Premieres 7

Story Positives:

1. Atmosphere: Gilded storytelling; things seemingly fine on the surface, but cues and hints of things being much worse
2. Intro: Intro does so much right in such a short period of time…
3. Intro: …and honestly earns a second positive
4. Pacing: Narrative pacing is excellent throughout…
5. Pacing: …with tons of ups, downs, breathers, and tension
6. Brickwork: Usage of color as atmosphere both highs and lows
7. Music Direction: Music direction is spot on…
8. Music Direction: …easily second positive worthy
9. Voice Acting: Amicia’s VA is incredible…
10. Voice Acting: …honestly earning a second positive
11. MSQ: Village sequence in its entirety
12. Animation: Animation in cutscenes
13. Voice Acting: Voice acting during stealth sections
14. Cutscene: The dream sequence is well constructed in general…
15. Cutscene: …but the way it built and crescendo’d into walking through a sea of rats as we struggled, screaming, to reach Hugo…
16. Cutscene: …earning a third positive
17. Character: Hugo is an adorable beacon of light in an otherwise dark game, and is brilliantly used strategically throughout to perk things up…
18. Voice Acting: …even further helped by his excellent voice actor
19. Character: Amicia is similarly an excellent and well done character
20. Voice Acting: General voice acting positive
21. Spritework: The rats themselves easily earn a positive for their usage and their tone
22. Integration: Gameplay / Story Integration positive
23. Visual Storytelling: The ratnado is, surprisingly, pretty terrifying
24. Character: Lucas is enjoyable in his own right
25. Character: Melie is, similarly, enjoyable
26. Character: Generally good supporting cast
27. Dialogue: Dialogue is generally well written
28. Doodads: Good doodad utilization
29. Sound: The sound design always adds to the narrative
30. Story Sequencing: Generally good story sequencing
31. Visual Storytelling: Visual storytelling does a lot to add to the story, especially the already rat-infested areas…
32. Visual Storytelling: …earning two positives
33. Voice Direction: Voice direction is spot on
34. Brickwork: Absolutely lovely Brickwork for the early section…
35. Brickwork: …easily earning two positives
36. Brickwork: For the village
37. Brickwork: For the pig farm
38. Brickwork: On the aquaduct level
39. Brickwork: And for the forest level

Story Negatives:

1. Character: Vitalis was just… not an engaging villain at all. I’ve seen worse, but ultimately he detracts from the narrative
2. Cutscene Incompetence: Here and there, most notably with the way Arthur died to Nicholas

Gameplay Positives:

1. Tutorialization: The tutorial section is honestly very legit, does a fantastic job of escalation and giving the player ways to ease into mechanics before testing them
2. Intro: The Intro is, similarly, brilliantly designed from a gameplay perspective and deserves its own praise
3. Core Mechanic: The Rats and Light mechanic in general
4. Core Mechanic: The stealth and avoidance mechanics in general
5. Difficulty Curve: Difficulty curve (especially due to non-binary difficulty)
6. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Generally good checkpointing
7. Level: The entire Village level
8. Level: The pig farm level
9. Level: The aqueduct mass grave level
10. Level: The forest level
11. Music: Music in general is excellent…
12. Yoshi Drums: …but the way it Yoshi Drums is fantastic
13. Sound: Sound design is good in general…
14. Sound: …but also really helps inform who is what, where, and how to deal with it
15. Level: City level
16. Level: The cathedral / library level
17. Level: Everything about the alchemy and garden section
18. Pacing: Pacing of gameplay is excellent throughout…
19. Pacing: …easily deserving a second positive
20. Kit: The kit is good and varied throughout
21. Encounter: Encounter design is generally good
22. All Roads Lead To Rome: Periodic multiple paths gameplay design
23. Integration: Gameplay and Story Integration
24. Tutorializatoin: Continually escalating mechanics introduction and further tutorialization
25. Princess Peach: The entire Hugo section of going through the prison is a wonderful Princess Peach segment
26. Enemy Variety: There aren’t many, but the enemies that are there are good variety, each one having different tactics that work for them
27. Alternate Leveling: The Alternate Leveling of having to balance inventory for consumables/ammo as well as upgrades
28. Replayability: The generally enjoyable stealth / action gameplay leads to a single Replayability positive
29. Terrain: The terrain design is top notch, helping almost every area to feel both unique and have its own methods of progression…
30. Terrain: …earning…
31. Terrain: …three positives
32. Boss: There’s only a couple, but surprisingly fun boss fights
33. HUD: A simple but informative HUD

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Controls: The controls for, uh, controlling the rats as Hugo kinda really suck
2. Controls: Wonky in general (and depend on the scene) but are clearly made for controller and not M&K
3. Pathfinding: AI pathfinding had occasional issues

Story Positives:

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: The intro cinematic is terribly done in almost every way. Storyboarding, pacing, writing, directing, and just… wow
2. Plot: The plot is nonsensical even for Trek
3. Writing: They somehow warp over into the very bodies and ship of the mirror universe but remain theirselves… somehow??
4. MSQ: The starbase keeps repairing the Excelsior despite openly calling them traitors… and then clamps and self destructs to destroy them… but… what?
5. MSQ: Meanwhile we have to beat the M5 by solo killing four constitutions… in a row… THEN the Orions…
6. Fake Drama: Should I mention how Sulu’s refusal to use his brain to think a way around Chekov leads to a totally unnecessary rivalry arc?
7. Pacing: There’s a total absence of pacing in this game. It just lurches around doing whatever it wants to
8. Story Sequencing: The story sequencing similarly has no logic or thread to it other than ‘random episode references’
9. Writing: The fact that our fighter is just… a doom death destructo machine and has to solo massive quantities of enemy fighters AND capital ships
10. MSQ: The entire wormhole mission is various layers of just… nonsense
11. Cutscene: The ‘cavalry has arrived’ moment in Vortex is terribly presented
12. Cutscene: The Mirror Mirror opening cutscene is bad at every level. The mirror ship, the fact that they (somehow) have tons of fighters despite also having lost their crew and are somehow here at the same time and of course, finally, a terrible ‘oh my’
13. Outro: The Outro is bad in general…
14. Outro: …but the WAH WAH nature of it, the awful writing, the terrible line reading, pushes it down even more
15. Consequence Storytelling: The entire game is the opposite of consequence storytelling
16. Dialogue: The dialogue is some truly awful writing
17. External Continuity: External Continuity actively makes this game worse
18. Voice Direction: It’s very clear the voice direction on Takei and Koenig was not there, and it’s especially true on everyone else
19. Brickwork: The brickwork (skybox) is actively bad (blue crap!)

Gameplay Positives:

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Level: The mission design for the second mission is not good. Endless waves of klingons interfering with objectives you can’t do until they’re cleared, followed by more waves of irritation
2. Level: The third mission. First fight fighters (what else), but then release the clamps or an invisible timer will instantly kill the Excelsior, and then destroy a capital ship by yourself
3. Controls: Controls are… really loose and barely designed
4. HUD: The HUD is not well designed in general, barely explained, and worse is actually covered by in-game dialogue
5. Kit: The lack of weapon variety and balancing is immediately noticeable
6. Controls: Targeting is bad, bad, bad. It’s inconsistent how it targets what
7. Core Combat: The knockback effect from getting hit is bad in its own right due to frustration but also screws with you because…
8. Core Combat: …the game in general is very disorienting, to the point of being vaguely nauseating
9. Audio Spam: Audio spam is pretty bad
10. Enemy Design: Enemy ships are just faster than you, even if you’re constantly holding down dash
11. Level: Mission 4 is actually terrible. Defend the Excelsior who is doing nothing against four Constitutions and an Orion. Even going completely suicidally berserker, the Excelsior is at 20% health and no shields by the time the Constitutions go down
12. Level: A second negative for Mission 4
13. Bug: Capital ships exploding forces a ‘cutscene’ but doesn’t pause the action, so you and your ally can still take damage (and die) during the cutscene
14. Level: Mission 6 can go to hell. It’s the exact same friggin’ mission structure as the previous ‘gather minerals’ mission and is, thus, boring…
15. Level: …but is made worse by the waves upon waves upon waves upon WAVES of enemies which, as usual, kill the Excelsior
16. Level: Mission 7 is, as usual, an awful escort mission
17. Difficulty Options: The… ‘difficulty options’… aren’t
18. Level: As usual, escort missions suck
19. Level: The Balok mission is pure insanity. Fifty hyperbalillion enemy fighters swarming you constantly, and despite killing them so quickly I was doing so once per couple SECONDS they still nearly killed the Excelsior before I could kill them all
20. Level: The amoeba mission was boring dull and stupid
21. Level: The wormhole mission was aggravating to play in almost every way…
22. Graphics: …but deserves a second negative for the visuals being legitimately disorienting
23. Level: The Tholian defense mission is really frustrating and irritating to maneuver through while having the usual timer / escort issues
24. Level: The Vortex mission is honestly really quite boring
25. Outro: The Outro is one of the worst Outros I’ve seen. It’s yet another boring escort mission for the Excelsior, while the enemy spawns an infinite wave of way-too-many-fighters, while having bad controls…
26. Outro: …earning itself…
27. Outro: …a third negative
28. Party AI: AI is bad in general; not acknowledging collision, no real maneuvering or tactics, and the friendlies are completely useless
29. Core Combat: The core combat is, at absolute best, boring
30. Difficulty Curve: The game’s difficulty curve is beyond stupid

Story Positives:

1. Dialogue: Dialogue is not only well written in general…
2. Dialogue: …but varies in tone between characters
3. Humor: Game is reasonably humorous
4. World Building: Generally good world building…
5. World Building: …but also continuous, natural world building as characters slowly explain to each other things that we, the audience, don’t know
6. Cutscene: Betty’s bit about trauma, hating an idea not a person, is indicative of the kinds of great lines that exist in this work…
7. Writing: …which I will give a second positive for sheer writing quality
8. Intro: The prologue did some… amusing stuff but was reasonably well fleshed out, especially between Beatrice and Deal
9. MSQ: The first day was interesting pretty much across the board
10. Cutscene: The porch scene between Dana and Jill
11. Tone: The game manages good perspective, but manages to keep it interesting… this is something I love when stories do right, the ‘real’ story is happening over there but you’re not part of that story, so you only see snippets…
12. Tone: …the viewpoint of the elephants fighting from the perspective of the ants
13. Background Lore: News articles and reddit threads as background lore
14. Internal Continuity: Internal continuity is very tight…
15. Internal Continuity: …as the game keeps track of what’s going on elsewhere and within its characters very well
16. Outro: The Outro between Jill and Gaby is really awesome
17. Character: Sei is adorable, straightforwards, and a great support
18. Character: Jill is interesting enough to be worthwhile
19. Character: Dana, the retired Punk, is awesome in all the right ways
20. Character: Dorothy is probably one of the best and most complex and fleshed out characters in the game, with a good head on her shoulders and surprisingly multi-faceted personality…
21. Character: …earning a second positive
22. Character: Stella is another multi-faceted character who bounces off Jill and Sei beautifully
23. Character: Alma is great, supportive, and engaging
24. Character: Kira Miki is really quite well done despite her lack of screen time
25. Character: Vergilio is pretty legit, and shows signs even early on of what’s really going on there
26. Character: Betty and Deal make a nice two-part act
27. Character: Supporting cast in general
28. Character: Really good chemistry and connecting threads between characters
29. Cutscene: Sei and Dorothy’s scene together did a good job on a lot of levels
30. Cutscene: Sei’s freak out and calm down shortly after the bank situation
31. Character: Anna Start was pretty legit

Story Negatives:

1. Character: The entire… loli… thing with Dorothy is gross on several levels, but even if one were to remove the emotional reaction, the fact is it adds nothing to the story and actively detracts from it

Gameplay Positives:

1. Music: Music is pretty enjoyable
2. NG+: Decent new game +
3. Log: Chat log
4. All Roads Lead To Rome: Pseudo-branching gameplay

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: Lack of rebinding
2. Controls: Jukebox is unnecessarily irritating to interact with
3. QoL: Lack of chapter select
4. Walkthroughitis: There’s… quite a few more esoteric requirements to progress some things in certain ways, especially regarding the endings

Story Positives:

1. Intro: The cold-open nature of the Intro does a good job of pulling you in and hooking you early on, as well as clearly indicating there is more going on here than it seems
2. MSQ: Plots. Several interesting, seemingly unconnected plots
3. Visual Storytelling: Visual storytelling pretty consistently (I mean hell, it’s a major point of the game)…
4. Visual Storytelling: …for a full…
5. Visual Storytelling: …three positives
6. Moment: The Kraken reveal (pretty much indicates the types of story this will be as soon as it shows)
7. Moment: The Soldiers of the Sea reveal (spider… crab… things)
8. Storyboarding: Storyboarding of posing the scenes
9. Story Sequencing: Story sequencing (events are very clearly connected properly)
10. Consequence Storytelling: Consequence storytelling (just about everything is one long domino)
11. Foreshadowing: Foreshadowing (we learn a lot in our very first tidbit)
12. Internal Continuity: The Internal Continuity in this game is spot on…
13. Internal Continuity: …to the point that it just is crazy how well it keeps track of itself…
14. Internal Continuity: …for a full three positives
15. Outro: The Outro and the final reveal of how the captain was, really, behind almost everything
16. Sound: The sound design helps add to each, uh, ‘scene’ quite well
17. Integration: Gameplay and story integration

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Intro: Intro. The initial three fates are relatively easy to learn, but more to the point are very clearly linked to each other and designed to get you into the mood and mode of what type of game this is
2. Guidance and Flow: Good guidance and flow of exploration
3. Integration: Gameplay and story integration, of course
4. Sound: Sound design literally helps you determine what’s going on in each ‘scene’…
5. Sound: …for two positives
6. Visual Continuity: At all times you can pretty much immediately tell where you are on the ship, regardless of time frame
7. QoL: Some small QoL features (in how the book operates, the ‘flies’, not being able to lose the corpse beam)
8. Core Mechanic: Core frozen vignette freeze mechanic
9. Core Mechanic: Core deduction mechanic (identity, cause of death)
10. Sound: Voice acting (for identification purposes)
11. Kit: Book usage and availability
12. Leveling: The ‘after three’ mechanic to tell you when you have three accurate things is a great decision because it doesn’t let you purely brute force guess (like telling you immediately would) and it’s not irritating (like not telling you at all would) and of course this also builds in a feeling and tangibility of progression
13. Leveling: …easily earning a second positive
14. Info In Game: Storyboarding and how it gives clues and helps with deduction
15. Level: Level design, too, is clearly designed with the overall deduction in mind…
16. Level: …for a full…
17. Level: …three positives
18. Info In Game: Info in game in the form of map, crew manifest, and glossary
19. Core Mechanic: The very well designed sketches and how they… help you deduce what’s going on

