that kill momentum. The game even plainly displays this fact to you with its post-level replays that are in real-time. Almost all of them will include multiple moments you had to sit around for a few seconds waiting for your gauge to recharge, or time you had to spend doing some awkward platforming. Not only is there a total lack of momentum in the moment-to-moment gameplay, there’s none in the chapter-to-chapter progress. The amount of talky interludes is absolutely insane, and it doesn't lead to any narrative payoff. The story ends on a sequel bait cliffhanger, which is a pretty bold move for an indie studio. Ending the story before it can get interesting means I don’t care how it's going to end, accomplishing the exact opposite of what was intended. I don't recommend this game at all, you should just play one of the games it borrowed from instead.