9.8 hours played
Written 10 years ago
I'm far enough into the game that I feel I can write a solid review of it, might edit later.
What is there to like about this game? At all?
It occasionally toys with a few decent platforming ideas, I guess. The graphics are passable.
...
That's... about it. There's not much else to redeem it.
For starters, the music is godawful and the sound FX even worse - I had to mute the FX because they gave me a headache, they're that bad. If the problems ended there maybe I'd be okay with it.
Good thing the game's just shoddily put together as a whole.
First, bugs. Enemies sometimes don't seem to take damage; have had to land 5 hits on enemies that normally take 2, and I have no clue why. As well, the springs sometimes decide to send you flying in not quite the right direction. Usually you need to be holding an arrow to even have a chance of going to the right spot, but even then it's not 100% you'll get where you need to go. And I've gotten stuck/forced to restart levels in combat scenarios by killing the last enemy too quickly such that it doesn't trigger the battle's end. Which is great.
The interface, also, is worth mentioning. You can't restart a level from inside the level, you have to exit to the main menu, choose the chapter you were at (always starts at the prologue so you get to scroll every time) and only then can you restart. What should take less than a second takes something like 15, The time attack menu isn't any better either. From one time attack level, you cannot access the previous or next, you have to exit to the menu and manually select it. And there's an incredibly long ~5 second countdown before each time attack attempt, where the levels range from 6-15 seconds. That's waaaay too long of a countdown. Go look at Dustforce for how to do that countdown right, ugh. And you don't even start on "Go", you have to wait a second or so after that.
The game also sets its standards way too high for the shoddiness of the controls. Speedrun times are only barely possible after extensive practice and usually require some luck to not get the game to screw up in one way or another. The time attack challenges are also picky by milliseconds, way tighter than they have any right to be. There's no in-level indicator of collectibles or monsters killed, too, so you can never be sure if you missed something until the end. And the levels can go on pretty long your first time through.
Also there's a lives system which is completely out of place for how long the levels are, definitely.
Level 3 is an underwater level in an absolutely awful submarine thing, that has a huge hitbox and tiny bullets, and can only move up by hammering the space key. There's an instance in the level that is literally impossible to get past without taking damage near the end if you arrive at it from a fresh run (i.e. not after dying and reloading at a checkpoint) which is just beautiful. Honestly this level does nothing for the game anyways, I don't see why it exists.
The game runs out of ideas fairly quickly, as well. I've played through level 5, and while the first four levels all add at least something (well, not really level 3), all level 5 adds is... an incredibly irritating palette to create a darkness effect it does nothing with. There's no other new obstacles, it's very tedious and dull. I hope the last four levels at least have something else I'm really going to get bored.
Honestly, the fact that the game is apparently pretty short might work in its favor. I'd hate it even more if I knew I had 20+ more levels to slog through as opposed to only 4.5 more (still have to speedrun level 5, whatever.) The time attack levels are, aside from their strictness, somewhat enjoyable though, 30 of them and they're all pretty short but usually toy with a decent idea, I've played half of them to gold medal status and all.
I'll probably finish this game but I don't have to be a psychic to predict that my early judgment isn't going to change by the time I do complete it, there's no way to redeem this one.