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Padding: The showpiece, followed by forced fade out, followed by book fill in
2. Options: The game literally doesn’t allow the player to change resolution, or move the window, without bugging out completely. This is on top of a near total lack of options, most egregiously in sound options (only one volume ‘slider’ for all audio)

Story Positives:

1. Humor: The game got some silly laughs out of me more than a few times
2. Voice Acting: Performances! Usually this is ‘voice acting’ but in this case it’s just plain ‘acting’
3. Lighting: Lighting, which is well done enough to warrant notice
4. Spritework: Makeup design for the actors
5. Character: Murphy himself is… well, Murphy
6. Character: Mojo is easily one of the best characters in the game…
7. Character: …alongside Louie, and his varying tones and good acting…
8. Character: …as well as Taylor, who is just generally legit and the actress is clearly just having fun with the role
9. Camera: Cutscene direction is pretty top notch
10. Character: Archie is pretty legit
11. Character: Smart Alex is, as you might expect, appropriately amusing
12. Atmosphere: The unique atmosphere and tone of serious, silly, slapstick, noir, Bond film
13. Banter: Good banter between Murphy and just about everyone
14. Character: The Translator is exactly as hammy and ridiculous as a Bond villain should be
15. Intro: Does some good stuff in establishing our core cast, ourselves, and our connections
16. Dialogue: Dialogue is generally well written
17. External Continuity: External Continuity is reasonably well done
18. Outro: The Outro with the Tesla Lab, the confrontation at the tower with Slade, while it had some issues it was still enjoyable

Story Negatives:

1. Voice Acting: Periodic issues with acting and with someone trying a bit too hard with a line
2. Pacing: Pacing is… not. It’s just sort of whatever, probably because of the format of the game

Gameplay Positives:

1. Info In Game: In-game hint system and Flashlight mechanic are both nice ways to keep the game going forwards
2. Core Mechanic: Generally enjoyable puzzle design
3. Save: Pretty good autosave system
4. Choice: Choices, not only changing the ending but scenes and the flavor thereof

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Interface: Font size is just way, way too small and makes the game difficult to read or understand
2. Choice: TOR Syndrome is pretty bad (if limited)
3. Pacing: Pacing has some pretty serious issues
4. Intro: Intro has several issues. It’s arguably one of the worst walkthroughitis moments in the game, with some vague hints and nothing really indicating the rock, and otherwise bleh
5. Outro: The Outro (the Tesla base) has many issues. Instant-death binary issues, lack of direction at multiple points, and the vague inconsistency issues coming with an ill-used engine
6. Walkthroughitis: I’ve seen worse, but it’s still there

Story Positives:

1. Animation: The sprite animation is actually really quite good, and always helps sell the scene
2. Atmosphere: Tone and atmosphere of dread, wonder, and exploration is very well presented
3. Banter: Banter, mostly towards the first two acts, is really quite good
4. Camera: The game’s ‘camerawork’ for scene construction is actually quite good (not counting the cartoon animations)
5. Dialogue: Some smartly written dialogue throughout
6. Intro: The Intro does so much so well. The stakes, the premise, the characters, the banter, the escalation, the tension, the crater…
7. Intro: …it’s one of the better Intros I’ve seen, it’s easily two positive material
8. Music Direction: Music direction is spot on, adding to essentially every scene
9. Cutscene: The suicide jump was honestly almost perfect
10. Sound: Sound design really adds to basically every scene
11. Brickwork: Some really damned good brickwork across the game…
12. Brickwork: …effortlessly earning…
13. Brickwork: …a general triple positives
14. Voice Acting: Several good bits of voice acting

Story Negatives:

1. Cutscene: Brink’s… big climatic death scene was just kind of… really awful
2. Outro: The Outro… has pretty serious issues. It’s abrupt, it’s unearned, and it flies in the face of previously established facts and themes

Gameplay Positives:

1. Music: Music is, as per Michael Land’s usual, is legit
2. Guidance And Flow: Not all the time, but quite often the game is pretty good at guiding you in how to progress forwards

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Visual Distinction: There is some pixel hunting here, especially due to poor visual distinction
2. Walkthroughitis: There are several issues of walkthroughitis throughout, peppered across the game

Story Positives:

1. Visual Storytelling: Visual storytelling of the house is honestly pretty well designed
2. Storytelling Mechanic: The storytelling mechanic of learning piecemeal what happened and what’s happening as we explore the house
3. Intro: Intro does enough right to be noteworthy, some good hooks laid down early on
4. Voice Acting: The voice actress playing Sam is decent enough, some minor issues and some problems with quantity

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: The Outro has several substantial constructive issues with it…
2. Outro: …and fails utterly to fulfill on the emotional impact it is so clearly going for

Gameplay Positives:

1. Minigame: Built in developer commentary mode
2. Guidance and Flow: The game, with one notable exception, actually has pretty good guidance and flow of exploration in its level design

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Guidance and Flow: Never did find the locker code which is literally mandatory for progression, which… is walkthroughitis and/or bad flow of exploration design

Story Positives:

Story Negatives:

1. Humor: The core concept of quirky humor is poorly constructed and poorly realized, actually making it unfunny and hurting the work as a consequence
2. Outro: The entire Outro is lacking on almost every level, with a weird non build up to a weird confrontation and another lawl so random moment with the critters, and then a near wah-wah conclusion

Gameplay Positives:

1. Intro: Intro is reasonably well done, good layout of things to interact with and (optional) tutorialization while you figure out your kit and progression
2. Core Mechanic: Physics based puzzles in general
3. Kit: Slice and grab are both good mechanics
4. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Mid mission checkpoints are pretty good

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Controls: Controls are honestly bad. Too loose, not enough platforming aids, game would literally go the wrong direction at times
2. Music: The in game music is not great
3. Outro: The final stage is honestly pretty bad, with bad visuals and tiny draw radius …
4. Outro: …and the final boss fight is just kind of badly designed and unnecessarily random

Story Positives:

1. Atmosphere: Tone and approach (status quo alteration and ‘now what?’)
2. Humor: Game gets a good deal of laughs out of me
3. World Building: The game weirdly does a decent amount to establish its kingdoms, politics, and rules
4. Storytelling Mechanic: The portraits did a good job of helping with the tone and characters
5. MSQ: RPG battle in the ogre kingdom
6. Character: Characters in general
7. Character: Princess Apoidea has her own layers to her, and is generally one of the more pleasant princesses
8. Character: Farrah Day is delightful, tragic, and adorable
9. MSQ: The game show sequence
10. Brickwork: City, insect, fire, ice, etc.)
11. Character: Crow is pretty engaging for a Bowser-style villain
12. Character: Becky is similarly awesome for an actually-running-things secretary
13. Dialogue: Generally good dialogue
14. Character: Great chemistry between characters
15. Intro: Intro is okay, but it really sets the stage properly once we end the first stage and enter the ‘now what’ phase
16. Plot: Plot is legitimately interesting

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Music: Music may be a bit misplaced but is quite good
2. Level: The dwarf princess section was legit
3. Kit: Princesses as power ups
4. Boss: We’re the boss design
5. Hyperbeam Moment: The segment with Farrah Day
6. Level: Train heist stage
7. Mid-Mission Checkpoint: Placement is pretty good
8. Outro: Pretty good Outro over all

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Sound: A combination of no audio options in menu, no ability to return to menu once in game, and the game is super loud (also the menu ignores volume options)… also the game is just periodically physically painfully loud, despite turning the volume down
2. Enemy Design: The flying ‘hover around you’ type enemies are irritating and frustrating, angle ‘onto’ you and are custom built to dodge your attacks
3. Controls: Controls are honestly just… bad in so many ways it’s hard for me to know how to summarize it
4. Bug: Inconsistent hit / hurt boxes
5. Core Mechanic: Jank issues with platforming
6. Core Combat: Honestly pretty bad
7. Sound: Generally bad sound design across the board

Story Positives:

1. Atmosphere: The atmosphere, the unique tone of being about game development from multiple perspectives
2. Character: Ish is an astonishingly well fleshed out, interesting individual
3. Character: Coda is fascinating in the perspective she adds and how she moves forwards
4. Character: Pro and Maze are good supporting cast in general
5. Cutscene: The ‘cinematic’ of the big demo reveal and Ish’s deconstruction
6. Dialogue: Generally well written dialogue
7. Integration: Gameplay/story integration is sort of the bread and butter here
8. Intro: The Intro immediately establishes your role, Ish and Maze’s conflict, and the nature of what’s going on
9. Cutscene: The entire demo scene was legit on several levels
10. Outro: The Outro does a great deal to wrap things up, and makes several points but doesn’t linger too much on preachifying any of them
11. Storytelling Mechanic: The storytelling mechanics of the audio and test logs
12. Voice Acting: Voice Acting is quite well done throughout…
13. Voice Acting: …sufficient in quality and quantity to deserve a second positive
14. Brickwork: Not just good graphics, but varied across the two ‘eras’

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. All Roads Lead To Rome: All roads lead to Rome design in the ‘open’ segment, both in general and in how you can progress past specific puzzles
2. Builds: Build gameplay in how you customize what with what
3. Controls: Game controls quite well for its mechanics
4. Core Mechanic: The core mechanic of draining, refilling, and editing is just awesome
5. Enemy Variety: Enemy variety is quite varied, as it should be given the core conceit
6. Fast Travel: Good fast travel system
7. Hyperbeam Moment: The hyperbeam moment is more stretched than usual (once you’ve snowballed, you snowball hard)
8. Integration: Gameplay/story integration
9. Intro: The Intro does a lot to help get you into the mode, your two major mechanics, and how to process them
10. Kit: The ‘kit’ in the squads is great (and allows you to ‘build tall’ or ‘build wide’)
11. Level: Level design has a natural flow and gradience to it, guiding you in certain directions at certain times to unlock more stuff
12. Outro: The Outro is quite well designed, with all abilities unlocked and infinite use to just screw with the demo however you please
13. QoL: The game has several small but critical Quality of Life features (escape working properly, summoning all minions with both buttons, giving tiered orders, and most importantly… being able to summon any dead enemy from across the entire game to you at will)
14. Visual Continuity: Good visual continuity, can basically always tell where you are
15. Visual Distinction: Good visual distinction, pretty easy to discern what is where and when
16. Map: A surprisingly well designed map, showcasing not just terrain, but where you haven’t gone, things you haven’t gotten, dead enemies, and warp points

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Traversal: Move speed is too slow, no run button

Story Positives:

1. Visual Storytelling: Graphics deserve special mention for how they are utilized to tell the story
2. Brickwork: Art direction obviously deserves its own special mention
3. Music Direction: The game uses its music for the narrative more than anything else
4. Music Direction: …leading to a second music direction positive
5. Storyboarding: Surprisingly well done
6. Visual Storytelling: Pretty much the bread and butter of the game
7. Animation: Animation in the woman, the creatures, the statue… and the ichor
8. Moment: The reveal of the bats as the screeching bird
9. Moment: The return of the black beast of depression in the eel sequence
10. Intro: The Intro which makes it very clear where and how this is going (the curling against the hand as it breaks)
11. Outro: The Outro in its entirety
12. Visual Storytelling: The very usage and audio-visual realization of the black ichor that is depression
13. Theme: The overall tone of the recovery from grief…
14. Theme: …and a plus for ‘feels’. Because there’s definitely feels
15. Sound: The sound design is pretty spot on to help accentuate the beast, the girl, and the terrain

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Tutorialization: Tutorialization is weirdly consistent throughout, always giving some kind of visual as to what you can do where
2. Level: Level design in ‘you choose your own failure’ platforming
3. Level: Special mention to the gravity swap level (the ‘last’ level, effectively)
4. Boss: The first bird ‘boss’ sequence, with good showcasing of the bells and fun pseudo bosses
5. Controls: Controls are quite well designed throughout
6. Yoshi Drums: Yoshi drums are excellent, especially when you regain the sing button
7. Music: The music in general is fantastic

Gameplay Negatives:

1. MSQ: The game has a periodic problem of giving you tools and forcing you to solve puzzles in a very specific way, which can cause issues here and there

