a great but flawed platformer with a fantastic move set and a lot of content. first of all if you're turned off of the platforming from the start i really recommend turning the move deadzone bar in the settings to none. god knows why its on so high by default, it goes from feeling horrible to great once you turn it on 0 imo. the triple jump, wheel, wall jump, and super jumps are all extremely fun to use. the only thing that stuck out genuinely bad to me was the lack of options when exiting the gliding turf ability. you should be able to jump out of it to gain more height last minute, but instead you're sent falling and it doesn't feel good. most of the time in normal levels it wasn't a bother and i had enough height for it to not matter but in two of the glide-centric trials it is miserable performing some of the glides over large gaps. those trials are one of the many side modes in the game and for the most part they're really good. i didn't bother doing most of the photo hunts and i dont think you should have to do all 50 to get 100% completion, and despite actually liking the combat the arena challenge goes on for way too long and should only be 10 levels instead of 25, but everything else is really fun. the remixed versions of levels are fantastic too, most feel completely different from their original so it doesn't feel like padding. that being said i think the 50 battery requirement forcing you to do a large majority of those remixed levels just to reach the end of the main story was a bad idea, it should've only been 40 max. the five bosses were surprisingly good, with the first and last being the weakest. wish there were remixed versions of the four world bosses to be honest. and lastly as far as visuals go i really like the look of the main characters and the bosses, but otherwise the environments and npcs can look really ugly. hopefully they either patch some of the real big issues out or continue to improve on the game in a sequel, there's so much potential here and some of it is wasted with odd decisions that seem to have turned a lot of people off from the game.

I really, really wish I liked this more than I do, and I'll cop to the fact that trying to 100% this absolutely made me like it less, but maaaan parts of this feel tragic. The movement (save for the way you exit a glide) feels absolutely perfect, the character designs are great, and the music is really cool and distinct. The whole thing feels like a labor of love, but the level design just isn't there for me at all, and the combat feels legitimately terrible in a way that tanks so much of the game. The ingredients are here for something special though, and I really do hope the devs keep going with this franchise, because I'd like to see it develop into the game I hoped this would be. My understanding is that Neon Splash is a step in that direction, so I still plan to check that out despite my issues here.

Also, the lighting in some levels legitimately hurt my eyes! There's a canyon level early on that's so red that I couldn't really see things properly for like half an hour. It's a shame that a game this aesthetically tight has spots like that.

One of the best metroidvania games out there, it has a complex story,
incomparable pixel art, excellent gameplay, wonderful level design, a bit difficult and extremely fun. Blasphemous has an amazing setting and atmoshpere which are acompanied with tons of lore and backstory. The new DLC: The stir of dawn (Which came out one year later and it's free) adds an impressive amount of content like new areas, new aspects of the story, new bosses, new enemies and even improves areas from the original game. To me, this shows how much the development team cares about this game and the community, and thats one of the many reasons why I support this game and you should too.
Definitely one of my favorite games and a MUST have.

I feel like it's a love it or hate it kind of game. It's also a really difficult game to criticize. If you have a problem with how long the game is, how most of its quests feel like generic, disconnected busywork, or how its sense of constant progression is too manipulative to be considered well designed, then that's fair. But if you were to say that any of these things were faults, someone else could just as easily argue that you're missing the point and they actually succeed in their true purpose of characterizing the MMO that the game takes place in, which is exactly the side of the fence that I'm on. CrossCode is the rare indie game that establishes a unique concept and actually ends up delivering on it. The game takes advantage of nearly everything that it establishes. The emphasis on convenience that evolves naturally from its MMO influence fits like a glove around its action RPG gameplay. Its mechanics are absolutely rock-solid from the very get-go, and there's never a single second where they aren't being expanded on in every direction. I wasn't crazy about the story- I thought it was pretty predictable and I never really found myself liking any of the characters all that much, but it's hard to deny how ambitious it is. It's got a really unique tone to it that I couldn't really see being pulled off without its particular setting, and it does reach towards some potentially interesting themes, although it doesn't flesh them out as much as I'd like it to.
I know I said that it's a difficult game to criticize, but I'm gonna try to do it anyway. The game's emphasis on convenience starts becoming a con most notably when your party members never end up feeling like real people. They respond to you instantly even when they're in the middle of something that requires a decent amount of focus, they hardly ever die, and they accept you as their leader no matter the circumstances- why would this ever happen in an MMO if I'm at a lower level than you and can't even talk? Aside from that, the game decides to absolutely neuter its pacing about 85% of the way through, which is a decision that doubly goes against what makes CrossCode a great game in the first place- it doesn't make sense contextualized either in its MMO world or outside of it.

it really just feels like a step back from CSD 1 overall. in theory, i like most of the new mechanics like as the holding stations and pre-prepping food, it adds too many buttons to the mix, making the simplified control scheme of CSD 1 (one of its biggest draws for me) obsolete. it also really removes the money system as a whole, because now its only used to buy food the the main restaurant, and i hardly play that mode. which brings me to the best part of the game: the chef for hire shifts. they maintain a good level of difficulty and the earlier shifts well-suit you for the later shifts and its very fun to try and score golds on each of the shifts. overall, i'd still recommend it. heard CSD 3's supposed to fix a lot of these probelms.