Ascendant

NOT RECOMMENDED. All you get from dying is a CHANCE to find an item - everything besides the CHANCE is lost when you die. Even those unlocks are mostly limited to how many bosses you beat. The final nail to that suckitude is how you need to go through hundreds of content-identical, procedurally generated kill-everyone rooms just to get to the items worth having. When you throw in sparse health item distribution, common attacks from off-screen and the reliance of high-endurance touch-damage kamikaze enemies rushing you, it is a dull, non-original and repetitive experience worth NOT HAVING. It has the signs of a me-too project - someone wanted to make a game like this before they were any good at it. The end result is a proverbial non-seasoned expiration-date discount sausage of third-rate. The price of free is not worth the mind-numbing.

This is a frustrating game, but for the price it's not bad. I won't put more effort into it, but the music is good, the graphics are interesting, and I think people who enjoy masochistic game play might find something worth while here. I've definitely paid for much worse games, that's for sure.

Too many buttons to keep track of (feels like having all weapons active at the same time), yet the actual game-play feels too simplified. A good game should only have a few controls but allow triggering complex events to master gradually over time. Random levels can be a nice thing after running out of designed levels, but not having anything designed at all makes it feel empty and repeated. Good that it runs well on Arch Linux though.

I played this game for about 5 minutes. Just the tutorial at that. The problem came with jumping and dashing at the same time. Try as I might, I kept pressing space and E at the same time and I could not make the tutorial jump. It seems it would make sense to also try running in that direction as well, but trying to do a combination of D, E and space is just to awkward for me to manuever succesfully. I tried seeing if I could change the movement keys to arrow keys but the controller settings are awkward and frustratinf as well. Suffice it to say, my experience was quite frustrating and negative. As this game has been out for the better part of a decade, I doubt the issues will be addressed.

the graphical style really is unique and good looking, the music is also relaxing. Overall, for what can be an EXTREMELY difficult combat platformer, it adds a tranquil feel to it. But that's the bugbear with this game. The difficulty. It has three difficulty levels "Baby", "Normal" and "Rage". But in this game, those words all mean "impossible"! I have not passed the second set of levels yet. There are also flaws in it's level generation routines, sometimes you will be forced to quit a game due to a jump being impossible to make. I am not talking about not being able to master the finger twistingly awkward "jump - dash" move, they *are* impossible, simple as! The GOG forum for this game are dead, dead, DEAD..... but on Steam they're active! So it seems the developer also has a "FU GOG users" attitude - probably a baby rage induced by GOG denying them the DRM they want. Outrageous corners have been cut too........ such as no re-bindable keys. The "different world everytime" claim is also an exaggeration! True, they are....... but also all look and feel the same regardless, and you'll never get past the same two "Early Spring" and "Late Spring" levels. You never gain any more "power" for you next try with each game loss neither. It needs a LOT of rethinking and redesign - but if given that, it could become a great game instead of a mediocre one.