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: Shadow himself deserves his own positive for being a great character with great sprites
2. Spritework: There’s also tons of well designed, interesting enemies and bosses…
3. Spritework: …and that deserves…
4. Spritework: …its own bonuses
5. Architecture: While not a Metroidvania, there’s a similar approach to the city design to make the city feel as large as an actual city would be. Each stage being a different section helps, alongside the visuals in the background, and the interaction with each other in layout
6. Intro: Lots of good establishment early. We can deduce almost immediately that we’re either a digital transfer of someone or a digital copy (we’ll find out more later). We see that we are NOT the first attempt, just the first successful attempt. We also know that there’s a Dr. Progen who is a problem, and that the area we’re in is in near complete ruins
7. Brickwork: Speaking of, LOVE that initial backdrop of Geothermal Towers. We can see what probably used to be an entire cityscape, possibly underground? And it is half smashed, swarming with robots, and has raw electricity sparking everywhere. Plus what looks like a normal city building and streets except there’s chunks of robots and mechanical parts slammed in here and there almost crudely. Not to spoil too much but as we learn later all this mechanical stuff really was grafted into the city so it makes sense visually
8. Brickwork: The Disposal Facility of course looks amazing. This is very likely to be a ‘brickwork positive per stage’ kind of game, just to let you know. Here we see the sheer quantity of garbage being churned through, as well as a strangely large number of mechanical bugs which seem to be infesting the facility (which actually serves as a bit of foreshadowing)
9. Brickwork: The Mekacity Ruins stage is an interesting approach to ‘ruins’ which, let’s be honest, we’ve all seen ruins in video games to death. But here we see a city that doesn’t look ruined, it looks DESTROYED. Chunks of infrastructure are literally falling apart, giant cracks in the otherwise intact cement, and Dr. Progen’s synthetic deployers everywhere, as we traverse what’s left of the subway covered in broken chunks of building. And of course what’s left of the cityscape in the background…
10. Brickwork: …solid double
11. Visual Storytelling: This is as good of a time as any to mention that there’s a lot of visual storytelling going on too. The actively crumbling ruins, the city that’s STILL on fire (we can tell this disaster happened pretty recently), the enemies that literally aren’t working correctly, the run down machines serving as level design, all kinds of cool stuff
12. Background Lore: There’s a lot of (optional) logs as we go that do a good job of conveying what happened and why…
13. World Building: …and developing the setting. We learn that despite the high tech aesthetic and stylings this is a full on fantasy setting, with a functional afterlife (the Ethos) and souls (Essence, which is being cultivated to power the synthetics… and to progress Dr. Progen’s plan)
14. Foreshadowing: Quite a bit. We see events we have no real explanation for pretty early on that slowly make more sense as we go. I should mention as well that there are a few things left unexplained, which makes sense considering a sequel was already in consideration
15. Brickwork: The Ethos itself usually takes the form of an ancient ninja dojo, which makes sense considering how long their clan has been working for the dragon and regulating souls on their way to the afterlife
16. Visual Storytelling: So, hey, the Research Facility. Everything you REALLY need to know about this place is exposited on a single screen. You’ve been moving through the reactor which is almost entirely synthetic and technological until you reach a dude who’s in a strange capsule, and behind him is a whole lot of cancerous flesh growth. He tells you he was being used to keep it at bay because there’s been an explosion of Ethos. So now we know that Ethos manifests in the physical realm as blorp and glorp (this’ll come up later)
17. Brickwork: Speaking of, great visuals here You can tell what kind of place this was before the disaster. A facility buried in rock and hidden beneath the earth until the Ethos erupted and now it’s covered in glorp
18. Atmosphere: Research Facility. In general this place is horrifying, and the more we learn about what happened here the worse it gets. Watching waves of flesh erupt behind us… and then there’s the experiments
19. Moment: It’s actually more like 3 moments but everything to do with our reanimated former body as it is consumed by glorp and trying to ascertain its identity is good stuff. It also quietly conveys to us how essence transfer works and gets across the idea of what the Master AI is
20. Brickwork: I love how it gets darker, less facility, and more glorp the further in we go. By a certain point there’s just cave walls and flesh everywhere, though not as gross as you’d think given that sentence (hell, I think this game is mostly less gross than something like Contra… although that last boss, whoof. We’ll get there). As an aside I love the quiet implication that souls naturally manifest as flesh in the physical realm as flesh, and so what we’re looking at is basically soul cancer. Unrestricted growth of Essence
21. Brickwork: And then we cut off the experiments they were doing and shazam, all the glorp is gone and it’s left pristine, which has its own implications
22. Brickwork: The Robot Factory, of course. Pistons and giant mechanisms and processing facilities
23. Brickwork: The City Outskirts looks more run down than ruined and is filled with old wrecks of buildings and cars, and tons of toxic sludge of course. And giant piles of scrap, like this is a landfill. I find myself wondering if this is a consequence of the new technology, or this is the runoff from whatever they used BEFORE they switched to soul based energy generation
24. Consequence Storytelling: There’s something I have a hard time putting a finger on that I really enjoy about the setup here. So the Master was, uh, a master of a ninja clan which has been around for some time and regulates Essence to Ethos. Okay. And her father is a brilliant scientist who obviously cares about her and has developed advanced technology. But thanks to his exposure to her he’s aware of the more metaphysical aspects of the setting, knows that Essence is a tangible thing that can be manipulated and harnessed. Of course he’d come upon the ideas he did
25. Tone: The entire work is very dark. The majority of the game occurs in a city where all living people were either wiped out or drained of their souls to power machines. Even before the game started we find out that the synthetics that Progen was so proud of are built out of human souls and, worse, begin to blindly crave MORE souls as they drain of power, making them an escalating problem. It’s never staged outright but it’s implied that if we don’t cut this off at the source these bots could just spread and drain the rest of the world. And the afterlife is full of people who were ‘the lucky ones’ (their words, not mine) who merely got killed instead of being drained like the rest. You’re actively dying, your one true love is actively dying, and the main villain is just a desperate father who can’t let go of his daughter’s life (don’t blame him) so is torturing people en masse to find a solution, ANY solution. This dovetails nicely into…
26. Plot: Dr. Progen’s overall plans are a colossal nightmare. You get the feeling he might have found a better way to do all of this given more time and if his daughter hadn’t fallen ill. And we KNOW he’s brute forcing things in unnatural ways because of the screaming still-tortured souls begging for release and the giant piles of biomass with faces blorping out of them. And all of this is just to get power as quickly as possible to save his daughter by any means necessary. We also see in his logs how all of this happened. The reactor disaster was because he put the facility below the reactor and the blorp Essence caused the explosion. Apparitor is a lovesick puppy who betrayed the clan to get with the woman who doesn’t return his feelings. And Progen started mass harvesting civilians and more ninjas to gain quicker and greater access to the Ethos. Also I just have to say really quick, screw the Dragon. They never say it outright but it’s implied the reason the Master started dying despite being fully healthy physically is that the Dragon was ‘calling’ her to serve it. And it flat out states ‘you serve me in life and in death’. And it does not seem to give a damn about any of the horrors unleashed, just that things get back to normal and its minions get back in line
27. Visual Storytelling: So hey, remember how there was just a little bit of Essence leak causing blorp as we were leaving the city? We saw it as we passed by. Well now we’re back at the Factory and now there’s blorp everywhere, including the ever famous flesh walls
28. Brickwork: The docks, the ships in the docks, the ever increasing Essence glorp everywhere… and did you notice that the quantity of corpses or indeed ANY signs of people have just kind of started fading? You really get the impression that while we’re playing the game the city is being scoured clean of any signs of life left
29. Brickwork: So, Meka Island SPACEport eh. How advanced were these people? We see later they had an orbital elevator. And as we ascend we see the glorp is back more and more as Progen is now tapping the Ethos directly via three of the four Elementals (since we’re so obviously the fourth Elemental, though it is interesting they never say that outright)
30. Outro: So we see the good doctor using the space elevator as he tries to merge with the last of the Elementals (us) and as we break his control we see all the Essence he’s gathered into himself breaking out en masse, making the entire elevator and platform one giant blorp pile. Even his form is covered by the screaming damned he has imprisoned and absorbed. And once we defeat him we are saved at the last minute by the Master AI (who sacrifices herself to do so), free the Master herself, and she instantly dies. The final reward is death, but not in a bad way. It’s a very japanese storytelling approach; What is has lingered too long and must move on

