Minoria

I like it. Played it on another platform 5/5, 10/10 atmosphere, art, gameplay (the gameplay can improve but the atmosphere is so good I get drawn in to the world and enjoy everything more)

seems a nice successor to the previous games, the artstyle is especially cute tho

I like the game, its a classic metroidvania, though there are a few annoying things in it. The combat is inconsistent, enemies do a crapton of damage, while my character barely does any, especially with secondary skills. Also there is a parry mechanic but its quite hard to use due to enemy inconsistency. The enemies telegraph their attack but every enemy does it at a different timing which makes sense i guess but its extremely annoying, one does it at the end of the telegraph the other does it a few seconds after, etc. Also i would much prefer it if the parry would function as a guard as well. Missing a parry has fatal consequences and how sparse the checpoint are that can be rather annoying. The game has a nice art style, especially when it comes to the characters, though their animations can be a bit clunky. The music is fenomenal, pleasure to listen to, and beautiful.

Prior to writing this review, I made sure to beat the game, the only thing I have not played is the bonus content offered upon completeing it.; I've witheld my judgement until completion so that I could give the most honest review possible. First off, this game is a metroidvainia, meaning the areas you explore are all connected rather then separated into "levels" aka "stages." However, as you progress through the game, you will notice that there are a few more modern elements added that are not altogether common to the genre in question. In alot of metriodviania's, you can walk up to an enemy and button mash, melee attacks; e.g. in Castleivainia Symphony of the Night, you can crouch down in front of an enemy and mash the attack button, and avoid most enemy attacks, at least enough attacks anyway, that deal large amounts of damage. In Minoria, you are required to dodge and deflect enemy attacks in order to defeat them. If you don't you'll die, just like in real life. To be clear, this is not a design flaw in the gameplay, the difficulty is reasonable, and once you are able to grasp the concept of this game mechanic, it is not really too much of a hassle. In fact, it starts to feel natural to react to enemy encounters in this way after playing for an extended period of time. As for bugs and glitches, well, as of this review, the devs have fixed most of those with patches, and have even sligthly adjusted the gameplay in order to make the experience more user friendly than it was on its initial release. Lastly, I'd like to point out, that if you've played any of the devs previous releases (Momodora series) you'll have to play the game without making any comparisions to the IP mentioned in order to fully enjoy this game; most fans will anyway. Take an objective stance while playing :).

Looks and plays like a worse version of Momodora. Enemies are similar, gameplay too, but the new art style just doesnt look nearly as good as Momodoras, especially when the game zooms in. The Bosses hit and hurtboxes arent quiet as clear as they were in Momodora and the Metroidvania part is too much for my taste. I got stuck several times, and exploring the world isn't rly fun, especially when you don't know what you are looking for, but maybe thats just me and my general distaste of most metroidvania like titles. But then again, the predecessor Momodora got that part just right too.