Good points:
- Memorable Experience: The game's aesthetics is one of the best parts, really original and visually pleasing, levels have varied aesthetics and unique mechanics, enemy types have clear diferences and strategies around them, bosses are distinct, memorable and well visually designed.
- Katana Combat is simple and basic, yet not braindead dumb. The implementation of chips isGood points:
- Memorable Experience: The game's aesthetics is one of the best parts, really original and visually pleasing, levels have varied aesthetics and unique mechanics, enemy types have clear diferences and strategies around them, bosses are distinct, memorable and well visually designed.
- Katana Combat is simple and basic, yet not braindead dumb. The implementation of chips is the best part of the combat system, it allows experimentation for coming up with chip combinations and combos, figuring these out is gratifying and there is no overpowered chip combo, really balanced, also comes with different offensive, passive and defensive chips that can be adpated to play-styles and strategies. Fun to learn and experiment with.
- Level Design: how every level changed the mechanics in a meta way was fun and interesting. Every fight zone threw me a different set of enemies and combinations that made me think on how to manage and approach them.
- Boss Battles: All of them have unique attacks and strategies, part of handling a boss is knowing what attack they will make, how to dodge or evade it and when to attack, this game loop feels gratifying to exploit with the chip combos you can come up with.
- The Implementation of 2 Playable Characters: Travis is stronger but slower in his moves, while Badman is the opposite, also they have some different abilities and exclusive chips that change up the formula. They also have different final attacks, Travis has a linear Tiger like attack and Badman has a circular Dragon attack that can work out in different situations and play-styles.
- Co-op is a nice addition to the experience and adds more depth to the combat and the gameplay and how combos can be mixed up.
Hit or Miss:
- Story is interesting, punk and unique, with a nice structure, characters, concepts and relations, but some important story points can fly over the player's head because of how briefly or how few times they can be mentioned (some are even mentioned in faxes that can be missed). It also can feel sometimes disconnected or nonsensical and trolly for the sake of being it.
- Characters are well written but not well developed or developed too fast that feel unnatural, this is the case with bosses, badman and those in the visual novel chapters.
- Visual novel chapters are a nice aesthetic decision and a good call to the past. But the same limited nature of the medium can lead to some confusion on what exactly is happening, how it happened and events can happen so fast and suddenly with no build-up that may put you out.
- Life is Destroy's puzzle mechanics and Racing Dragon GP's racing minigame are fun unique gameplay segments but can be frustrating if not figured out, the first was sometimes a little too complicated (plus the inclusion of the flying blue death head) and the second expects you to know how gear changing works in racing games with no explanation.
-Combat can feel repetitive, there is a nice sort of enemies, wave combinations and ways to aproach them, yes, but sometimes the game throws lots of consecutive enemy waves or fight zones that makes the flow of the game and levels feel stale, slow and/or stuck in some points.
- There is some non-mandatory exploration in the levels, it rewards the player with collectables, experience and more money, most of these are not super complicated to figure out and can be fun for an extra challange. Sometimes levels have complex route ramifications like in C&D (making it feel way too long of a DDMk2 game) and in some points the level won't let you go back to explore optional routes you may have wanted to see, making you replay whole sections in some instances.
Miss points:
- Basic beam katana attacks doesn't feel to well, the game feel with these can be sometimes too floaty or too heavy, eg. the weak air attack feels amazing, but the heavy air attack feels off. (Roll feels amazing when combined with an attack right next). It always felt as if enemy patterns were not designed with the beam katana combat in mind.
- Coffee and Doughnuts and CIA levels overstayed their welcome by a little bit, C&D was the worst of both, there was variation on the level backgrounds and settings, but it felt kinda repetitive and padding, the level would have felt more beneficiated of 1 or 2 less "look for coffee and doughnuts" quests (there were a total of 4).
- Loading times can be too long (The first boot up loading screen lasted around 2 minutes, I thought my game crashed before showing me the company logos).
Conclusion:
All in all it's a nice experience if you want something short, original and enjoyable even though a bit obtuse and a long in some minor moments. Not the best hack and slash of all time but the chip system and game style is definetely worthwhile elements to experience. 7.5/10… Expand
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