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Music: The music in this game is an ABSOLUTE bop. Let’s just give away…
2. Music: …the triple…
3. Music: …and I’ll see you in the Song positives
4. Visual Distinction: Fantastic, of course. Backgrounds, enemies, and you are all on different palettes so you can always tell what you’re dealing with…
5. Visual Distinction: …great stuff
6. Controls: Absolutely incredible controls. Tight, responsive, with good shortcutting and placement. This is right up there with the best Megaman games…
7. Controls: …and so earns…
8. Controls: …a triple
9. Difficulty Curve: Smooth and fair. It starts hard and it ends balls hard…
10. Difficulty Curve: …one of the better difficulty curves I’ve seen in gaming. In fact I debated this for a while and I ultimately think…
11. Difficulty Curve: …this deserves the triple. This is shockingly well playtested
12. Itemization: Absolutely excellent manual placement of items, especially power ups and other upgrades…
13. Itemization: …solid double
14. Itemization: Drops are also pretty solid, mostly in weapon energy but trust me you’ll be using plenty of that so you’ll want it…
15. Itemization: …plenty of currency too, to upgrade the checkpoints (and you WILL want to)
16. Enemy Design: This is some of the best enemy design I’ve seen in quite a while. Each enemy clearly has a ton of design, thought, and effort put into how it operates, where its attacks hit, and often has multiple phases depending on how damaged it is…
17. Enemy Design: …consider this…
18. Enemy Design: …a rare triple
19. Enemy Variety: Similarly there’s a huge variety in how you approach enemies. Floaters, homers, arcing attacks, straight attacks, spawners, splitters, you name it we’ve got it somewhere…
20. Enemy Variety: …some absolutely fantastic variety…
21. Enemy Variety: …and easily another triple
22. Penalty For Failure: So death sends you to the last save spot. These are pretty prolific (which is a good thing, you will be dying a lot) and the load screen time is very short. This isn’t quite at Celeste levels of retry but it’s pretty short. The real benefit though is you gain the ability to upgrade respawn points to have them respawn you with some weapon energy, and can buy weapons from them to help you progress. That’s optional too
23. Itemization: You can spend currency on checkpoints to upgrade them, giving you weapon energy when you respawn there. I just mentioned this but it deserves its own positive for being helpful and optional. You can heal this way too, which can be VERY useful (these upgrades remain permanent), and of course can give you specific upgrades. These also tends to be close to the fast travel spots so you can have a ‘favorites’ you bounce back to for recovery if needed
24. Mid Mission Checkpoints: I should mention these checkpoints aren’t just frequent, they’re very carefully placed. Horrifically difficult segment? Usually a checkpoint right before it. Long stretch of enemies or terrain following a theme up to a power up? checkpoint right after so you have to do it in one go but after that you’re done. Stuff like that… some clear thought was put into the design here…
25. Mid Mission Checkpoints: …and I can just feel the design in it
26. Kit: So our first bit of weapon is the shuriken. Straight, fast, damaging. It’s seemingly little but it kills a lot in one shot and can serve as a great ‘clean up before platforming’ weapon. Then we get Rising Fire, an angled attack upwards which is immensely useful for the entire game due to how it helps control the verticality above you (and helps with several bosses). Airstrike lets us stab down (so now we can attack up or down). Then we get wall climbing and this may sound strange but this is a game changer because it completely opens up how you interact with the game world. When we get this is also, I believe, the first major point at which the game wants you to go backtracking to get power ups. After this we get a few more things like the dash and the parry (which is crazy useful)…
27. Kit: …but what really makes this work is when we get powered up by the dragon and get a charged version of most of these attacks
28. Kit: So there’s also items you can buy at save points or otherwise procure. These include Blade Extend (basic and exactly what it sounds like but useful), Charge Blaster (will charge and shoot when you attack), the E-Field (projects a barrier in front of you which will block projectiles, and can be launched… great for some segments)…
29. Kit: …the Nin Gun (ninja gun? Really? Anyways this automatically shoots any enemies that hit its crosshairs, which is way more useful than it sounds I swear), the Orbiter (a shield which does damage, and you can spread)…
30. Kit: …the Salvager (block enemy projectiles and turn them into weapon energy)…
31. Kit: …and the SP Dispenser (invaluable… I loved this thing, it gives you weapon energy every few seconds). All of these are already exceptionally useful, worthwhile, and cool in ways that are more ‘change how you attack’ rather than ‘give you more damage’…
32. Kit: …and then there’s the Swag Blade. This thing is hard to describe but if you’ve seen it you know.. you know. So it kind of tries to hover around you at all times. If you move, after a delay it’ll start following you, like it’s on a swing… but there’s momentum and weight to it so if you move then stop, it’ll follow you, fly past you, then bounce back. What this means is this this one weapon can be absolutely insane in the right hands, and the skill ceiling is through the roof on its use. Even an amateur like me could get this thing flying around and rotating around me destroying half the screen while I maneuver through a section, and I’ve seen speedrunners pull magic with it. This thing is phenomenal and frankly…
33. Kit: …deserves its own double
34. Guidance: Lots and well done. Rarely did I find myself wondering where to find a specific power up or upgrade, it was always just a matter of how to execute
35. Power Progression Curve: Definitely. It’s pretty much the standard Megaman curve, though a bit more linear
36. Intro: Pretty standard platformer tutorialization and introduction, but all well done. Here’s jumping, here’s enemies, here’s projectiles, here’s puzzles, here’s terrain hazards. It should also be mentioned that the difficulty ramps up pretty solidly pretty quickly, which normally I would complain about but first it’s done well, second it’s a smooth incline, and third it’s a very clear ‘this is the type of game you’re playing’ thing
37. Level: Chapter 1, Geothermal Towers. So I’m listing this separate from the Intro because this is a pretty meaty stage and honestly this stage, right here, is at about the level of most Wily stages in your typical Megaman game. Tricky moving platforms, mean enemy arcs, multiple different themes which dovetail nicely into each other. I will mention this early so as to not bore you too much but there’s a concept called ‘tough but fair’ which is… really hard to pull off, but I think Cyber Shadow does it. Make no mistake, this game is hard, but unlike some other games I could mention (like Mummy Demastered or Megaman X7 or Ecco The Dolphin) the difficulty is not in bullcrap placement or traps you have no ability to avoid or frustrating controls or wonky physics. There’s patterns to how the enemies move and clear ‘avenues’ where you can maneuver through, and there’s a bit of touch and go encouraged in fighting enemies with layered attacks. It’s some really tight stuff…
38. Level: …and very deserving of a double
39. Boss: Apparitor 1. Get used to this loser. So he has some basic line attacks you have to jump over, some avoidance attacks, and otherwise serves as a nice ‘you’ve been paying attention right?’ boss
40. Level: Chapter 2, Disposal Facility. There’s a lot going on here (instant death processors, falling debris, periodic enemies… again, tough but fair) but I have to give special mention to how the level STARTS by mandating you use the shuriken you just got to progress past the front door. We also have seemingly simple platforming which soon develops into ‘use the nooks to hide from the death laser’ sections. Then we escalate our themes to include bugs, enemies, laser death, AND platforming. By the way I love how the laser death also hits the enemies, and is a very viable strategy. Either way after a few minibosses of more laser death (sensing a theme here) we have a few ‘enemies complimenting terrain’ sections, a quick elevator segment (with a checkpoint RIGHT next to it before and after, thank you game)…
41. Level: …either way, another solid double
42. Boss: Scrambler is an interesting fight. Starts off big and slow, transitions into fast but simple, and both require different but similar patterns to avoid
43. Level: Chapter 3, Mekacity Ruins. This is a fantastic stage. As you progress you unlock shortcuts (which also helps with later 100%ing… or, y’know, if you die), great usage of enemies creating columns of avoidance while dealing with crumbling platforms, and some really smart terrain usage (if I can zoom the camera in on one segment, you have to make a jump to a large platform, then a smaller one, then an even smaller one. All three platforms have crumbling blocks meaning the initial jump is easier, but then immediately gets harder as you have less terrain to work with)….
44. Level: …great stuff
45. Level: Then the level CONTINUES as we enter the laser section. We now have to contend with an orbital laser which will lock onto us then absolutely obliterate us, but only while out and about. This then informs the entire next segment of the stage, as we deal with some new area denial enemies and then escalate into mixing and matching ‘safe’ areas swarming with enemies and then ‘unsafe’ areas… also swarming with enemies…
46. Level: …great segment
47. Boss: The Biohunter is another great pattern boss. Some mean and fast attacks but nice big vuln phases and avenues of avoidance
48. Tutorialization: This is as good a time as any to mention how well tutorialized this game is. Ignoring the obvious ways it introduces then escalates constantly, there’s this repeated pattern of showing us something new in the lead up to a boss. Usually something in the terrain, something we’ll notice but can’t do anything with. Then we beat the boss, get a new power up, and lo and behold it’s used with the stuff we just saw, and now we have unlocked new paths of progression…
49. Tutorialization: …it’s very smart, and exceptionally intuitive…
50. Tutorialization: …so enjoy that triple
51. Level: Chapter 4, Reactor. Whoof. If you were having a hard time before here, maybe reconsider continuing playing. This is some properly wonderful difficulty. Our first few segments introduce a bunch of new themes, like guided platforming, terrain that morphs based on player interaction, alternating progression, and it’s all so damned good. We have enemies which you attack their center to stop their rotation and hit their weak spot, floors that periodically light up, death spikes (enjoy this by the way, there will only be more death spikes as we go), enemies that cover certain ‘lines’ vertically and horizontally… and our first cyberspace segment! These cyberspace segments are cool, they involve going into a temporary and digital version of the screen you’re on (think the sub mushroom screens in Mario 2) where you complete a challenge to progress…
52. Level: …and as with the previous stage this is all before we are more than halfway through
53. Level: Shortly after this we escalate… now the columns you attack to progress are even longer, the rotating enemies are just straight up damagers you have to avoid, and we have horizontal covering enemies over alternatingly damaging terrain while exploding the power lines to be able to progress. In short, some very smart (and mean) escalation. And trust me, this gets harder from here
54. Boss: I rather like the Mekadragon fight. So in keeping with the theme of the stage you can attack the helicopters to create platforms to stand on, but the boss can also hit those platforms and remove them. These also drop weapon energy (and currency). And finally the boss has nice big vuln windows which benefit from a vertical strike and, as mentioned, the boss drops a lot of weapon energy
55. Boss: Then we have a brief but fun spike escalation segment and a boss fight with the Vessel Defense System. This is a great escalation boss. You have to destroy the wall portions, the ground turrets, and the ceiling crap
56. Level: Chapter 5, the Research Lab. Again we introduce some awesome themes very quickly. We have NOT instant death spikes, advancing waves of death, and enemies and terrain that must be damaged or grows back because of the glorp. This also escalates brilliantly; the first wave of flesh (what a weird sentence) is pretty easy to avoid, the second less so, and so on…
57. Level: …forgive me for being succinct this is just a damned good stage. I’m also fond of how the spikes grow in reaction to us and aren’t present until we’re nearby.. but not SO close as to be a gacha
58. Boss: Alpha… y’know, our previous body… is a hell of a fight. It’s also very much a ‘you figured out how to parry, right?’ boss. With one of his attacks being easy to dodge and the others being insane to dodge… unless you parry them. He’s also unrelenting in his pace, very berserker… and his second phase is interesting in that it’s essentially teh same attacks with slightly different expression and once again rewards you for patiently moving with him as he attacks which creates natural vuln windows
59. Level: Chapter 6, Robot Factory. I’m going to stop saying things like ‘this is hard’ because by this point EVERYthing is hard. So our themes are interesting here. We’re back to instant death spikes (yay…), moving platforms (pistons and mechanisms of the factory), lots of destructible terrain to progress, lasers that alternate blocking progress, the usual excellent enemy placement… oh I should mention, those lasers? They don’t do damage, they’re much worse. They’re security sensors… so if you trigger them the defenses activate. This is nice because it’s not instant fail but uh, to be quite honest on SOME screens it might as well be because those defenses are friggin’ mean…
60. Level: …this is actually one of my favorite stages for what it is. Crusher platforms that encourage you to use them to progress, segments that reward timing and patience but don’t restrict you if your reflexes are good enough, lots of great moments to use abilities, boss tutorialization in how to open its weak spots…
61. Level: …a solid triple even at the start, including the train miniboss. This is also one of the shortest stages in the game, but it won’t feel like it, trust me… this is a good thing though. Too many game designers think stages need to keep escalating in length as the game goes on and forget that density is more important
62. Song: “Robot Factory”. This is honestly one of my favorite songs in general, not just in this game. It does such a good job of conveying the sort of morose, sorrowful tone while retaining the more unfeeling mechanical timbre of the factory…
63. Song: …solid double
64. Level: Chapter 7, Outskirts is the very first stage that started giving me issues my first playthrough. Enemies are starting to attack from nonstandard angles which makes counterattacking difficult, and don’t think those death spikes are going away. The enemy design is interesting too because it’s not ‘enemy spam’ in the traditional sense. I’ll use a specific example; On one screen there’s three of a given enemy, just three… but each one shoots a lobbing projectile which, when it hits something, leaves a flaming spot. So you have converging arcs of damage, blobs of fire, and of course spikes everywhere, and you can get how it feels overwhelming
65. Level: This is followed by a segment where we’re introduced to a new theme; Acid pits! And toxic waste sludge everywhere, all while enemies no longer have safe avenues of progression. Now you have to start MAKING them
66. Level: Chapter 8, Return To Mekacity. We start off with death spikes and area denial weapons which track you, enemies that launch blasts at you or home in on you, and plenty of opportunities to use those shiny new charged attacks we just got from the dragon. We really see some fundamentals here as we introduce (spikes, enemies with shields, flame jets, moving platforms) then escalate (mix and match two of these at a time, then three, then all of the above). This is also followed by…
67. Level: …the Exo section. This is properly mean. So there’s a lot of VERY fast moving platforming you have to do here, so I hope you brought your reflexes, but there’s almost always a recovery segment. The enemies are similarly pretty fair, mostly involving pay attention checks (like the enemies that drop their spike shields when they die)
68. Level: Hyperbeam Moment: After this is another tough but mean section but that’s not the real star of the show. No then the game gives us the friggin’ Exo armor with a gigantic autocannon of death and it’s glorious
69. Song: “Return To Mekacity”. Absolute banger of a track, kind of fulfills the usual Wily song duty
70. Level: So hey, back to the Reactor, though it’s looking a little more fleshy than last time. This really takes the security lasers mechanic and dials it up, having to be on moving platforms while jumping over security lasers and dealing with advancing walls of flesh. And y’know I’m getting vaguely weirded by how many times I’ve had to type the phrase ‘wall of flesh’ today
71. Level: After this we see another ‘remixed’ level (great idea by the way, remixing earlier stages for the second half of the game) and just… I don’t know how to describe this insanity. This is the Reactor level now and it is insane. Flesh walls, enemies that deny areas, temporarily damaging terrain, attacking terrain to advance, damaging enemies that home in on you, turrets, non death spikes…
72. Level: Chapter 9, Mekacity Docks. I died here… so much. Every type of enemy, hazard, and challenge comes back here plus a few new ones like orbing death balls and frickin’ mines. This is on top of ground or wall seeking enemies, and then everything I just mentioned but all at once. It is SO easy to die here my goodness. We also have an elevator… er, I mean hovercraft section which is fine. Mostly aerial enemies which leave area denial attacks on the ground
73. Level: Chapter 10, Meka Island spaceport. Whoof. I hope you enjoy falling platforms and electric death walls while turrets shoot spread fire and rockets periodically area deny. What’s vaguely funny to me is while this area is undoubtedly harder I had more deaths back in the Outskirts. Maybe this is better designed? Maybe I just got better? No idea. Either way the tempo of this entire stage is awesome. Moving platforms over death pits with patterned enemies while you’re forced to wait briefly and some other enemies home in on you, and of course then we have screens which I can’t even properly describe to you but trust me they’re absolutely insane…
74. Level: …this stage…
75. Level: …is freaking mean
76. Boss: And followed by a tense but brief boss with Spiderail. Lots of ground attacks, sweeping attacks, and vertical strikes all taking after each other
77. Song: “Meka Island Spaceport”. There’s actually a final stage theme after this but let’s be real, this is basically the final stage song
78. Outro: Level: The final stage, the ascent up the Orbital Elevator, is interesting in how it’s almost entirely on you to make your own platforms with the enemies. And of course, once again it’s dense but not super long. Imagine if this stage was like twice the length, it’d suck
79. Outro: Boss: Once you’re past the Apparitor fight the actual final boss is legit The first phase is very mean with a LOT of attacks flying out, some patterned and some homing, with limited vuln windows on the boss himself. But what REALLY rocks is the actual final phase. There’s three big obvious weak points you can hit which release the Elementals, and in so doing they provide aid in avoiding or bypassing the boss’s mechanics. It’s a shame there’s no checkpointing here cuz otherwise I love this fight

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Terrain: Spikes. Little too much reliance upon spikes, especially in a few specific levels
2. Mid Mission Checkpoints: It’s MOSTLY excellent. And then there’s a few moments where it is not (looking at you, Outro)
3. Info In Game: Moves and bonus attacks not explained in game
4. Outro: Boss: The final boss is actively boring in how it does its phase transitions. The first fight is just a dull, unnecessarily long, boring fight before the real final boss actually starts, and it absolutely destroys the pacing (and enjoyment) of the actual final boss fight. I was having issues because I couldn’t actually practice the final boss because I kept having to do the first fight over and over

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: The wilds surrounding the city…
2. Brickwork: …for two positives
3. Brickwork: The city and castle itself…
4. Brickwork: …for a full…
5. Brickwork: …three positives
6. World Building: Worldbuilding is very much on display
7. Storytelling Mechanic: Journals as a storytelling mechanism which help flesh out background lore
8. Plot: Plot is surprisingly engaging, seemingly micro focused but actually being a macro plot with a micro focus
9. Dialogue: Dialogue is tightly written throughout, feeling like actual conversation
10. MSQ: Amadeus’ lab
11. Character: Haristel; the blind soldier through never having to question it
12. Character: Rameda, the lost medic who seeks to simplify
13. Character: Neliste, the woman who refused to take part in the violence of her nation but had no real solution
14. Character: Eschem, the lost soldier who is a great personal look into the caste system of Vilete and its foibles
15. Character: Seykis and his squeeing over Eschem is adorable, but it once again puts a face on Vilete and its people
16. Prime Opt: The conclusion of character quests is honestly just a nice, heartwarming moment
17. Outro: The ascension Outro is quite well done, suitably somber, and neatly fits with the rest of the game’s arc
18. Consequence Storytelling: The game does a good job of keeping consistent in consequences of its narrative
19. Doodads: Doodads are very, very well done…
20. Doodads: …earning a second positive
21. Internal Continuity: Reasonably good internal continuity
22. Intro: The Intro absolutely gets you into things immediately, and while a bit obvious its clear where it’s going
23. Story Sequencing: Story is well sequenced, especially given how it has to take into account the metroidvanianess
24. Visual Continuity: Good visual continuity throughout, past or present it’s always pretty readily apparent where you are
25. Animation: Some truly enjoyable animation
26. Storytelling Mechanic: Portraits for the major characters
27. Spritework: Some absolutely brilliant sprites in this one…
28. Spritework: …for a full…
29. Spritework: …three positives

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Minimap: Mini-map and its reflection of…
2. Map: …the map, which has markers, color coding, and clear indicators of where you’ve been, what % you’ve uncovered, and where you can go
3. Visual Distinction: Great visual distinction at all times
4. Music: Music is excellent…
5. Music: …worthy of two positives
6. Core Mechanic: The ‘freeze time’ gimmick is a fun way to manipulate and outmaneuver enemies
7. Encounter: Encounter design is spot on
8. Enemy Variety: Enemy variety is excellent
9. Guidance and Flow: Very good guidance and flow of exploration…
10. Guidance and Flow: …to the point of being two positive worthy
11. Kit: The Orbs are excellent kit, fun and varied…
12. Kit: …further amplified by the other equipment which can vary up…
13. Build: …the type of Build gameplay we have on display
14. Power Progression Curve: Very smooth and good power progression curve
15. Itemization: Good distribution of the upgrade items throughout, not only rewarding exploration but ensuring new equipment can be crafted semi frequently
16. Outro: The Outro is generally fun and well done, between the optional grind dungeon and the final boss being quite well done
17. Boss: The Ravenlord is easily the best boss fight in the game, good arena and attack vector usage
18. Animation: Good animations, informing attacks and avoidances
19. Bestiary: Reasonably good in-game bestiary
20. Core Combat: Enjoyable core combat, especially with all the options available to you
21. Difficulty Curve: Very smooth difficulty curve
22. Fast Travel: The waypoint system is fast, well spaced, and smooths out backtracking a lot
23. NG+: Not the best, but it’s still good New Game +
24. Terrain: At several points, clear thought is put into the terrain design to make traversal less irritating, and make encounters more interesting
25. Replayability: Enjoyable enough to be worthy of a replayability point

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Info In Game: Info in game (no indicator of some quest items, orbs leveling, how some mechanics work)
2. Padding: Boss health is just too bloated…
3. Padding: …earning a second negative
4. Saves: Limited save functionality (save points and spread thereof)

