Iconoclasts

My fault. Went in thinking this was a Metroidvania. I mean it's been tagged online at sotres that this is a Metroidvania. Well, maybe a very very light Metroidvania. There are barely any secret areas. The upgrades take far too long to acquire to keep interesting game progression. And oh god the dialogue... The story is okay but man there is SO MUCH TEXT. Like an unbelievable amount of boring exposion. Every character constanlty says thei thoughts out loud and you have to sit there and mash the button until you can progress. I'm all for an engaging story, but I bought this game expecting some exploration and powering up. There is very little exploration and SO MUCH TALKING. Iconoclasts started off really cool with a unique religious-authority story, but manit's so hard to keep going when you constantly have to read chatter and you just want to play. This is a potentially great game, but a lesson how NOT to do story for all developers. Either make your text have voice over so it could be engaging or cut the chatter dramatically. I don't even feel like finishing it but I had to write my frutration with a game that started off well and just becomes such a monotonous drag.

First you should know this is really more of a puzzle platformer than a Metroidvania. Progress within each area is pretty linear, with you coming to a door, going off to solve a puzzle or trigger a plot event, then proceeding to the next door. You'll generally finish an area before moving on to the next, often involuntarily within a cutscene, and often with no way back until later. You'll usually only return to a previous area to collect crafting materials you couldn't reach before, or to trigger plot events. The world is also laid out in a straight line, with a fast travel system, so there's not really much in the way of plotting a course between areas. Nothin' wrong with any of that per se, just don't go in expecting truly Metroid-style open-ended, upgrade-based exploration. Gameplay is varied and generally well-executed, and there's quite a bit of content. I think tweaks would've felt more rewarding if you unlocked more slots over time, though. I never spent most of my crafting materials because I liked the 3 I already had. The writing, though, is a mess imo. Dialogue is rambly and awkward in a way that's hard to put my finger on. Drama often feels arbitrary and unrelatable. Mina in particular seems totally scatterbrained and prone to wild moodswings. Royal is the only character who seems to have an actual character arc, but even his story is kinda clumsy. Motives and affiliations are often unclear. Characters often argue about ideals, but in meaningless vaguaries. By the end I still wasn't entirely clear on what exactly had just happened, or what to take from it. Overall it really is a remarkable game. Looks fantastic, plays good, but the bizarre storytelling really kinda left me feeling cold despite the game's other strengths.

This game is really great! Surprisingly well written, making a lot of social commentaries about organized religion, theocracies, systemic oppression, capitalism, climate change, the list goes on. I finished the game and I'm astonished as to what has been achieved here. I wish more people would play it and talk about it. I actually played a really really early version of this game a long time ago and I'm delighted to finally play the full version of the game. If the creator reads this: good job!!! You did really good!! ALSO: I've heard some people complain that this game is anti-religion. It is. It's called Iconoclasts (look it up) and if you can't handle that, this game is not for you.

The basic mechanics are pretty solid; you have both guns and your trusty wrench. The guns can be charged, but will have a longer cooldown time after firing charged shots. The wrench can be used for striking, swung at the right time to reflect projectiles, twirled for a good DPS attack, twisted to crank knobs to move pieces of puzzles the size of an entire room, and can even attach to grapple points. To summarize, the game plays like a combination of Metroid, Bionic Commando, Castle Excellent, and Monster Party; it's quite a mash-up, and tests your brain just as much as your reflexes. The bosses are no exception, and since there aren't many upgrades, you often have to think about all of your skills before you can find a solution that works. Many of the boss fights are quite engaging and fierce - it's rare for a game to expect you to be a good fighter and a good puzzle solver - but there are a select few that are stupidly easy or just plain obnoxious. Unfortunately, this does have the side-effect of bringing you times when you'll have no idea what to even do, making the challenge weirdly inconsistent. The visuals are made entirely of pixel art, but it's not the low-detail variant that screams indie at the top of its lungs. This is high quality, and has a very unique aesthetic. The characters all have excellent visual designs. The scenery is also unique, both in its shape and its coloration; in the very first area, you have trees with little cubes on them for leaves. The music complements all of this fairly well, and while there are only a handful of standout tracks, few of them are bad. This is heavily story-focused, and while the story does take some interesting turns, and has some good philosophy behind it, a lot of the characters are unlikeable, or go back-and-forth between whether or not I could stand them. Overall, if you like this style and are up for a challenge, this game's merits do outweigh its flaws.

