A puzzle box of meticulous design, and it actually summons a Hellraiser.

Over time, this title's reputation started to seep into my skin and conditioned me to believe that it is bitterly unfair, that an element of clairvoyance is necessary, that hints to solutions simply do not all exist within the text.
This was my first replay after many years, and it served to prove to me that it's all true - the biggest clue is actually in the manual.

Very clearly inspired by Masacore indie titles, built top of its more direct Maze of the Galeous roots, La-Mulana takes the crown of the cruel genre by being one of the only entries with a beating heart. A sprawling structure that demands intuition and respect in regular doses. Fall out of line for even a second, and you're inviting your archeological gig to end prematurely in sharp, fiery death. Bosses use every cheap trick in the book. Fields populate with countless enemies that exist purely to halt all progress. Completely untelegraphed traps jump up and kill you with reprise. All this, made feasible with a generous checkpoint and teleportation system, it's kind of genius.
Soundtrack is a bop, too. Invites you to the challenge and remains a toe tapper throughout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rfhi6I84hM

Puzzle design like this remains unmatched in anything outside of a Cyan Worlds point & click game. Every single screen holds an element of a grander puzzle, each with an inspiring level of thematic relevance. Their biggest crime would be dodgy wording in places. There isn't another Metroidvania in the world where every single room is equally important. All this, and the final task is to fold the ruins in on itself like an Origami butterfly, opening up a whole new layer of appreciation for the painstakingly crafted world Nigoro has created.

In the interest of sounding unbiased, it's definitely imperfect. Lots of iffy collision, a trial and error, and sheer leaps of logic are afoot. The later bosses are cruel to comedic degrees. All of these are astoundingly valid reasons to despise or drop this game..................... I just think it's uniquely satisfying to overcome the trials regardless - a nailscraping crawl to a victory that you need to fight tooth and nail to earn. To the last, I grapple with thee. from hell's heart, I stab at thee. for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

Bros will buy the game with scantily clad anime girls plastered all over it and complain that there are scantily clad anime girls plastered all over it. I just wanna ask what the fellas in the backloggd reviews were expecting when buying said game. This is the equivalent of some fella lookin at a war shooter and getting upset that it's indeed a war shooter but buying it anyways and complaining about that fact as if they didn't know exactly what they were getting into. I don't care how good the reviews are for said game, people should be able to recognize when something is clearly not made for them. (and also recognize that steam reviews normally don't mean shit in the first place)

Ignoring the weirdos that are upset about this and bought the game anyways, the gameplay here is good, very good, my favorite gameplay in fact. As someone who adores both platformers of the metroidvania variety and bullet hells this becomes something special with how it blends these two genres together perfectly. It really says a lot about a game's quality when I ACTUALLY want to go through the entire "beat difficulty to unlock higher difficulty" fiasco, something I didn't even do in something as good as DMC5. Also the boss fights are kinda phenomenal, they're very distinct from one another, have an absurd amount of attacks which constantly keeps them fresh, feel very fair despite the difficulty, and there's more than 30 of them lmao. The ost is also great with "Finale" being one of my favorite final boss tracks ever. overall a good time.

tldr game is very good but it attracts animephobic weirdos despite the very obvious exterior, obviously don't play this if you are for some reason scared of scantily clad anime girls like so many people in the backloggd reviews clearly are.

Edit after playing the Tevi demo: ANYBODY who likes this game needs to hop on Tevi, it's a spiritual successor to Rabi Ribi and is a perfect evolution of it. I very easily see it dethroning Rabi Ribi as my favorite game ever if it even matches the quality of the demo. The wait for Tevi's full release will be a difficult one... November 29th bros...