I enjoyed this game very much. Compared to Spelunky: Caveblazers is more combat oriented so earlier levels are consistently easier than later levels. Once you learn the enemies on earlier levels you can pretty much always beat them, only to die in a later level if you haven't learned that level's enemies. So the runs will eventually get longer than Spelunky, where there are more "surprise deaths" and you can never quite master the early levels and get complacent. It might start to feel like a chore to get through early levels of Caveblazers to get to the later levels to continue learning the enemy patterns. I liked Spelunky's short runs and consistent difficulty better. In Caveblazers there are many more items than Spelunky so each run can feel very different (combat wise). In Spelunky there is a couple of key items everyone tries to get for the most success in the last level. Whereas in Caveblazers there are more item combinations (and strategies) that will lead to a win. The bosses of Caveblazers are very hard and you get a different boss after during each run so it's hard to learn a boss's pattern. You might end up having to replay the first level multiple times just to practice a boss that you can't defeat. This will frustrate many people. Fortunately, there is a way to turn the bosses off, although I think this will affect the game's balance since you won't get the boss item/blessing drop. I wish there was a boss practice mode, but the cheat menu for turning off bosses is greatly appreciated. The game's journal of blessings uses symbols (no text labels). This makes it very hard to locate a blessing in the catalog since all the symbols resemble each other (like some unfamiliar ideographic script). I didn't like the (orchestral) music. I ended up turning it off to listen to podcasts. Controls felt fine to me. No bugs or crashes. While not quite as good and addictive as Spelunky, it's still worth trying. Review based on GOG version. I played until the magma level, then I uninstalled it because I was spending too much time on this game.