Iconoclast is the latest game from Joakim Sandberg, aka Konjak, and the third full indie game from him. I've played both of his previous two entries, being Chalk and Noitu Love 1 and 2. While I did like Noitu Love 2 quite a bit it never jived with me the way it seemed to with other people I knew. Iconoclast changed that, I have not been so obsessed with a game as to play it multiple times back to back since System Shock 2. This game absolutely absorbed me for about 40 hours in the span of one week, I played this game like it was my full-time job... My first playthrough was on GoG and by the end of it I liked the gameplay and soundtrack but found the story a little weird and a few hiccoughs in GoG Galaxy made me not want to sink too much into it. I found it it was on Play Station and that is where I beat harder mode and than challenge mode. In short, I love this game, it's possibly one of my favorite Indie games to have ever been produced. Graphics: 80% The art direction for the game is pretty impressive, with some very creative designs for the characters, bosses, and environments. One thing that stood out to me was that some of the animations are only used once (I could watch Mina's slow clap all day long). This doesn't seem like much but it speaks to me that Konjak didn't want to cut corners and it really shows. Another positive note is that his creativity with environments really flourished with some of the more nasty looking places oozing off their boundaries and it just added a nice sense of immersion. The only negative I have is that some characters seemed more detailed than others, it might be a stylistic choice, but Robin especially seems to have tons of animation personality, but her sprite is fairly bland in the facial region even compared to Mina or Elro. Sound: 70% The soundtrack was overall pleasant and fitting. Nothing particularly stands out, from the rest which is fine. I would certainly buy the soundtrack, but I just don't see myself listening to it purely for the sake of how good the music is. Gameplay: 80% This game is an action platformer. I am a long time Metroid fan, with the original having been one of the first games I ever played. I'll get this out of the way right away, this game is pretty bad Metroidvania. There isn't a whole lot of discovery, with your adventure being fairly linear forward. There is a pretty limited toolset meaning that most of the items are hidden away behind similar puzzles. What threw me over the edge was the incredibly inconsistent signposting for one of the later game upgrades. Everything thing not tied to the Metroidvania aspects is nearly perfect though, even the exploration and routing is still amazing. As always for a Konjak game, the boss fights are a delight and a spectacle, my favorite being Fitzroy. Control: 80% The controls for most actions you do are very responsive, and Robin has a nice clean jump. The animations for swinging your wrench or firing your guns are nice and snappy and have a nice punch to them. My major complained in this area is that the game tutorizes some things, well other, fairly important, things it doesn't give you a clue about and you just are left to waffle. The two things that stood out to me are that you can use your gun's recoil to gain hight which is a foreign concept at least for me and that you can fire every gun except your first gun diagonally. Story: 75% The game actually does have a pretty fleshed out story, with character growth, deep lore, all the trappings. However, I'll be impressed if anyone understands what is going on their first playthrough. The story is pretty disjointed and quite a few moments were the cause and effect of something are separated by a good number of cutscenes combined with some people talking very vaguely about the problem. You basically have to have an amazing memory to remember the abstract way something played out to understand what they are talking about. Unless you already played it and now know where the story is going so you can tell much easier. Additionally, there is, unsurprisingly with a name like Iconoclast, a story you could easily apply to real-world issues, and well I'm normally not a huge fan of dating something so heavily these are things that have been around for a long time. Where I do have issues is that most of the game is presenting the negatives of every side of the argument without showing any positives or solutions. I get that might not be easy, but it just seems like if you want to take pot shots than you might want to also take the high road and at least present an argument for how to fix things, or at the very least recognize that there are benefits to almost every viewpoint. Overall: 95% This game is a gestalt. Taking each of those parts individually I don't think the game would be as much of a standout as it was for me, but as a whole this became a game that I think might be one of my new altime favorites. I certainly didn't feel that way on my initial playthrough, but as I understood it more the more briliant it became. I honestly give this game the strongest recomendation I can for anyone interested.