I like my metroidvenias to be around 4-6 hours long. This game is 15+ hours long. Don't get me wrong, this is a good game. The movement is smooth and responsive, the enemies are challenging, the bosses are fun (for the most part, the watcher knights fight dragged), the presentation is top notch, but its just too long.
I knew of this game for a long time thanks to the numerous memes spawned from it, but I only played it recently and I must say this game ROCKS! The action is top notch! The music is amazing. The writing is insane (but in a good way). Unlike other entries in the Metal Gear franchise this game is more about slicing and dicing and less about stealth (even though there are some optional stealth elements). Speaking of slicing and dicing, this game has an incredible physics engine which lets you cut tons of stuff in the environment into bits with your sword (enemies included). The story of this game is written like a bad action movie (in the best way), 10 years after its release some of the commentary is still shockingly relevant, its not very subtle but it does makes you think a little. My only real critic of the game is the use of quick time events, if you have issues with repeated fast pressing of "x" (like if you have a representative strain injury) , then this game might be not for you, there are several points in the story that you must mash a button repeatedly in order to progress. Another nit pick I have is that to quit the game you must select a save file, which wastes a little bit of time.
Its a "find the hidden object" kind of game, kind of like the "where is waldo" books. There are tons of cats to find. The illustrations are cute and details. The music is nice. There is a little bit of humor, and even some references to other video games.
Exploring Voyager and interacting with characters from the show is fun. The amount of dedication for detail is pretty good, the actors from the show reclaim their roles, and the chonkey low poly models are charming. When it comes to gameplay its OK, but not great. The engine is based on Quake 3 so the movement is fine, but all the weapons are kind of boring. Very "pew pew" lasers, which is appropriate for the Star Trek Theme, but isn't that fun. Speaking of the Star Trek theme, the story isn't that good. Solving everything with shooting guns isn't very Star Trek. Maybe a first person arena shooter isn't a great match for Star Trek. I couldn't like Munro, he is kind of a "generic action movie" type, which isn't that fitting to the setting. Technical issues: I played it on a Steam Deck, and I had to use the "Virtual Desktop" setting in Wine, because the start up menu wasn't playing nice in full screen.
Had fun with this one. Lots of levels, and lots of secrets. The enemies are challenging, the weapons are fun and the level design is creative. I found this game pretty challenging, remember to quick save a lot ;) Sadly I did have some small technical difficulties, but nothing game breaking. I used the Linux build on a steam deck, and the control bindings were mixed up. Worked around it by using steam input to bind the keyboard and mouse controls to the controller. The multiplayer button on main menu is broken (The game is looking for the wrong file name to execute, symlinking the right one to the wrong name worked around the issue). Also the DUSK HD file comes without any instructions, do I just extract into the install directory? a README file would be nice.