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: I… really like the brickwork of the Graveyard area. The ruined buildings, the cathedral in the distance, the grass over stone foreground, it’s legit
2. Brickwork: Of course the forest looks amazing. I’m pretty sure EVERY zone is going to get a brickwork positive because of course Wayforward is going to have good visual design
3. Brickwork: Speaking of which, really fond of the Subway as well. Bricks, stained glass windows, water stained tunnels, tracks with emergency lights, hallways with tile, it’s all good stuff…
4. Brickwork: …easy double
5. Brickwork: A bit of a step down after the Subway but the Prodigium HQ still looks cool. Though it basically just looks like an extension to the subway… yes I realize it probably IS because hidden base and all that but whatever
6. Brickwork: For as much as I despise the stage, the London Streets look great. The sand slowly building up, the cityscape in the distance, the houses (with sand in the windowsills), the broken streets and beached cars, the constant sandstorm…
7. Brickwork: …this is some proper brickwork
8. Atmosphere: I’ll even give it a third nod for nailing the atmosphere of a town besieged by an ancient egyptian horror
9. Brickwork: I’m starting to think we’ll only have visual positives here. So the Clocktower… of course it looks great. Gothic architecture, great literal bricks, the grinding gears, the blood red windows… did they just want to make a Castlevania game? Hm
10. Spritework: I’m willing to swing this just for the main character model. Lots of animation, looks really smooth, nice recoil on shooting, just generally great stuff
11. Spritework: I’m not SUPER impressed with the enemies but they’re still good

Story Negatives:

1. External Continuity: While the film isn’t… good, the external continuity of how it doesn’t use it is not super great
2. Story Sequencing: The events of the story are all over the place, no logic or coherence to them at all. We’re dropped to find a mummy, okay we found her chase her, okay she vanished nevermind that she’s right in front of us, okay our HQ is under attack and conveniently our HQ is RIGHT next to an abandoned subway you happened to be in, I could keep going
3. Outro: So you counter the super powerful Mummy who has blanketed an entire city in death and sand and her super powers are summoning minions and throwing a boomerang. This is her ‘at full power’ mind you. After we obliterate THAT joke she turns into a giant Andross boss (sure) and kill that, which leads to… two screens of an ending, one of which is just text. This is pretty bad. In fact…
4. Outro: …I’m going to double this, because the first negative is for the deflating buildup on Ahmanet, and this one is for the non ending. I’ve seen NES games with better endings than this

Gameplay Positives:

1. Music: Music is really quite good, I can’t deny that. Same composer as Seven Sirens so no surprise there
2. Map: Not a bad map overall. Shows percentage, where you’ve been of course, some indicators of where you can go, some room indicators like save rooms (and where your undead former self is)
3. Minimap: And, for the same reason, not too shabby of a minimap to boot
4. Kit: Nothing super fancy really. You get a shotgun which is basically just an apology for the basic gun… the only reason this game gets a positive for this at all is the plasma rifle of death which just sends out a gigantic arc of death that crosses the screen. By the way have fun if you die with this thing cuz you are NOT getting it back

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: No rebinding controller or sound options. You can rebind the KEYBOARD, before you say anything, but you cannot rebind a controller. And WHY are there no sound options?
2. Controls: Dudes and gals and nonbinary pals… we have a Problem. Let’s call this the Snowball Problem and let’s start at the beginning. Aiming/combat is… weird. You can only aim in 8 directions and there’s plenty of enemies that come at you from all kinds of angles. In fact I would go so far as to say it’s terrible specifically BECAUSE of how the enemies are designed to come at you. Some games (Metroid games come to mind) don’t have full 360 aiming and that’s fine because the game is designed around that. This game… is not. It is distressingly easy to fail at hitting something because you’re shooting just a little bit off of it and in the time it took to figure that out you’re already dead. So consider this a double, one for controls…
3. Encounter Design: …and one for the encounters being antagonistic towards said controls…
4. Enemy Design: …but now that I’m thinking about it this is actually something of a Problem. Because early on you’ll probably barely even notice this, but in later levels enemies are designed to straight up kill you. I know what you’re thinking, ‘of course they are Lore’, but no listen to me. They’re designed to murder your face off in a game where dying has tremendous consequence and the time to kill is really short. Like there’s plenty of…
5. Gotcha: …gotcha! in enemy placement as well, making sure you couldn’t possibly predict or see an attack coming. This has a knock on effect because quite a bit of the…
6. Terrain: …platforming REQUIRES running to do. If you’re not aware, running is a ‘commit’ action in this game…
7. Encounter Rate: …meaning enemies can randomly spawn in your path with no way of seeing them coming and you cannot get out of their way. Hang on I’m not done…
8. Itemization: …because the itemization in this game is awful. Remember my point about enemies designed to kill you? I take it back, the GAME is designed to kill you. They really liked their ‘die and start over’ gimmick and went all in on it. So good luck getting drops or pickups, especially when you need them. And you’re probably thinking ‘but Lore, what’s that core gimmick?’ Well…
9. Penalty For Failure: …let’s talk about that gimmick shall we? For those unaware when you die in this game you start over as a new character, but you can go pick up all your dropped stuff… somewhat similar to the Souls approach. Thing is you don’t just drop money or currency or whatever, you drop EVERYTHING. All your gear and power ups and health ups are now dropped, so you are now a level 1 nobody dude. This is already really bad for reasons I’ll mention later but…
10. Core Mechanic: …where it really gets bad is when you realize that your stuff isn’t just, y’know, there. It’s on your previous corpse which is now an enemy whiiich has all of your stuff. And it’s smart, and more than capable of hitting you. In fact it’s EXACTLY as capable of hitting you as you are it. Meaning you’re at a disadvantage to beating it twice. In the early game this is whatever…
11. Mid Game: …in the mid game this can be tremendously problematic…
12. Late Game: …and in the late game it means game over. Just straight up game over, start the game over again. See I mentioned enemy design up above but you have to understand, all the later stages hit SO hard and do SO much to kill you, and you have to deal with all that as a level 1 nobody starting from scratch, THEN kill yourself to get your stuff back. It’s POSSIBLE but in most cases you’re basically softlocked…
13. Penalty For Failure: …and that’s the final nail in this coffin. I know people who played this to one of the later stages, died, and that save was gone because recovery was just not happening. I should mention this is actually my SECOND playthrough (long story but I was without internet or a computer for a few weeks and happened to have this game on my Switch so I decided to give it a second playthrough to Audit it up to code a bit and remove the Incomplete tag) and I got to the frickin’ Clocktower and died my first attempt. That made me walk away from the game for a day because of how frustrating it was to get that far and just lose the ENTIRE game…
14. Penalty For Failure: …and for that…
15. Penalty For Failure: …this is definitely a Problem. There are a few other related issues, for example…
16. Enemy Design: Enemy design is actually bad, with enemies that are hard to hit and have too much health and move too fast for weapons that can’t track or hit them, which gets insane in later levels
17. Encounter Rate: Enemy respawn issues (most notably with bats and zombies). This is what I call the Ninja Gaiden problem, where enemies respawn the moment you double back and then go back over their spawn trigger, which is very easy to do while platforming
18. Guidance and Flow: Actively bad guidance and flow of exploration, both in the map and in the level layout and item placement…
19. Guidance and Flow: …earning a second negative
20. Saves: Enforced ironman save mode and…
21. Saves: …pretty bad savepoint placement. Did I mention when you die you go back to the latest save? “Duh” you may say, but think about having to redo most of a REALLY HARD level while a level 1 nobody
22. Difficulty Curve: I probably don’t need to explain this one. Normally this type of smooth curve is to be encouraged but this is just not a great game for that. I’ve been putting some thought into how to make this work and ultimately I think having a toggle menu deciding what exactly you drop would fix it. So you can decide if you drop your health and/or your guns and/or your relics or everything or nothing. In any case whatever you ‘drop’ is now part of the undead you, and you can still go kill them to progress, but whatever you don’t drop the new you keeps. Boom. One option and the whole mechanic would be better. I don’t think it’d be GREAT and I’m not sure what it’d take to really make it work really well but hey
23. Kit: Your basic gun sucks. It’s infinite but it’s hurtbox is INCREDIBLY narrow, meaning it’s distressingly easy to shoot right above or below or around or even through an enemy without hitting them and it is exactly as frustrating as it sounds. Also frankly every gun that isn’t the shotgun or the plasma rifle sucks too. Even the assault rifle (the, uh, limited ammo one not the basic one) is just basic gun with more damage
24. Unskippable Cutscenes: Weirdly enough
25. Raspberry Jam: The low health beedleeps are back. Because of course they are
26. Encounter Rate: This is a good time to mention that this game has some SERIOUS enemy spam problems. Like.. entire swaths of levels, even earlier levels, are JUST empty corridors with a dozen plus enemies swarming everywhere. And that’s before I consider the infinitely respawning enemies which are EVERYwhere by the way…
27. Encounter Rate: …this is pretty bad. In fact…
28. Encounter Rate: …it never gets better
29. Level: So you’d think the Graveyard is pretty solid right? It’s basically the first stage. But no, even here the platforming is… wrong. The placement of items is contradictory to your jump arc, the enemy spawns are specifically designed to screw with you, and enemy MOVEMENT is screwy too (the bats can go directly to hell)
30. Level: So hey, Forest. Moving platforms and enemies that go up and down or do jumps or attack in arcs. Please remember how incredibly limited our shooting is
31. Level: The Subway Tunnels is probably when I realized how bad this game really would be the first time around. More enemy spam, more angles and non platforming sections designed to get you hit. By now you at least have the Shotgun so that helps (a LOT) but it’s still just… not fun. What’s worse though?
32. Level: …it’s LONG. It doesn’t look like it on the map but the Subway is easily longer than the previous two levels combined and most of that is just repeated filler. I was keeping track with pen and paper this time around (no computer, remember) and I counted at least 3 times where I thought I was done with a particular segment only to find yet another one right after it
33. Boss: The alligator boss (sidebar; I looked it up, this is supposed to be a dragon named Ammit… cute. Anyways) is the same basic pattern repeatedly over and over and has way, way, way too much health considering it basically has ONE attack
34. Level: So something I talk about a lot when evaluating and reviewing platformers is ‘theme’. A theme, in gameplay, is a repeated style of challenge or difficulty. Having a level all about blocks that vanish after you step on them would have a theme of temporary blocks, for example. I bring this up because for the past three stages there’s only been two themes; Basic platforming (and I don’t necessarily mean that as an insult, but this is BASIC platforming, the kind of stuff you’d see in the first stage of most games) and enemy spam. And that is it. When I got to the Prodigium HQ stage and noticed we were having the same two themes over and over I just sort of realized that I was bored. And I know that sounds like a weird sentence but it really is kind of how it went. “Wow, I’m really bored right now.” I found myself fantasizing about switching to another game but no… I said I’d remove that Incomplete tag and I will (and if you’re reading this, then I did). So yeah this is just a long boring level…
35. Level: …y’know, ANOTHER one. In a row. But hey we have high jump now. Oh and this is when dying really starts to suck because you have plenty of health, multiple guns and grenade types (including C4 and incendiaries), and irritating enemies everywhere
36. Boss: So unlike the previous boss, Anubis is more of the ‘good luck dodging this’ variety. You can of course but by far the best and easiest place to shoot him is up close. So naturally this means this is just a health tax fight right? …actually no. I THOUGHT it would be until I realized that almost all of his attacks are stupid easy to dodge by standing in the right spot directly under him and shooting straight up. And even if you don’t dodge, you only get hit once anyways. So this is mostly just a giant ball of health and not much else
37. Level: So here it is. The London Streets. If you saw the actual stream vod (the one still linked on the site) this is where I put the game down. The enemies are absurd at this point and by now you have like 700 health and over half the kit in the game. Dying here ended my run TWICE (once in the original playthrough and once in that second playthrough I mentioned up above). All the problems of the rest of the game are worse here and worst of all… remember what I mentioned about themes? There’s no new themes here. Empty corridors, basic platforming, and enemy spam. That’s it. It’s just the enemies hit MUCH harder and attack faster now. At one point I was trying to farm enemies to get health back and the health I was LOSING outweighed what they were dropping (mentioned in the Itemization negative up top). Anyways what this means is this stage is the previous stage but, y’know, worse…
38. Level: …so let’s…
39. Level: …give that triple. Our first triple negative stage, and we have two more
40. Level: The Clocktower FINALLY has a theme other than ‘basic platforming’ and ‘enemy spam’… yes that’s right, it’s spikes and treadmill platforms! Yeah this isn’t great. Remember everything I’ve already said about how bad death is at this stage of the game. Now remember that it is SHOCKINGLY easy to make one mistake, one SMALL mistake, and die… now remember that enemies are EVERYwhere trying to knock you off constantly. For what it’s worth I actually like several of the specific screens in this stage but the constant terror of death really brings that down a lot. For whatever it’s worth I’d consider this one of the best levels in the game. The boss is even just kind of vanilla
41. Outro: Level: So as we descend to the final stage I have to complain about the crusader enemies. Their shields can block bullets. I don’t know what else to add to that, these little bastards. Anyways! Final stage is… a boring looking cave with poison pits, basic platforming, and lots of enemies. If that sounds familiar… it should. At least it’s short? I mean the whole game’s short, my final run was like 4 hours and I was being super cautious and gathering collectibles
42. Outro: Boss: Ahmanet 1 is kiiind of boring. This is her ultimate power? She can throw a slow moving boomerang and summon stuff. This is both boring and she has too much health. Oh well, round 2 time
43. Outro: Boss: Yeah this fight isn’t great either. Remember how many bosses in this game are solved by ‘stand under the boss and fire’? Well guess what works on this boss. It still has WAY too much health (and hits too hard… something like 22 damage a hit). So this is boring and padded
44. Outro: The final escape sequence is… not great. It could be better but they don’t really do anything with it so consider this mostly a letdown negative. By the way have fun if you die here, hah

Story Positives:

1. Sound: Audio atmosphere
2. Doodads: General, mostly in the cityscape areas
3. Integration: As per usual with Soulslikes, in multiple facets of the game
4. Voice Acting: Generally good voice acting (special props for Godrick)
5. Atmosphere: Gross horror atmosphere
6. Storytelling Mechanic: Use of items as world building
7. Visual Storytelling: Castle Morne
8. Visual Storytelling: Raya Lucaria
9. Brickwork: Manor place and the adventures of the spider hands
10. Brickwork: Siofra River underground
11. Character: Iron Fist Alexander is pretty legit, as is Boc the Seamster and Rya and a small but amusing host of other people
12. Visual Storytelling: General creepiness of Rennala phase 1
13. Character: Blaidd was a good boy, alas (and further a great insight into the actual nature of how messed up the Erdtree Order was)
14. Visual Storytelling: Of the frozen wastes
15. Visual Storytelling: The visual storytelling of the Crumbling Farum Azula is honestly some of the better visual storytelling in the entire game…
16. Visual Storytelling: …earning it a second positive
17. Character: Jar Bairn is just adorable, and a nice bit of positivity
18. Prime Opt: And the entire jars quest chain is actually quite well done, if needlessly tragic
19. Internal Continuity: The internal continuity of the game is very self consistent
20. Lighting: The lighting consistently adds to the narrative flavor and tone
21. Secondary: Generally enjoyable side quests (Rya’s, Nephali’s, Rodgier’s, etc.)
22. Localization: Where it’s good, the localization does a good job of adding local flavor and tone…

