Judging from the 4.5/5 rating and the numerous glowing reviews for this game I have to assume it's from pure nostalgia from people that only had this game in the early 2000s and not single other one. The controls are just way too stiff and weird to get into, it's like a hack n' slash that's trying to be a fighting game and it sorta fails at both.
Do not let the listed release date fool you, Cloud Meadow is a game that's been in development for almost 10 years and shows no real sign of ever actually being finished. Many moons ago it began life as another game called "Breeding Season" that never went anywhere. After the two lead developers had a huge falling out, one split away (the lead artist, I believe) and formed the team that would make Cloud Meadow. If you are content with owning a game that will likely never be feature complete then go ahead and buy it, just know that your money IS going to waste.
Whatever idiotic DRM this game has won't even allow someone to play a LAN game without having to own it first.
I really enjoyed the original Hedon and by itself would certainly get a solid 4 stars, but the addition of a few of Blood Rite's levels (so far) really, REALLY, tries my patience as a player. A lot of the time what Hedon does is pure GZDoom wizardry and it's pretty great, but, as some other reviews have stated, the art style runs together. This causes a lot of environmental confusion and has often left me stumbling upon something that was "hidden" but not actually secret because I just was not able to notice it unless I stopped and examined very closely. This can often be frustrating but not hindering. What is hindering is when you have to deal with it in combat on top of some... questionable choices in level design. **SPOILER ALERT** I'm only going to talk about map 14 "Besieged", specifically the second half after you sleep and the whole camp you are in is suddenly attacked by an infinite wave of demons, because this is as far as I've gotten with Blood Rite so far, and it was pretty galling. When Zan wakes up her gear is gone and you are left with only a small amount on a table next to her. You then have to travel around this small, cramped map trying to find a thin shadow being that, thanks to the blurry environment, you can barely see, while also dealing with the aforementioned infinitely spawning demons. So far Blood Rite has done a good job of introducing a lot of Plutonia level difficulty but also with a lot of drawbacks from it's own environmental artwork and those two things do not mix well.
