You can add some iframes, tighten up the parry and add a little more air control to really make this something special without upsetting the tryhard crowd that wants everything to be borderline impossible. I love the theme and building on the lore of an oldie is great but this game is too hard for all the wrong reasons.
There is a legit fun game here that, yes, does take a long time to really understand but it's ultimately a plain old Source shooter with a trippy setting, upgrades and a wonky translation. Take your time, do NOT look at min/max build guilds and just experience it. Whatever you do though, do NOT TURN OFF AUTO-LEVELING in the character menu if you decide to play that way. You will lose all the experience up to that point and have an empty shell character with a level but nothing to show for it.
I feel like I bought one of those Steam knockoff games with similar titles that are shoved out early to try and piggyback on hype games. Why is it so ugly, why does it run so poorly, why does nothing work like it should? Come on guys, this is just sad.
Then it stops feeling like METAL CONTRA YEEEHAW and becomes more like Bit.Trip Runner. Missed a single input? You died. Everything loses it's luster after a while when the action games bleeds out and it feels more like a rhythm game.
The production values are nice, the concept is...unique to say the least, but the actual gameplay is decidedly average. Therein lies the real issue with this game, despite what the other reviews here will tell you, HMA does NOT know what it is, and that is a shoot'em'up. The focus is more on the shop and making sure you have the exact equipment to get through the next bite-sized level of pure chaos rather than being a coherent shooting experience. Had this been five long levels with a shop in between it would have been a much better experience for it. As it stand though you'll spend most of your time reading dialog, buying and selling the same gear over and over again in the shop to suit the level you just tried and got raked over the coals in for not having the exact weapon you need. At the end of the day there just isn't a lot of shooting in this shooter. Too many buttons, too many micro stages over in the blink of an eye, too many screens to flip through. If you want to make a shooter make sure your controls are tight, your weapons are crazy and you don't bury your actual game underneath all the elements a shmup isn't know for.
