I loved this game, but I see a lot of ways it can be improved. Starting with the good, the game looks, sounds and plays amazing. The character design, graffiti, levels and everything else are a feast for the eyes, they look slick and extremely well polished, the UI design is also stylish and readable, easly the best part about the game. About the music, it's a bit different than JSR, but I think it works for what they are doing, ultimately, there are some stinkers, some bangers, but overall, really good time. Gameplay is smooth as butter, love the mechanics and the movement, just playing the game moment to moment feels cool and exciting, which is great. The game has some small issue that can be easily fixed, like one button cutscene skip; easier character/ride swap; shorter police custcenes; no animation for small graffiti; better map, which shows dance pads/taxi/bathroom/other collectibles. There are also bigger issues, my biggest gripe is the scoring system and difficulty, I understand this game is supposed to be easy, but I feel like the scoring system is so forgiving and easy to increase, that even bad players will get bored at it, decreasing the combo multipler to 0.5x when hard turning; tricking at the wrong time making you drop your combo; making manual timer NOT replenish by griding, only by using SPECIAL tricks (with blue metter); and removing the scaling (or putting a cap on it) that is applied when building blue metter with tricks would really improve the the scoring system and challenge. Another issue is sound design, the soundtrack IS strong, but silcence it and you will feel how barren the map feels, adding more ambience goes a long way. Cutscenes are also affected by this, they are plagued with jarring music cuts and the sound effects/ambience problem is even more evident with them. In the end, being a JSR fan or not, this game retreads ground but also has fresh ideas that work well. I really hope Team Reptile continue making games like this.
Minor spoilers ahead. I wanted to love this game, unfortunately some problems stopped me from doing so. My main problem is the mission structure, which are not very creative, most of them are fetch quests which are made worse by two factors: travelling is not fun, you are slow and even with the 3 teleporters the game gives you, they are not enough since you'll need to traverse multiple worlds, and if your TPs are in another region, you will walk or use your twon-ha, which has awful drawn-out mount/dismount animations; and the other reason is that finding NPCs is a pain, I like how you need to ask around to find them, but in places like Talaanzar, the NPC list is so big, that you have to cycle dialogue options for literal minutes if unlucky to find the guy you want. Gameplay is barebones. There isn't a lot of enemy variety, and you can cheese a lot of enemies by just staying far from them. There isn't incentive to use the powerful weapons because even upfront, enemies are easy. The final confrontation would be a cool moment to use all your weapons in a climax, however the games takes most of your ammo and you can barely use them. That being said, there are also some great points to the game. The Soundtrack is beautiful, really sells the world of the game and makes everything sounds grandiose like it should. The setting is really well made, it is clear the devs put a lot of effort into making Adelpha a really cool alien world, with a different culture and unique world. The graphics, like the music, really help sell it. I liked the story, I liked the majority of characters and the antagonistic dynamic between Marion and Slade is great, although the final fight was bad in a gameplay perspective, in the context of the narrative, it was really well done. In the end, my experience with Outcast was worthwhile, however, exploration and combat which should be the main focus, are badly executed. While I hoped for more and the game didn't click for me, it might for you.
I think this might be one of my favorite 2D platformers ever! It took me a while to get into it, the controls felt sluggish since characters have a couple of frames of animation before they do the action, but after a while, controlling the characters felt second nature and even the thoughest precision challenges felt fluid. If you get beyond this hurdle, Dustforce is one of the most compelling platformers ever made, the scoring system is simple but done really well and getting an SS rank always felt satisfying, so did replaying levels again and again trying to get the best time or score. The addition of a replay system is brilliant, sometimes you will get stuck in a level because it's too hard or you didn't master a certain mechanic, but watching the replays really helps the player learn and improve, although I usually don't go for top rank in games, seeing my progress by watching my replays really inspired me to do better, and aside from the last level, I have SS'd and got within top 1000 in the score rankings for every level. The replay mechanics also helps players figure out new mechanics about a certain character or a time-saving trick in a level, even the easy ones with barely any hazards are still fun to play because of it. I can't forget the music, although Dustforce is a fast-paced platformer, the music is calm and helps you relax, this combined with really fast respawn times keeps you away from getting angry. One criticism I do have is some later levels, specially the X-difficulty ones, become these giant spike labyrinths with some safe ground to stand on every now and then, they are hard, but not in satisfying way. Which is a shame considering other levels aside from these extra hard ones are really well designed. Despite that, game is amazing and I think it's definitely worth a shot, I believe it deserves more recognition.
