Regarding combat, the first 2 methods you acquire for fighting are a pitchfork and lighting the enemies on fire. Regarding the pitchfork, you can't just press a button and have your dude attack with it. You have to hold down the button so the guy can basically wind up the attack, and then when he's ready, you release the button. Meaning a basic attack takes several seconds to execute, and when you start out, it takes 3 stabs from the pitchfork to kill an enemy. And the pitchfork breaks after 4 successfully stabs (and my friend and I only ever found 2 pitchforks in the entire game). As for lighting the enemy on fire, you can only do that if the enemy is standing on a patch of hay you can ignite (which is stupid considering that the only enemy you can do this to are themselves hay monsters [don't ask]). Also, even if you do light the enemy on fire, it still takes a while for said enemy to die and they can still attack/kill you while engulfed. Your 3rd method of killing enemies is to hit them over with a hay truck. However, it still takes several hits from the truck to kill 1 enemy, and you can still get hurt while in the truck. And considering how you have to wait for the enemy to get back up before you can damage them again, if you have to contend with more than 1 enemy, you're better off running away. The last method is by using a rifle, which you don't get until the last quarter of the game. But of course, using the rifle is still cumbersome and time consuming to use. Oh, also, there's 1 kind of enemy you encounter whom you can't kill, and the game doesn't tell you this until after you get close to said enemy and try to kill them. As for the stealth, its not clear how far the enemy can see, and if you're spotted, its very difficult to get them to give up on chasing you. Also, they all have long range attacks. Plus, there's this stupid mechanic where, when your guy is afraid, he moves slower (making it harder to run away). Lastly, all 5 endings suck.
I played through this with a buddy of mine, and for the most of the game, we thought it was a tough but fair and fun game. However, that all changed when we got to the final boss. It took us 2 hours to beat that guy on the Normal difficulty setting. That sullied both of our experiences with this game, and because of that final boss fight, I never want to play this game again. I'll still give it a 3 out of 5 since, up until then, I didn't really have an issue with it.
This game is one of the most unique horror games I've played in recent memory. While I have no nostalgia or history playing really old PC games, this game not only pulls off the aesthetic of one. And its not just in the visuals but also the gameplay, which is very simple. However, there are some design decisions that kept me from enjoying this more than I wanted. First of all, you can't skip cutscenes or dialogue. So if you die fighting a boss that had a cutscene before the fight, then you have to watch the cutscene again. Secondly, outside of very few specific times, you can't save whenever you want. The game just has an autosave mechanic. Thirdly, while this game avoids obtuse adventure game logic for the most part, there are cases where I got lost and had to resort to using a guide (also, if you plan on getting the good ending, you'll need a guide). Despite these shortcomings, I still very much enjoyed my time with this game.
This is definitely an improvement over the first game. It controls much better (multidirectional aiming, better jumping controls, a dodge roll), the boss fights are better, the enemy variety is greater, and a few other small things here and there. However, you still don't have any invincibility frames when you get hit, and this becomes a much bigger issue in later levels when it really feels like a 2D hoard shooter. In fact, during most of the later levels, my buddy and I would just forgo fighting the waives of enemies and just keep moving forward since it just wasn't worth killing all the enemies (plus, the later levels all had various death traps that would kill the enemies anyway). So yeah, there's more room for improvement.
Here's my damning by fine praise: this plays like a top tier Newgrounds flash game. Not only does it look like, sound like, and have concept of something you'd find on Newgrounds, it plays kind of janky. The main issue I have being that there's no invincibility frames when you get hit. Meaning you could very easily lose most or all of your health very quickly. Also, the few boss fights are all pretty bad. So, definitely not great, but I have played worse games.
I only bought this to playthrough with a friend of mine. Unfortunately, if you want to play through this via local multiplayer, one person as to be on a keyboard while the other has to use a controller. There isn't a way to play this where 2 people can use a controller (or with 2 keyboards if you wanted). I googled this issue and apparently its a bug on the Steam and Xbox Gamepass version as well. A Reddit post said that a patch was supposedly issued to the Steam and Gamepass version to fix this. However, another Reddit post said the problem is still there, and regardless, this issue is still in the GOG version and I've not seen or heard anything about fixing this.