Story Negatives:

1. Storytelling Mechanic: Presentation of storytelling and limitations thereof…
2. Storytelling Mechanic: …also known as the ‘go google it’ problem
3. Outro: The Outro is the usual Dark Souls problem
4. Outro: The Outro has too much technicolor Mass Effect 3 problem (there’s really only 3 endings, the others are just palette swaps)
5. Outro: The Outro is honestly very unsatisfying across the board
6. Intro: The Intro isn’t bad in the strictest sense of the word, but it is very lacking
7. Localization: …the localization is actively problematic at times
8. Story Sequencing: The story is, perhaps by design, sequenced… very very badly…
9. Story Sequencing: …earning a second negative

Gameplay Positives:

1. Info In Game: Good information-in-game on the level up screen (showing exactly what stats affect what and how)
2. QoL: QoL changes (no stam drain out of combat, indicator immediately on enemy death of loot, toggle sprint on mount, fast mount/dismount,
3. Tutorialization: Tutorial is actually really well designed, introducing then escalating mechanics and enemies, leading up to and concluding with the Tree Sentinel and the ‘go explore’ concept
4. Core Mechanic: Stealth isn’t great, but its introduction is a well received multiplier to navigation and combat
5. Traversal: Mounted movement in general is quite fluid…
6. Traversal: …further helped by the snappy controls, double jump, and separate health bar
7. Core Combat: Mounted combat is good in general for how it varies it up but also…
8. Core Combat: …for how it changes based on setup and build, as well as adding a new dimension to combat
9. Core Mechanic: The ‘keep playing to recoup’ mechanics aren’t as prolific as I’d like, but the ‘clear camp’ and ‘scarab’ mechanics are welcome additions
10. Co-Op: Co-op gameplay exists
11. Map: The map is actually quite well designed, with good visuals and indicators of terrain and points of interest even without exploring, plus with the abilities to drop your own nav points and gather map fragments to fill it out…
12. Map: …earning a second positive
13. Fast Travel: Surprisingly good fast travel system…
14. Fast Travel: …further buoyed by the number and specific placement of travel points
15. Overworld: Limgrave has good general flow to its overworld design, with navigation pathways and indicators and enemy placement to help guide the player in exploration
16. Overworld: Limgrave further has good overworld density, lots to do and little wasted or empty space
17. Mid Mission Checkpointing: It’s taken a long time but the addition of Stakes of Marika as occasional checkpoints are a welcome feature
18. Boss: The Dragon fights in general may be somewhat simple, but they are always enjoyable…
19. Boss: …and special mention for the sheer viscerality of said fights
20. Boss: The Margit boss fight
21. Penalty For Failure: The ‘grab corpse, get stuff back’ penalty for failure remains good as it usually is
22. Level: Catacombs/caves/etc. are a nice addition of micro-dungeons; Quick, reward exploration, and generally fun
23. Boss: Rennala Phase 1 is actually really good, with a nice gimmick and good audio design and lots going on while being fully recoverable
24. Boss: Rennala Phase 2 is actually a great mage fight, with multiple methods of dealing with it and a great arena to fight within
25. Boss: Ancestor Spirit is a fun fight in general, but made all the better with the visuals and audio, and unique music
26. Boss: Radahn’s fight is very unique, with a nice big open area where you can fight mounted and summon (and re summon) multiple allies to assist
27. Boss: The crystal bosses are pretty legit in general
28. Boss: Special mention to the triple scarlet rot crystal boss of hell
29. Boss: The Putrifying tree spirit fights have some issues, but are actually quite enjoyable overall
30. Boss: The Godskin Apostle boss (in the Divine Tower of Caelid) is honestly awesome. Great rhythm, lots of attacks for multiple ranges, and generally fun to play…
31. Boss: …in addition to some great visuals and music to go with it
32. Boss: Mimic Tear is creative and quite amusing
33. Boss: Regal ancestral spirit boss
34. Boss: Astel, Naturalborn of the Void boss
35. Boss: Lichdragon Fortissax boss
36. Boss: Mohg has some irritations but is nonetheless a very tight, reasonably balanced fight (ways to avoid dying to Nihil, agile but low HP, etc.)
37. Builds: The game has extensive Builds gameplay, with many viable builds
38. Kit: This is especially expressed in the number and variety of weapons…
39. Kit: …earning a second weapon kit positive
40. Kit: The Arts system in general gains two positives…
41. Kit: …for sheer number and variety…
42. QoL: But a bonus positive for how the modularity of the arts system makes it super quick and efficient to swap and try out new things
43. Enemy Variety: Enemy variety is, let’s be honest, fantastic
44. Enemy Variety: …easily earning…
45. Enemy Variety: …three positives
46. Overworld: Generally good overworld density
47. Overworld: Exploration is usually rewarding, though not always and not directly
48. Level: Gelmir Hero’s Grave dungeon (lava, lava for days)
49. Level: Occasional shortcut design in dungeons (mostly in the Legacy dungeons)
50. Boss: Malenia is actually pretty well designed for the most part. Low poise and fast attacks encourage reaction and aggressiveness, her patterns are pretty obvious to see coming but hard to execute due to tight timing. And her second phase has nice long vuln periods that are risky but rewarding to go after…
51. Boss: …leading to a second positive
52. Boss: The Fire Giant is actually a good example of how to make an overwhelming foe have very precise weaknesses to exploit
53. Boss: Placidusax is honestly a great fight. Most of its attacks are fair but punishing, it has good coverage and reach but varies properly, and it does some wonderful stuff with its vanishing teleport attacks…
54. Boss: …earning it a second positive
55. Boss: Maliketh has a very cool moveset, very rewarding swoops and actions and general fun
56. Boss: Godfrey boss
57. Boss: Radagon boss
58. NG+: New Game Plus which has good features, but also weird limitations, and mandatory difficulty increase
59. Respec: The ability to respec exists
60. Kit: Summons add some nice kit to the game
61. Kit: Spells are generally very well designed across the board…
62. Kit: …adding further good kit to the game
63. Enemy AI: When it’s good, there’s good enemy AI design
64. Animation: When it’s good, there’s good animation design (mostly in attack telegraphing)
65. Replayability: Game does a good job of supporting replayability
66. Visual Continuity: Anywhere outside of a dungeon it’s very possible to navigate purely visually, thanks to good visual continuity
67. Viscerality: Generally good viscerality (especially in the spells)

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Launch: Unacceptably bad launch (optimization, broken quests, fps issues)
2. Co-Op: Forced pvp for co-op (as per usual)
3. Co-Op: Co-op irritations in general
4. Co-Op: Oh, and further co-op irritations (can’t re-summon in boss areas, huge delays in it working, network issues)
5. Saves: As usual, forced ironman mode saves
6. Camera: Camera issues with certain bosses and areas
7. Controls: Lack of ability to rebind properly (can’t put multiple keys to one command, can’t bind multiple actions to multiple keys but are limited by context sensitive setups)
8. Controls: Mouse capture problem (game cannot seem to capture the mouse correctly, leading to control issues)
9. Guidance and Flow: The game very clearly is designed around funneling you towards Margit, and is then quite mean of an encounter (counters for every range, hits like a truck, very fast, two phase, and reads your input)
10. Info In Game: There is a fairly severe lack of info in game…
11. Info In Game: …leading to a lot of either trial and error or ‘google it’ gameplay
12. Walkthroughitis: Speaking of which, items have some walkthroughitis
13. Walkthroughitis: And quests have even further walkthroughitis… to the point where it’s truly ridiculous, with not just lack of quest log or indicators, but excruciatingly vague directions (or in some case an actual lack of directions, instead vague hints)…
14. Walkthroughitis: …leading to a third negative
15. Walkthroughitis: Also you can permanently screw yourself out of quests without really knowing how or why
16. Graphics: The gross factor returns, as it always does in these ones
17. Interface: The lack of proper pause feature has its own issues
18. Info In Game: Actually inaccurate info on tooltips and tutorials (notably Great Runes)
19. Music: The music in the Limgrave area is bleh to the point of wanting to turn it off
20. Music: Let’s just give a second negative for tiresome music throughout the game
21. Level: The micro-dungeons are, honestly, a bit over-used and get repetitive after a while
22. Level: …leading to a second negative…
23. Boss: Further complicated by repeat boss fights…
24. Boss: …in some cases literally just being copy pasted bosses
25. Boss: A final, pseudo-aggregate negative for repetition
26. Boss: The Rennala fight has several irritations, most obvious being; one of the longer runbacks in the game (where it otherwise avoids the issue) and having to do Phase 1 again each attempt
27. Bug: Occasional but massively game-breaking, game BRICKING bug which the very fact that it can happen via something as innocuous as loading a screen, is utterly unacceptable
28. Grind: Unacceptably low drop rate, along with no bad luck protection
29. Controls: The buffer input in this game is weirdly bad. It’s a bit longer or misplaced, I’m not sure which, but either way it results in a common scenario of doing an animation (usually getting hit) then doing the action you hit prior to being hit…
30. Controls: …and its a constant irritation throughout
31. Boss: There really is a bit of an overtuning problem in multiple bosses
32. QoL: The fact that any dialogue pop up interrupts all possible actions is irritating, unnecessary, and can actually get you killed
33. Overworld: Overworld flow and density issues in Liurnia
34. Overworld: Irritation of navigation…
35. Overworld: …and of map design in the Plateau
36. Overworld: Boring emptiness of the consecrated snowfield
37. Gotcha: Lots… and lots… of gotcha! Moments…
38. Gotcha: …easily enough for two negatives
39. Sound: The audio balance is the usual ‘too soft or too loud’ issue
40. Core Mechanic: Inconsistent message distribution (the online messages are so spammy they de-incentivize you to read the ones you have to for quests)
41. Boss: Ordina can go to hell
42. Padding: The 1 HP thing
43. Crash: There aren’t a super number of crashes… but there are crashes, plural
44. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Malenia forces you to fight phase 1 each re attempt
45. Padding: The forced ‘reload state to progress quests and dialogue’… design choice… thing
46. HUD: Speaking of which, the fact that you have to talk to NPCs multiple times, there’s no indication other than repetition when you’re done, and sometimes the repetition is slightly different
47. Boss: There are several small but significant issues with the Maliketh fight, like re-doing phase 1, the ‘debuff lock’ he can place you in, and some other frustrations
48. Outro: Final boss rush and phase 1 repeat issue, as usual
49. Outro: The Outro in general has several issues, not the least of which feeling rather rushed compared to other parts of the game, but also everything about the final boss is honestly kind of lackluster (especially for a fight that feels so clearly designed for Torrent… and isn’t)
50. Enemy AI: When it’s bad, the enemy AI design is awful (looking at you, dragons)
51. Animations: When it’s bad, the animations kinda suck
52. Grind: The game is honestly a bit grindy, especially given how little you get out of it
53. Lighting: In many cases the lighting, while atmospheric, actively makes the game harder to understand or perceive
54. Visual Distinction: Some general visual distinction problems (especially at night, or in some dungeons)

Story Positives:

1. Voice Acting: VA…
2. Voice Acting: …VA…
3. Voice Acting: …VA! In all seriousness, Kevan Brighting is legitimately fantastic, in so, so many different ways
4. Sound: Sound direction in general
5. MSQ: 5 clicks on door 530 ‘quest’
6. MSQ: Early death
7. MSQ: Go the wrong way consistently…
8. MSQ: …and the ‘real person & choices’ slide
9. MSQ: The Stanley Parable Adventure Line
10. MSQ: The first, uh, ‘dlc’ wasn’t great…
11. MSQ: …but the second one and the ‘additions’ actually got me pretty good
12. MSQ: Bucket%
13. Dialogue: Dialogue quality…
14. Dialogue: …is hard to explain how well crafted it is
15. Prime Opt: The Bucket Ending… what is it… who’s there?!?
16. Prime Opt: The… Bucket LOVE Ending…
17. Prime Opt: The Bucket broom closet!!
18. Prime Opt: Just… so much, I can’t even describe the quality of each ending ‘chain’ post Bucket (this one’s for Bucket Insane)
19. Prime Opt: This one’s for Bucket Games
20. MSQ: The entire collectibles line is legit in general…
21. MSQ: …but the (out of no where) payoff is even better
22. Prime Opt: The bucket escape pod was hysterical to begin with, but the re-acquisition… wow
23. Prime Opt: Bucket Destroyer!
24. Branching Narrative: The branching story was already fantastic…
25. Branching Narrative: …and deserving of a second positive…
26. Branching Narrative: …but with the addition of the Bucket lines, this becomes one of the best, most branching games I’ve ever seen
27. Character: The Narrator deserves his own positives for his own character, varying though he be
28. Doodads: Doodad design is quite good throughout
29. Internal Continuity: External Continuity with… the… original version of the game (it’s hard to explain)
30. Storytelling Mechanic: The Narrator as a storytelling mechanic which is, let’s be honest, the primary thrust of the game…
31. Storytelling Mechanic: …for a full…
32. Storytelling Mechanic: …three positives

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Tutorialization: Bizarrely excellent tutorialization…
2. Tutorialization: …which is combined with a very clear and well designed guidance and flow of direction such that you effectively always know what kinds of things you can do, and (almost) all the lines are things you can pretty intuitively figure out
3. Branching Gameplay: There are a great deal of branching ‘quest design’ in this game, so much that it easily stomps any other I can think of…
4. Branching Gameplay: …earning it…
5. Branching Gameplay: …three positives

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: The settings menu has some legitimate issues
2. Padding: The Skip button gag section honestly took a bit long and…
3. Padding: …the 4 hour ending is just stupid and annoying on purpose
4. Padding: A second negative for the 4 hour ending. Optional’ness aside, it’s actually worse than originally indicated, because it has periodic points where the narrator pops in to add to the ‘gag’ but only after literally dozens of minutes, or HOURS, of absolute aggravation AND making it worse as you go by adding a second button to hit

