Have you heard about one more turn syndrome? This game gave me one more dungeon syndrome.
Stunning retro metroidvania that will glue your eyes to the monitor.
Controller buttons are shown as 0-9. D-Pad buttons are not shown. Menu navigation buttons are hard coded to certain combat actions. No quick way to revert to "default" controller settings.
For the full review, check out this post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidvania/comments/hn83qt/review_alwas_legacy/
WARNING: This review is focused on the flaws of the game. For all the upsides, check other comments on Steam as well. Most of them are very agreeable.
This review is also heavily comparing to its predecessor, Alwa's Awakening (AA).
Graphics: Higher resolution. More details. 16-bit art style. Very colourful and comfortable. However it lacks the nostalgic feelings.
Sound: BGMs are not as memorable as AA. The piece used in Central Alwa is the same piece as that AA but re-rendered. Can't say neither good nor bad. The death tune sounds like a hard copy from AA which gives out a weird feeling.
Now the gameplay.
I would like to say AA's movement style is a bit hardcore. It has all the good stuff from old NES game but with ergonomic designs. Elden Pixels must have spent quite some time on polishing it. While Alwa's Legacy's (AL) style is too modern to feel like a game from 16-bit. The pace is quite fast. It's so fast that I don't feel like exploring areas. I just wanna go to the next screen.
Most enemies in AA requires one hit to kill. Some two. This is all before upgrade of the staff. But guess how many times do you have to hit the Groot-like enemies to kill them? Three. And over-feed them with attacks would result in them hitting you back in the gap between your two attacks. This is very annoying. BTW you never got an attack upgrade.
Abilities are weird too. Of course you get the ultimate floating bubble and green stone. Some of them are straight up nonsense. Like drop through a bubble to change your colour to blue. Creating a green bubble. How often will you use them? Once per run? And there's a power that makes orbs orbiting around you, like a shield. Useless piece of junk.
For the full review, check out this post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidvania/comments/hn83qt/review_alwas_legacy/
If you are looking for an experience which does not feel the need to remind you of the lies we tell ourselves about what is euphemistically called "diversity", this is not one of them. The images on the store page are not representative in this regard. If games are art, then this trend is kitsch in the worst sense, and this is a legitimate criticism of the piece—woeful in itself that I have to justify it.