I played through this with a friend of mine, and while he had a decent enough time with it, we encountered some annoying bugs (and not just the kind you find in nature) and design decisions: 1) One of these bugs was found in the 3rd level. Specifically, where you are supposed to pull open the matchbox towards the end. We tried pushing it open at first, which you could do to an extent, but when we found out via a playthrough video that we were supposed to pull open the matchbox, we couldn't because the matchbox kept having collision issues. The vast majority of the puzzle platforming in this game is physics based, and I imagine the devs are using the default physics engine in the Unity engine. Even if they aren't, the physics engine used is a fairly temperamental one. Another, non-physics related bug we encountered was in one of the later levels (the one where its raining). You're supposed to use a clover you pick up to progress. But for some reason after putting the clover down, it de-spawned and we couldn't get it to come back. Now, these bugs wouldn't have been so bad if there was a way to restart at the last checkpoint. Unfortunately... 2) There isn't a way to restart at the last checkpoint. So if you encounter a gameplay breaking bug, you have to quit back to the level select menu and start over from the beginning (and any secrets you found will have to be collected again). 3) You can't remap the controls. This was particularly annoying for me, the 2nd player, because the character I controlled could only be moved with the d-pad or right control stick and the action button was the right trigger. That made playing the game somewhat uncomfortable and I really think the devs should include a way to remap the controls on a controller. If they address these issues, I could see myself giving this a 4-star rating. As is, its a 3-star at best.
But everytime I tried to play this game, I kept thinking to myself, "I'd rather be playing DMC/Devil May Cry 3/Devil May Cray 4/Devil May Cry 5/Bayonetta/etc.". While the spectacle fighter combat in this game is fine, its not as flashy or varied as this game's bigger budget brethren. Also, the story is brought across in a visual novel style, which combine with its very basic visuals, only further reminded me that "Oh yeah, this was made by one person with a small budget." So you don't get any absurd cutscenes or anything to bring across the plot. Now, while spectacle fighters are never known for having good stories, they usually get by from being brought across in an over the top fashion. That isn't the case here, and the story here isn't good either. The characters are all stock anime archetypes with barely if any personality to them that helps them stand out from other characters of the same anime stereotype. I want to give special notice to Kanoko Yotsuba, who I HATED MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS GAME! As for the attempts at comedy, they completely fell flat for me. This is because the vast majority of the attempts are done via the visual novel cutscenes (so all the comedic bits are described in text). For example, there's a scene where a robot (who's a boss character) is touted to be very polite, so the character Asaru is prodded to greet said robot so it could demonstrate this. Asaru apparently does so and hands said robot a business card. The characters then describe how amazed they are that the robot bowed and has such natural looking movements, as well as describe how the robot threw the business card away. If we could've seen this play out, maybe it would've been better, but having all this just described in text didn't work at all. And that's how almost all the jokes play out. So in the end, I quit playing and moved onto something else.
This is the only total conversion I've played, and I played this with a friend. If you've played any boomer shooter before, you'll know exactly what to expect here. But my friend and I had fun playing this.
Of the 3 Opus games, this is definitely the best one. Unfortunately, there's several things about it that left a bit cold - There's no way to manually save. The game autosaves at certain points and that's the only way you have to save your game. Which can be a problem if you're in a story heavy part and you're skipping through stuff as fast as you can because you need to save so you can go take care of something urgent - The music tuning mechanic is poorly explained. In fact, I don't recall there being a proper tutorial on how you're actually supposed do the 2 variants you're tasked with repeatedly doing - The game tends to drag in several spots, and then the end chapter comes and goes super quickly. So I'd say there are story pacing problems - The characters are pretty stock. They're not bad (though Remi is the annoying, grumpy tag-along kid stereotype I hate) but they're nothing special. And in a narrative heavy game that's really light on gameplay, that's a problem I had some other minor quibbles, but suffice it to say, I was disappointed with how I didn't enjoy this more than I did. If I had to lob a positive though, I think the setting in this game is great. I just wish it was used a better game.
