Caveblazers

I'm mad at these controls, because the game looks and sounds like I want it, and has a bunch of mechanics that I want to play with. Inconsistent movement (not solid) gives it rushed and random pacing (not fast), has it feel hard because broken (not hard because polished), and makes the repetition pointless and grindy (not rewarding and fun). 8-direction aiming can work, but it seems out of place here. Analog movement and aiming would have fit better, and they didn't make it work without them.

It's challenging but very rewarding once you unlock new things and become stronger. Just take your time and plan how you will attack each enemy because there are a lot and they behave differently.

The game itself is actually very fun, but... After beating the normal endboss with every perk the real game begins: 5-relic runs. To survive this mode you need stupendous reflexes, along with so much luck with the drops. Also, there is time pressure, not to speak of loosing all your blessings before encountering the endboss. Beating the final final boss turns nearly impossible. Or even reaching it. In fact, don't even think about reaching the final zone. And because getting there is so, so difficult you can't even train that true endboss. So you need to play over and over and over again. And while playing the game for hundreds of hours for even beating it once, i realized how unbalanced it really is. Some of the weapons are completly useless, as are the perks. I don't know why there are explosion weapons in the game, there's no point in using them, except you want to kill yourself. Also, elemental damage seems useless. It's mostly damage over time, but you need the enemies to die very quickly, so it can't even trigger once. Only some particular items are actually useful, you just need the luck to drop them. The minibosses also vary a lot in difficulty, you need luck with them as well. DLC: It is kind of fun, but very unbalanced, as the main game. To proceed or beat the arena you need one of the game breaking combos. And then it gets a stupid mess. I like to play a game to completion, but this frustrated me after hundreds of hours trying and trying. A game should be fun, I don't mind if its hard and challenging, but this one is so difficult that you have to be a robot to beat it to completion.

TLDR: the game is very fine but there is not enought reward for me in-game. Especially to grind thru the game to get 100% completition of it, after the boss was beat. You can increase the drop pool by unlocking more, but the game still uses random generation... so its easy to loose interest. The good: + you can choose a perk. This allows for some variety and allows you to find "your" playstyle better. + blessings. They are randomized and buff you in some way. + items, weapons, and blessings. + some "shrines". lots of balanced variety. + As you try to beat the game over and over - items permamently unlock over the time. Adding better stuff for you to use and increasing the pool of what items can drop. the bad: - melee combat will be unpredictable. And/or dangerous. You may say: "just get gut, and know the patterns of the attacks that the enemy does." You see muchacho, this game doesnt have the collision detection between you and the enemies. So even if you are facing 2 melee enemies, one of them (if fast enought) can pass right thru you, turn around, - and now you have 1 enemy attacking you from the front and one from the back. Now imagine if there is more of them. - Potions. even potions are randomized.can kill you. The ugly: relics are useless. You need to grind to unlock them. And they are not necesarily better. Because for each benefit they will also make your life harder, so its pointless. * Blackjack relic shoulnt exist. OR should be buffed: Blessings and items no longer drop and you have to buy them now. from the same RANDOM pool anyway. Just like without blackjack relic. And if you will ever look up how hard is to unlock Blackjack then you will know why Im salty. * oblivion relic = Its the only one that doesnt suck. as it adds new items. After 100 hours I beat the main game and arena DLC. But frankly I expected more. As progress in game is not rewarding enought for me and often unlocks even more grind (like thru relics). P.S. Havent tried coop.

One of the more fun and challenging metroidvanias I ever played. Very enjoyable. Although if you are new o the genre it can be a bit tricky to really get the hang of the mechanics. A lot of them are only told in the logbook after the fact, and it could be a great addition to have a little summary of blessings showing just below their name.