Rebel Transmute

Wasted potential. The game is very undercooked and reeks of zero playtesting. Just go play Environmental Station Alpha ... it's a far superior game in this style.

[h1]Hollow Knight at home, but...[/h1] With a whole host of wild movement tech and some of my favorite secret hiding in an MV I've played recently, this is just an absolute blast for people who are fans of the more metroid-y side of Metroidvanias. Throughout the game, you'll encounter lots of stuff ripped... honestly pretty much entirely from Hollow Knight (and other games in the genre), but with a handful of fresh things mixed in and, again, fantastic map design, this isn't one to skip if you're an MV fan!

I play a lot of Metroidvanias and this one hits the spot. It has a good story with good gameplay. I like how you naturally figure out movement tech by putting you into situations where you have to figure out how to get there. Really well done.

Game has its positives and negatives. Visually its a treat and mechanically its fine for the most part... however, the game does not have a solid flow and it's really easy to get lost and not know where to go. Too many mechanics are never explained well which leads to unintentional sequence breaking because it leaves you thinking it's the right path to take. One of the biggest problems is the augments which often times actually create gameplay problems. An example is there is an augment you can get that removes knockback when shooting an enemy. What it doesn't tell you is this also removes your ability to pogo with shots to bounce across enemies, hindering your mobility and making some traversal impossible untill you get a much later upgrade that lets you bounce on enemies. Then there is also an augment that causes defeated enemies, and destroyed objects, to explode. Sounds good but this causes blocks to chain explode and makes certain platforming sections impossible while the augment is installed. One room has a large column of respawning blocks you need to shoot and climb up. However if you have the augment installed it will chain react and destroy them all making it impossible to climb the shafe unless you have, once again, another power up you get much later in the game. These tiny things keep cropping up and it is extremely easy to get yourself softlocked in multiple places in the game. There is a force respawn option but that shouldn't be something you need. You will softlock yourself multiple times in your playthroughs, its going to happen. Going back to what I said, the game is unclear on what is or is not a sequence break. When you get to bomb weapon you quickly learn that it can propell your jump which leads to often sequence breaking where you shouldn't be. The bomb also clings to everything, including these purple plant/symbiote things leading you to think that you need to bomb jump off them. Spoilers, you get a powerup later to bounce off them so the game does a terrible job at reflecting that and instead leads you to believe you need to use the bombs on these plants. The game is fun in general but these minor things prevent it from being one of those games you just don't wanna put down. I find myself frequently putting the game down because it starts feeling like a chore. Its good but greatly flawed and I hope to see a sequel at some point. One last thing, the character is very unlikable. Its the typical "Tough Edgy" character. At one point you find an AI who offers to help you named "Quirk" and the main character is rude for no good reason. In fact they are rude and standoffish for no good reason with a lot of characters and then incredibly nice to others almost like the main character is bipolar. Not a fan with how Moon was written.

This is a really nice love letter to the genre. Visuals/music/characters/world is all very fun. Unfortunately, there were some issues that became too heavy too quickly. Momentum is awful, you'll have to circle back through previous rooms for messing up jumps, character moves very sluggish even with the movement transmutation active, the movement tech isn't explained well, and isn't utilized frequently enough to feel rewarding. The gun shoots at an arms length, unless you get the new gun, which barely does damage unless you have full health to buff it. This negative review is because i got the wall climb upgrade, and didn't hit a switch on my way down that i didn't see, soft locking me into the area because i didn't save from a further room to respawn to, to get me out of the soft lock, because the only other way through is to descend through some specific blocks with the spin jump, not ascend. hope to see this fixed, but put too many hours in to restart the game just to move on from the area.

if anyone complains about silksong taking forever I'm going to tell them to play this game. Because this is hollow knight without the polish.