I just noticed that there aren't many reviews for this one, so I decided to give some love now. I didn't beat the game yet, then I'll give my impressions so far, and will update it when I do.
[h1]Good Things:[/h1]
1 - There's a huge twist after some minutes (in my case around 1 hour and a half) of gameplay. [spoiler]The game starts as an old 2d platformer game. You have the first stage, which is the entrance of the castle. Then you get in and can choose between 4 other stages. After you beat these 4, there's a final short one, but the boss of this area is a bit harder than the others. When you beat him, you are awarded some sneakers that let you run faster, allowing you to reach a part you couldn't before and make you realize that you are on an interconnected map. You will soon discover that the other four stages were areas of this castle as well, and the game becomes a Metroidvania.[/spoiler]
For me, this is one of the best things about this game. I don't remember any game with a twist like this and I really loved it.
2 - The graphics. I really loved each detail of the scenarios. The dev did an excellent job to make every scenario clearly distinct from the others, using a simple art style and few tones of green.
3 - The music is quite nice and nostalgic.
4 - I can't talk much about this part yet, because I didn't get to that part, but, [spoiler] I know that you can sequence break the first part of the game, this is advertised by the dev on this page and this is one of the achievements. I didn't try it yet because I want to finish the game before, but I'm excited to try that and I already know one way that *might* be the way. The idea of sequence breaking the first part complements my first point and it's really nice.[/spoiler]
5 - Boss fights are really awesome. They are simple (due to the game as a whole being simple) yet they can be a little challenging. You have to learn the patterns and be really precise, especially when the boss is almost defeated, where his attacks become more frequent.
[h1]Neutral Things: [/h1]
1 - It's important to be aware of some of the game mechanics because they might not appeal to some audiences. The combat which some people complained about, isn't as bad as they say. Anyone that played old Castlevania games is used to the "short jump and attack" strategy. If you attack while on the floor you become rooted for a few moments.
The second point is the knockback when you get hit in the air. This game is more like La-Mulana than Hollow Knight. This means that you won't have the controls to choose where your character will land. This can be frustrating in some areas with platforms, but, having played La-Mulana myself and being used to it, I don't think this is a good or bad feature.
And to finish, the short invulnerability time after getting hit is basically non-existent, so you have to play around it accordingly.
2 - There's not much variety in the enemies. I don't see this as a bad thing, because this game pays homage to simple older games, so I didn't expect to have dozens of types of enemies.
3 - Even though the name is 'Destroy Space Aliens', the enemies resemble ghosts, dragons, and demons...
[h1]Bad Things:[/h1]
1 - The first message you get as you start a new game is that the game doesn't save your progress, you have to use a password system. It was cool at the first, maybe the second time. But, since I'm not playing it hours on a sitting, rather playing small bits every day, the password system soon became a chore, especially because they are not numeric, or alphanumeric, but a matrix of yes or no represented by dots. It's really tedious to put in the password every time you have to start the game.
2 - There's one thing, out of two, in Metroidvania's map system that I think it's essential. Either there's no map to buy/find, and your map is displayed as soon as you enter a new room (like ESA) or you have a bought/found grey map that starts to be displayed as soon as you visit new areas (like HK). This game has none. Even worse, the map is not so quickly found after you find a new area. For the first area, it took me a few minutes, for the second I didn't find it until [spoiler] I found the compass, which reveals the location of the remaining items. To access this map I needed one item that I found later in the game[/spoiler], for the third it took me a while. This creates two main problems: The first is always being clueless about where you are (if you don't have the map yet). The second, which I think is the worse, especially considering that this game is a Metroidvania, is that you can't know which areas you have already visited. This applies not only to before getting the map but also after. So if you think you missed a collectible, you have to revisit all the rooms on the map, since you can't know if they were already visited. I think the reason for this is the way the dev programmed the password system. Each thing you get in the game is assigned to an object, so, it would be insanely hard if he would program each room to be an object too as well.
Another bad thing regarding the whole map system is the lack of any distinction of areas in the map. Since the dev couldn't change the color of the areas, he could've at least added the name of the individual areas.
One last thing: there are only four buttons in this game, which makes the map to be included in the pause menu. I know the dev was inspired by the older generations, but I think a quick map view in a different button would be a nice addition to the q.o.l. of the game.
3 - I said that there wasn't much variety in the enemies, which was not a big issue. Well, there's not much variety in the bosses and for me, that is an issue. Bosses look like stronger variants of prior bosses, with more powerful attacks.
4 - Some enemies are not in the room yet, but they will appear after you pass a specific location in the said room. This is not an issue at all, but there is one particular enemy that appears way too fast, and, if you are running, it's almost impossible to avoid the contact damage of him appearing right in (above) your face. This frustrated me a few times. This enemy actually gets on my nerves all the time. It has a homing attack that computes your position 'till the last second, which makes it hard to avoid this attack, especially when there are more threats in the same room.
5 - Two power-ups are too hard to use since you have to use only the control buttons plus the jump button. Again, this is due to the nostalgia, but I really think they could get an exclusive button attached to them, especially because they are not so reliable to use when you wish (they are a combination of three buttons). For one of them, I could assign a single button on JoyToKey, but for the other, I couldn't. But what makes things worse is that both these power-ups were acquired really close to each other, and one of them makes the other useless. So, it didn't bother me that I couldn't use that one. That makes me think that the design of this ability is flawed or its location. Because you don't need this ability for anything, especially because the other (and better) one is so close.
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Well, as I said, I will finish the game and come back to update this review. But I really wish the dev creates another game like this, and hopefully, you will be able to save it as we do it today hehe.