Story Positives:

1. Visual Storytelling: Visual storytelling in level design
2. Sound: Sound design in atmosphere
3. Storytelling Mechanic: Mechanics of letter logs
4. Plot: Being right ‘behind’ the story as it unfolds in front of you
5. MSQ: Errant Signal is a little bit exposition dump-heavy but where it really shines is in how it shows you the narration as it goes
6. MSQ: The slowly growing confidence during the Nithriel fight literally expanding the arena and giving you access to more firepower and drops was a nice touch
7. Visual Storytelling: Pale Wind has an excellent first half, really showcasing the value in an ‘empty’ zone and how it can be used as a vector for storytelling
8. Architecture: Good time to mention that a lot of work is done to make each non-combat area feel like a real, fleshed out location. I’ll talk about this more down in the Brickwork but it deserves its own mention
9. MSQ: Research & Decay finally elucidates on the traitor, is clever about its ‘cutscenes’, and is appropriately terrifying to peruse through
10. MSQ: The Crystal Heart is a good build up and follow through of us finally catching up to the plot, and the ending leaves just enough dangling threads to keep interest high
11. Brickwork: The architecture of the game really does a lot to make the areas feel like actual places, the zones ‘lived in’ and adds to the overall vibe of every area
12. World Building: The Mansion stage and its, ah, interesting insight into the rich snobs who joined the cult, and how they utterly ruined themselves before we ever showed up
13. Cutscene: The entire ‘waking up at the hell beach’ segment
14. Consequence Storytelling: Consequence storytelling is all over the place, with events being followed through on in ways that really help the narrative
15. World Building: The hell cluster level does a fairly large amount to flesh out the demons, their way of life, and how they operate…
16. World Building: …especially the Primarchs, who have their own varied motives and desires re: the Baron
17. Background Lore: Generally good background lore, almost always in the NPCs of ‘hub’ sections
18. Visual Storytelling: The general visual storytelling of the final, alien area is great
19. MSQ: The ‘in the mind’ sequence and subsequent defiance in the mental landscape
20. Outro: The ending covered a lot of ground quickly and efficiently and was very satisfying to boot
21. Character: Generally good supporting characters (persistent, too)
22. Internal Continuity: Game has good internal continuity, keeping track of its own concepts and events and how they link up
23. World Building: The world building throughout is fascinating, giving enough peaks into how the planet functions
24. Intro: The Intro is a bit wonky but does some good things to establish events and tone
25. Doodads: The newly patched in Doodads are still limited by the Doom engine but they’re also still good, and add some nice detailing to a lot of areas.

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Intro: The tutorial stage does a good job of being the tutorial, ironically more so than the stage prior
2. Visual Continuity: The environment changing noticeably and moving as stages progress is a nice touch
3. Save: Usual good and easy to use save and load…
4. Save: …as well as good quicksaves and quickloads/li>
5. Save: Also autosaves…
6. Save: …and multiple autosave slots
7. Map: The map is useful and distinct and the automapping feature helps as well
8. Level: Grove; multiple paths through, drown the enemy encounter, good usage of terrain for encounter variety
9. Encounter: The stealth segment during Errant Signal was actually really excellent despite lacking several tools one would expect, in part due to the limitations of the enemy ‘detection’
10. Level: Parapet is when the level design starts to pick up, with good interconnectivity and visual distinction of layout
11. Level: Crystal Heart really starts actually having honest game design in its interweaving elemental areas and guiding the player in which to do when via enemy spawns…
12. Encounter: …as well as the entire friendly followers section
13. Level: The cultist castle in Besieged is a good all roads lead to rome section of quest design, with good itemization and the combat not ramping up until after you’ve rescued the multitude of allies
14. Level: Brazen Bull involves quite a bit of creative usage of triggers and scripts, and at no point felt walkthroughy but instead flowed as it should
15. Level: The Hellscape mission does a lot of good, creative things with the moving ships, cover approach to the flagship, and navigating the final few ships
16. Enemy Variety: Enemy variety is decent
17. Kit: Gun variety is actually quite good, offering decent kit throughout
18. Viscerality: Viscerality is enjoyable, not just in the weapons themselves but in the gibbing
19. Level: The hell level cluster is probably one of the more creative sections of the game, trying out multiple approaches to puzzle design
20. All Roads Lead To Rome: Similarly, there is a great deal of well thought out all roads lead to rome level design in the hell cluster
21. Outro: The final boss fight was actually quite legit, with good pacing and phases and drops and fun
22. Difficulty Options: Good overall difficulty design, affecting enemy placements and AI design…
23. Difficulty Mutator: …bonus positive for the Bearzerk mode, including new and fun weapons just for the difficulty
24. Tutorialization: The Testing Hub is a nice built in select / test / cheats thing
25. Replayability: Replayability (especially with the difficulty options)
26. Level: The Deep Calls section has a few issues (enemy AI, enemy encounter design, terrain visibility) but nevertheless is well laid out with a good pseudo hub structure and no confusing layout
27. Kit: The turret is love, the turret is life
28. Party AI: The allies mechanic, while infrequent, is great when it’s there

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Guidance and Flow: Issues on the town level
2. Guidance and Flow: Issues on the lava level
3. Visual Distinction: Lack of visibility with interactables in early missions
4. Interface: Several minor but persistent issues with the engine being twisted to do something it wasn’t designed to do (inventory, crafting, interaction)
5. Boss: The Errant Signal Nithriel fight, purely mechanically, had several issues (terrain that’s too easy to slip into, entirely too much health/armor on the boss, attack patterns that encourage rapid movement on uneven terrain, invuln phases)
6. Walkthroughitis: There’s some pretty serious walkthroughitis going on in several of the methods of progression
7. Level: Research & Decay has several design issues, but the biggest one by far is; Dark areas with dark backdrops and fast moving dark enemies that shred you
8. Level: Level design and enemy placement across the board is clearly more slanted towards story than gameplay, with long stretches of exploration and map size being, honestly, a bit too big
9. Backtracking: The backtracking in the mansion level is real
10. Itemization: There’s a bit of an itemization problem that grows more obvious the further in you get, with ‘recovery’ sections a bit too dense and a bit too spread out, leading to palls of no recovery for lengthy swaths of levels
11. Padding: The game is entirely too long for what it can do. There are competing issues here and there (enemy variety, encounter design, player kit) but really what it all boils down to is there’s only so much you can do for so long and this game is long, long, long…
12. Padding: …easily the worst aspect of the game overall and dragging the entire experience down
13. HUD: The HUD is… not good. It’s a bit too crayon stylized and as a consequence there’s legitimate issues discerning certain aspects of it, especially in combat or at-a-glance
14. Outro: The Outro is good except when it’s not; the pacing of the final stage is a bit problematic (especially given the relative lack of guidance in said final stage)
15. Visual Continuity: During the trip through the Minotaur town, there’s a few different methods to progress, but the excess of browns combined with a very (relatively) small area, with small and narrow alleyways, streets, and corridors, actively hampers navigation and visual continuity

Story Positives:

1. Intro: The Intro does some good introductions to characters, concepts, and world and quickly establishes the plot hooks
2. Moment: The rather heart-warming moment of the crew coming together and sharing food with us is actually pretty legit
3. Brickwork: The town earns one by itself
4. Brickwork: The grassy, mountainy areas
5. Brickwork: Snowy areas
6. Brickwork: Aquatic areas
7. Brickwork: Caves and the like
8. Brickwork: And of course, the future
9. Doodads: Again, the main town…
10. Doodads: …plus everywhere else except the dungeons
11. NPC Set Dressing: The spread and variety of NPCs out in town really add to the flavor of things
12. Storytelling Mechanic: The usage of the diaries as continuing journals to give additional insight into events going on
13. MSQ: The conclusion of the Fogbound Lake arc, the wonderful visuals of the lake itself, and the nice wholesome moments with Uxie
14. Background Lore: Background world building is regular and interesting
15. Character: Bidoof is a weirdly good character all on his own
16. Character: The supporting cast is kind of awesome, with their own distinct quirks and presence in the story
17. Character: The core arc for the main character (no not us, our ‘partner’) is actually pretty legit; the idea of being someone who’s always done what they’re told to, and the slow shift into being their own character with their own decisions is great… if terribly told
18. Cutscene: The scene between the main character and Grovyle on the cliffside was actually pretty good
19. MSQ: The Dark Future Arc is a good showcase of what we’re fighting against and why, literally visually showcasing how bad things would (did?) get, in addition to serving as a vehicle for the main character’s arc
20. Music Direction: The music’s direction admittedly only occasionally accents the scenes, but when it does, man…
21. Moment: The final scene of our character saying goodbye to the main character as we fade into nonexistence is actually really quite powerful and tear-jerking
22. Prime Opt: The Bidoof episode is weirdly higher quality storytelling in general (in small ways here and there) but really clinches it with the scene where the guild swoops in to save the day (and refusing to waste his money on the TM … and refusing to waste his wish with Jirachi)
23. Prime Opt: While the primary plot was somewhat lacking, the background worldbuilding of Wigglytuff’s story and how the pokemon interact with each other is nice
24. Prime Opt: Team Charm isn’t the best but it also does a lot right, and bypasses most of the issues of the main game while still doing some cool things with it
25. Atmosphere: The overall tone and atmosphere of general wholesomeness is really smile enducing
26. Internal Continuity: The game keeps track of itself surprisingly well and self references throughout
27. MSQ: The Manaphy arc is adorable (and pays off in the end)
28. MSQ: Not just the suicide parallels, but the way they use them; “The world would be a better place without me”, proven… completely wrong, with everyone re-affirming how much they’d be sad in their absence
29. Theme: The overall theme of the Grovyle arc, of the impermanence of life and wanting to make what life you have worthwhile… of survival being insufficient… is a good theme
30. Outro: Even though it’s completely destroyed right after, the lead up to the final battle and the group’s final sacrifice as they die with no regrets is tremendously powerful
31. Spritework: Sprite Work is fantastic, both in color distinction and detail…
32. Spritework: …for a full…
33. Spritework: …three positives
34. Animation: This is complimented by some excellent animation

Story Negatives:

1. Tone: The entire way the game… lacks morality about the (let’s call it what it is) cult that the guild is, and how abusive and unpleasant they function while using methods to control their own (including withholding food!) is awful. The story ideas themselves aren’t really the problem, it’s entirely the way it’s portrayed; like it’s normal, acceptable, or worse–like it’s just a joke
2. Tone: There’s actually more to this, but the specifics of how awful this entire sequence of events is and how it portrays the innocent cute pokemon as abusive corporate overlords is utterly unacceptable
3. Writing: Repetition in storytelling and is… really, really bad…
4. Writing: …to the point where it stopped being funny and started actively grating
5. Padding: Okay for real, the unnecessary flashbacks is absolutely ridiculous…
6. Padding: …to the point of being second negative worthy
7. Empty Text: Lots of Empty Text issues
8. MSQ: Unfortunately, while the main character arc is great, it’s just… horribly presented, either buried in bad translation or due to someone somewhere ‘pulling back’ on the storytelling
9. Moment: The fantastic, powerful, meaningful outro to the main story… is absolutely destroyed in the last 10 seconds by the resurrection of our character
10. Dialogue: I really hate to ding what is probably the best part of the game, but the dialogue is just… bad. I’m not sure if it’s ‘dumbed down’ to be ‘kid friendly’ or if it’s just badly written, badly localized, or some combination thereof, but the core dialogue is honestly kind of awful
11. Moment: The absolute emotional whiplash of undoing the sacrifice at the end of Grovyle’s story (…again…) completely destroys the ending
12. Localization: The localization is, related thereto, noticeably lacking throughout and actively detracts from every moment

Gameplay Positives:

1. Flow: The flow of dungeon-crawling is well structured and streamlined
2. Core Combat: Core combat and its positional nature is interesting and fun, especially given…
3. Kit: …the usual spread and variety of kit for your team
4. Build: This is further enhanced by the Pokemon Plus (for builds) being even better than usual given the added benefit of having more than one pokemon out at a time, as well as ranges and angles being relevant. Now, this isn’t to the extreme extent of the main Pokemon games, but there’s still plenty of Build gameplay here…
5. Build: …for a full…
6. Build: …three positives
7. QoL: QoL features of quests (leaving option when done, indication per floor, notes on map)
8. Music: Music is boppin’
9. Mid Mission Checkpoints: The fact that mid mission checkpoints actually fully heal and restore you makes this game substantially more tolerable, and serves as good checkpointing besides
10. Kit: The additional kit of the IQ abilities and how they vary up combat is neat…
11. Enemy Variety: Enemy Variety is hampered by the dungeon design, but is still top notch (I mean, it’s Pokemon)
12. Info In Game: Generally good info in game (explaining items, moves, IQ abilities, etc.)
13. Sound: The sound throughout is generally distinct and informative
14. Replayability: The game is generally replayable, especially with the variety of builds and starters
15. Minimap: The overlay map is reasonably useful
16. HUD: The ability to customize what the top screen tracks is useful
17. Minigame: The footprint minigame is a neat diversion
18. Log: The in-game log is present and helpful in figuring out what happened in combat

