Your first look will say Undertale, the first cutscene will say Golden Axe (not the last classic game nodded to here), but once you sink into this game, you'll find it's very much its own (rasta) beast. The sense of humour, characterisations and worldbuilding are all tasty, though all left me wanting more. The soundtrack is memorable to say the least. Stand-out tracks include the finale to the main story as well as some of the optional, harder-to-find battles. The Megalovania equivalent is particularly gnarly. For what looks like essentially a rhythm game, the mechanics here are deceptively deep. Battles manage to stretch the concept of "dodge to the rhythm" in new and inventive ways each time you advance the story. New mechanics are carefully introduced in advance before later turning gameplay on its head, while a host of different visual effects lie in wait to try to distract you. For a game that's hard enough (on extreme difficulties) to satisfy any achievement hunter -- rest assured you won't no-hit most of these battles in a hurry -- the learning curve was not too steep for this gamer with motor issues, and difficulties go low enough to be accessible for most. You still get the full experience on lower difficulties, just with much more forgiveness for mistakes, and you can adjust difficulty on the fly. There are also settings for colourblindness. Accessibility features often go unpraised, so I wanted to show appreciation here. Oh, and because it's obligatory on the official Discord (where the devs answer questions and accept translation requests): Green Mage my beloved. Rasta Beast my fluffy.
