I logged in about an hour. It's a good game. Easily 3/5, at least this far. If only it had a real character designer...
Anyway, here is the review I was planning on publishing. The stuff he says is all correct, but I don't mind it. It's part of the attraction even. This really is a wonderful little game.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... ed/367520/RB wrote:I wish Steam had options other than 'yes' and 'no' for "do you recommend this game" because this game is ok, but with a few flaws that become really, really grating after a while. As other reviews say, it's super pretty and challenging, and the setting is interesting. I'm a few hours in, I have explored a few areas and unlocked some movement abilities, beaten a few bosses.
My issues with it:
The way the game handles dying is incredibly frustrating. When you die, you leave a ghost holding all of your money and your maximum 'soul' (mana) is reduced until you go back to the place where you died and kill the ghost. It's a weird design choice because money is very much used as a way to make the game easier if you're struggling a little - you can buy extra lives with it, upgrade your weapon, etc. Soul is also vital for healing and casting spells. So if you fail a platforming section, you have to go back and do it again, but this time with less souls and with an additional enemy (the ghost) floating around. If you die on the way there, you can kiss all that money you were carrying goodbye, too.
Save points are very far apart, often (but not always) located a couple of rooms away from a boss. Additionally, if you want to spend your money on anything you'll need to make your way all the way to a transport station to get back to where the shops are, and these are also very, very sparsely distributed throughout the map. I'm cool with difficult platforming and boss fights etc, but the fun (for me) of a game comes from learning how to beat these challenging sections by trying over and over until I get the hang of it, and it really sucks that between each try I have to trek over from the last save point to the boss/platforming room again and kill a ghost before I can give it another shot. It doesn't really add anything fun to the game for me. The pointless amount of backtracking extends to some other stuff too - there's a banker you can save your money at, but it's located far from all the other shops and two rooms away from the nearest transport point. I can't really think of a reason why this banker isn't just in the main town once you unlock it.
I found platforming a little awkward, because I'm used to jumping having momentum and this game has zero momentum in it. I'm using a DS4, and sometimes the precision platforming really doesn't agree with the length a single tap of the d-pad sends your character. There's a downward swing move that is incredibly difficult to pull off consistently, and this becomes a real nightmare when multiple platforming sections of the game are built around this one move.
So yeah! A very challenging and pretty game and a fantastic achievement from a two person studio, but I think there are some design decisions in there that make the game a lot less fun without really adding anything, and I really can't stress enough how much of a pain that downward slash is. If you can put up with backtracking and are well trained in platformers you'll probably like this game, but I wanted to register a negative review just to highlight the fact that it isn't perfect and there are some real flaws.
I'll keep playing and streaming, and I'll keep you posted.