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Unskippable Cutscenes: The plague of gaming
2. Save: Single save slot and associated problems
3. Intro: The Intro has some pretty bad early game hell, further hampered by the lack of proper explanation (or even pacing of tutorialization) in the first handful of dungeons
4. Level: The randomly generated dungeons seem to lean a bit too heavily on the one-width corridors which actively gets in the way of the interesting combat
5. Balancing: There is an unnecessary amount of RNG on top of RNG which can completely screw you over out of no where with no real ability to do anything about it
6. Level: The sheer quantity of not-designed dungeons really drags the game down even at an early time, especially given the aforementioned issue of actively getting in the way of the otherwise excellent combat
7. Secondary: The Sunflora side mission is… bad. Ignoring the fact that it takes away a critical element of the game (party members), but also offers no mid-mission checkpointing at all, requiring you to start all the way at the beginning anytime you fall
8. Secondary: A second negative for Sunflora’s missions being terribly designed in essentially every way
9. Secondary: The RNG and level design of Team Charm’s mission is rather lacking
10. Grind: …the sheer grindiness, despite doing everything right and planning it out, of raising IQ abilities is a bit much
11. MSQ: The requirement of two blue gummies for the Manaphy arc is nonsense on many levels, especially given how easy it would be to bypass (and there’s no indication that it’s coming… and no reason to hold onto them…
12. Level: The Aegis dungeon can go to hell. There were several ways it could have worked, but instead it’s just RNG on top of RNG and dull to boot
13. Level: The fail condition of some specific dungeons sucks (such as losing Shaymin, or Cresselia, even when you have a full party)
14. Outro: The Outro sucks almost across the board. In addition to the final dungeon being just another dungeon, you also are saddled with the load that is Cresselia (who is weak to several pokemon in there) and then the final battle is just a few random pokemon and Darkrai (where Cresselia continues to be the load)
15. Enemy AI: The ‘AI’ throughout (both allies and enemies) is… just nonsense
16. Starting Options: The inability to just select your starter at the beginning, instead relying on essentially walkthroughs or the internet to get one, is not great
17. Backtracking: While it’s not as bad as it could be, there is a periodic run-back problem with bosses and their respective checkpoints

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: The Florio Nature Park, and its wonderful foresty feel
2. Brickwork: The Founja Jungle and its own, uh, jungly vibes
3. Brickwork: The wonderful dunes of the Sweltering Sands
4. Brickwork: The Fireflow Volcano and its fun burning walls
5. Brickwork: Lovely vibes at the Maricopia Reef
6. Brickwork: And very wonderful chilling at the Blushing Beach
7. Brickwork: The cold cavernous Outaway Cave
8. Brickwork: Absolutely gorgeous visuals in the Lental Seafloor…
9. Brickwork: …for two positives
10. Brickwork: The frozen wastes of the Shiver Snowfields
11. Spritework: This is further accented by the design of the pokemon themselves who, as usual, are brilliantly designed…
12. Spritework: …for a full…
13. Spritework: …three positives
14. Atmosphere: And even further by the generally chill atmosphere of the sound design, which compliments the visuals
15. World Building: The little tidbits of world-building are actually quite enjoyable, in how the pokemon interact with one another
16. Doodads: Doodad design is pretty legit in every stage and area

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: The game’s ending is… too much. I like heartwarming and I like positivity but the ending was actually sickening in how saccharine it was
2. Voice Acting: The inconsistent voice acting is a further issue to the audio spam issue down below

Gameplay Positives:

1. HUD: The combination HUD and interface are reasonably well designed, with good information and navigation
2. Core Mechanic: The main gameplay which is, at its core, a puzzle game, is surprisingly enjoyable…
3. Kit: …probably because it has more depth than it looks like at first glance. The tools and kit you get to interact with pokemon changing how and when they interact, allowing you to snap different tiers and access different areas, is fun
4. Level: The Florio Nature Park (manual, crafted design)
5. Level: Founja Jungle (manual, crafted design)
6. Level: Elsewhere Forest (manual, crafted design)
7. Level: Sweltering Sands (manual, crafted design)
8. Level: Fireflow Volcano (I think you get the idea)
9. Level: Lentil Seafloor
10. Level: Maricopia Reef
11. Level: Blushing Beach
12. Level: Shiver Snowfields
13. Level: Outaway Cave
14. Level: Ruins
15. Level: Barren Badlands
16. Level: Mightywide River
17. Guidance and Flow: In general you have decent guidance and flow of exploration in what to find, where, and how
18. Replayability: The game is generally chill, which works as a good replayability factor

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Save: Single save slot and the usual related issues
2. Audio Spam: Professor Mirror is… irritating at best
3. Grind: Progression curve is a bit grindy and a bit slow at times
4. Seconds In Minutes: Seconds in minutes problem is definitely present, especially when waiting to hit the next setpiece (in stage) or the post-stage wrap up
5. Grind: Actually filling out everything is a bit of a chore (made even worse by virtue of the fact that you can only fill one star category per pokemon per trip)
6. Walkthroughitis: Some of the specific challenges and stars are pretty walkthroughy

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: The general variety and quality of the backgrounds of each stage…
2. Brickwork: …are legitimately impressive, on many levels, and do a lot to really add to the visual presentation of events

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: The Outro is a bit absent and a bit sudden, such as it is

Gameplay Positives:

1. Mod: The stage editor is a bit crude but still has decent tools and options
2. Cosmetic: While the custom Mii fighters thing is mostly just cosmetic and neat, the fact that you can customize the special moves is what really sells it and makes it a positive
3. Tutorialization: Good and varied training mode with lots of options
4. Power Progression Curve: The unlocking ‘progression’ of gaining new fighters and having new characters to try out is decently fun
5. Itemization: Itemization is exceptionally varied, though this is both good and bad, and it helps keep matches interesting
6. Info In Game: Decent info in game, especially the moveset on the pause menu
7. Minigame: Smash Mode itself is fun of course, but what really, really makes it work…
8. Minigame: …is the absolutely insane…
9. Minigame: …level of options and customization that it offers. The sheer quantity and specifics of how you can set it up are honestly bonkers
10. Level: A bonus positive for the map morph option which is not just cool and awesome, but really a neat way to vary up a match
11. Minigame: Smashdown mode is a fun way to vary things up
12. Minigame: Super sudden death has even more options than before to vary up random matches
13. Minigame: Online multiplayer has good options and good modes…
14. Minigame: …further supported by things like spectator mode and the like
15. Tutorialization: There’s an opening tutorial demo which is actually pretty neat
16. Music: There are some legitimately good mixes, though there’s… just such a huge variety of music that the quality varies pretty wildly
17. MSQ: The gimmicks and variances added to the World of Light mode are actually pretty cool, and a neat way to keep things interesting
18. Unit Design: King K. Rool is a nice, complex fighter with good variance on reach, range, speed, and his own gimmick…
19. Unit Design: …earning a second positive
20. Unit Design: Marth seems ‘average’ but actually is well designed in the ‘sword tip’ mechanic, the recover, and the comboing
21. Unit Design: Pac-Man is surprisingly interesting to play, very fast and reactive and his gimmicks of directing his ‘line’ attacks and the item toss are very fun
22. Unit Design: Donkey Kong is a well designed risk/reward grappler, with surprisingly good reach and armor
23. Unit Design: Duckhunt is surprisingly good of a character; fairly weak in several areas, but with a great ability to setup and payoff
24. Unit Design: Inkling is very centric on their gimmick, but it’s a good and fun gimmick that works pretty well to keep them fluid
25. Unit Design: Lucario has a neat gimmick but aside from that is just surprisingly well constructed, with good risk reward and good movement
26. Unit Design: Bowser is a great wrestler; his moves themselves give him mobility and his armor lets him piledrive through attacks, making him easy to injure but hard to avoid
27. Unit Design: Peach has a great range on the ground and fantastic air mobility, combined with a fun moveset
28. Unit Design: Pikachu has a ridiculous amount of control, mobility, and recovery, combined with being very hard hitting and difficult to use
29. Unit Design: Villager is very gimmick, very short range, and very setup-heavy, but if mastered can really nail it
30. Unit Design: Captain Falcon is a great combo of speed and slow, maneuverable and static, and his attacks have wonderful range in all directions
31. Unit Design: Isabelle is surprisingly fun, essentially the Villager but better, with the fishing rod being a weirdly big game changer, among other little changes
32. Unit Design: Fox is… Fox.
33. Unit Design: Little Mac is astonishingly fast, hard hitting, bad at recovery, and has stupid reach, a great grab bag of detriments and advantages
34. Unit Design: Ryu is ironically much better designed overall here than over in Street Fighter, with his usual well designed specials complimented by multiple unique gimmicks…
35. Unit Design: …and very tight design to his movement, reach, and spread
36. Unit Design: Snake has his usual spread of weird, situational, trapping area control abilities
37. Unit Design: Lucas/Ness have good general variety to attacks, and are massively vulnerable while using them
38. Unit Design: The Belmonts have a great and varied kit, and while lacking in any unique gimmicks they make up for it by sheer quality and quantity of their set
39. Unit Design: Samus is actually quite excellent, a heavy hard hitter with great spread but low range, and plenty of specials to cover gaps
40. Unit Design: Pokemon Trainer’s switch gimmick is pretty much their entire shtick, but…
41. Unit Design: …what really sells them is how distinct and different all three really are
42. Unit Design: Shulk of course has the stances, which is neat, but also a very precise and interesting moveset…
43. Unit Design: …which encourages planning and, well, precision
44. Enemy AI: The enemy AI is, honestly, fantastic in general, but especially with how dynamic and gradient it is…
45. Enemy AI: …easily earning the coveted…
46. Enemy AI: …three positives
47. Unit Design: King Dedede is an interesting example of a heavy who has floatiness and is actually slow, but great recovery and staggered hits
48. Unit Design: Ice Climbers are actually quite fun and responsive now, with great mobility, speed, and move variety
49. Unit Design: Incineroar is a delight to play in general but the variety to how he can combo his throws and moves is great
50. Unit Design: Sonic is very precise in his movement, his moveset isn’t that great but his aerial is insane and he rewards control
51. Unit Design: Wario is a surprisingly complex character, which helps flesh out his… less than stellar presentation
52. Unit Design: Ridley is fast and frenetic, with great move variety and fun viscerality
53. Unit Design: Ganondorf is heavy, hard hitting, and wonderfully difficult to get off but when you do it’s so satisfying
54. Unit Design: Cloud is probably one of the better sword types, being focused on his limits and his limit gauge to empower them (and gain a launcher)
55. Unit Design: Ike at first seems like a generic fighter but his windup and his launch really helps distinguish him (and adds some risk/reward)
56. Unit Design: Metaknight is… Metaknight. But, y’know, not ridiculous (high speed, high maneuverability, high vulnerability, high pressure)
57. Unit Design: ROB is nuts. Heavy hitting, fast, area denial, insane recovery, and great coverage in range
58. Unit Design: Wolf is honestly better designed than Fox, with better variance to his moves’ coverage and more interesting reach on his smashes
59. Unit Design: Greninja is all about mobility, both horizontal and vertical, and he can command a huge area very quickly
60. Unit Design: Corrin’s reach and follow-through is fantastic, with good mobility-in-moveset that allows her to aggressively redirect
61. Unit Design: Bayonetta is, as expected, quite well designed, with good range and reach and rewarding counters
62. Boss: The first Ghaleem fight is actually pretty legit
63. Build: The spirits system offers some good opportunities to add mutators to your fighter or vary up the ‘build’ slightly
64. Cosmetic: Good customization in the alternate colors and costumes
65. Boss: The Dracula fight is actually pretty fun, in fact he’s noticeably more interesting and harder than in most Castlevania games
66. Boss: The Ganon fight is, legitimately, better than he is in some Zelda games
67. Boss: The Marx fight is honestly quite fun and, like the others, better than in his original game
68. Hyperbeam Moment: Okay, the Master Hand hyperbeam moment was actually pretty cool
69. Outro: And the final, final dual boss against Darkhon and Ghaleem is actually pretty legit
70. Level: One positive for the actually good stages, the ones with variety and gimmicks and interactions
71. Viscerality: One positive for general viscerality, it looks and sounds impressive to smash things (go figure)
72. Replayability: The game is generally replayable, so long as what you’re after and enjoy is random matches
73. Unit Design: Kirby is quite balanced, doing a little bit of good in a lot of fields // Mario is a bit more specialized towards control and defense these days, but he works quite well for it // Link is a bit basic, but still has good range and close covers // Palutina is… okay, with good zoning but otherwise very basic moveset
74. Unit Design: Pit has wings and a bow // Zelda’s a decent mage, mostly unchanged from Brawl // Chrom is a bit generic but still enjoyable // Luigi is distinct from his brother and still reasonable

Gameplay Negatives:

1. MTX: Microtransaction negative (fighters and cosmetics)
2. Grind: The fact that you have to unlock fighters can be neat (see the attached positive) but it’s also pretty restrictive, a bit needlessly punishing, and worst of all; prevents you from just sitting down and playing whom you want
3. Interface: The character select screen… actually sucks. They’re organized by when they joined the roster, which is incredibly unhelpful as opposed to literally any other sorting method, and further there’s no search function
4. Interface: There’s a bit of obtuseness to the menus throughout the whole game
5. Graphic: While it varies… a lot… there are some scenarios where the game just has way, way too much visual and audio chaos going on…
6. Audio Spam: …which combines with some audio spam issues
7. Minigame: Netcode issues which are just unacceptable in a game with this level of required precision
8. MSQ: The World of Light mode is entirely too long for what it is…
9. Padding: …being dragged on and on and on with only slight variance, and actually getting harder as it goes, which would normally be a good thing but…
10. Encounter: …what it does is it makes the game even more of a slog as factory worker syndrome kicks in
11. Encounter: And the factory worker syndrome is real, lemme tell ya
12. MSQ: A bonus negative for the world of light for both slog, factory worker syndrome, and general lack of design
13. Level: The over-reliance on basic stage designs sucks in general but it’s much worse in the World of Light where there’s way, way too many of them and none of the great stage designs
14. Unit Design: Olimar… kinda sucks. His basic moveset is boring and his gimmick is disinteresting
15. Seconds In Minutes: There’s a bit of seconds in minutes / runback problem with the load times
16. Grind: The function of the spirit system as a ‘level’ (for despite it’s practical function as a handicap selector, it is in practical application just your level vs. theirs) is unnecessary and really adds nothing while otherwise detracting from the game
17. Boss: The Pauline fight is a special kind of screwed up
18. Power Progression Curve: The spread of how which fighters you gain where in the World of Light honestly feels haphazard and has no real flow or design to it
19. Level: Some of the specific conditions of some of the fights in the World of Light are honestly either bullcrap or boring (like… ‘here’s an empty platform that’s on fire… that’s it’)
20. Unit Design: Rosalina honestly kind of sucks in pure combat, with her capacity being a little too tied to her Luma and having some lack of real flavor to her kit
21. Overworld: It’d take too long to list them all so just please believe me when I say; the overworld design of the overworld… isn’t…
22. Overworld: …for two negatives
23. Outro: The back and forth of the final mode is honestly far too arduous for what it’s trying to be
24. Outro: Similarly the final ‘platforming’ section is not just slow and bland, but actively cheap