I really wanted to like this game. I love metroidvanias, and the pixel art and ability to switch the palette was a big plus for making me pick this up.
The third star of this review is earned through the pixel art and aesthetic alone.
However, the game often feels like it is deliberately wasting your time. Enemies take just a few too many hits to be worth dealing with.
The game stutters slightly every time you pick up an item.
The map is large, but wholly forgettable, many rooms presenting neither challenge, nor something interesting.
And the wall-jump functionality in this game may have caused me more deaths than the enemies did.
The progression is pretty much exploring all rooms, hoping to find a container to have more currency. Find the correct merchant to get the progression item, repeat.
There are some sequences which try to break things up, but even they end up feeling plodding and out staying their welcome before they're done.
Put together, it makes for something that looks like it should be awesome that just feels somewhere between "Bad" and "Meh", which is a real shame.
For a positive experience, going to arcade mode and taking the speed run option gives you a much better experience, as you mostly want to ignore enemies, don't need to explore and there are no bullet sponge bosses.
So yeah, the game boiled down to a <10 minute experience is much more satisfying than the 4-ish hour slog I played first.
