Gash

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[h1]Overview:[/h1] '[i]Gash[/i]' is a first person hack and slash game where the goal is to become the strongest swordsman in Japan. Supposedly taking place in the Sengoku period, the objective is to fight various enemies throughout different arenas to power-up, advance and ultimately beat the current strongest swordsman and claim the title for yourself. The idea sounds interesting enough and even the video on the store page makes the game seem like a pretty fun, fast paced hack and slash but don't be fooled. I absolutely love these kinds of games but there are a lot of underlying issues plaguing this one and I'll break down each aspect the best I can. [h1]Gameplay:[/h1] Now to start off, you only have the option to pick one class out of the three that appear to be in the game: the wandering swordsman also known as a "Ronin". The other two are "Ninja" and "Samurai" which I found weird since both ronins and samurais are well, samurais, but both these classes are locked and have a big fat "[i]Coming Soon[/i]" text hovered above them. And seeing how this game was released almost a year ago and still these classes have yet to be released, I'm not holding my breath for any updates. You start off in a small village where every single occupant seemingly wants to kill you. Farmers and peasants with rakes and swords, novices lob rocks and even chefs wearing wooden buckets all want you dead. It's absolute pandemonium right off the bat and you're basically forced to fight these apparent [i]civilians[/i] for no reason. They're never ending and will continue to spawn up until you summon the level's boss on a blue podium. During this wave survival phase, you can hack down as many enemies you see fit as they'll occasionally drop power-ups that will improve your damage, movement speed, and stamina effects. One particular power-up however I found useless cause it would increase stamina usage when you block with your sword. Why this was a power-up confuses me as it does nothing to help the player aside from make them tired quicker when blocking. Power-ups take the form of trophies and none of them are marked so when you pick one up, you don't know what you're going to get so it ends up being a gamble whether or not you get something good. The other issue I had with the power-ups was movement speed. Like I mentioned, one thing that can be improved is your movement speed and although moving fast would normally be helpful in combat situations, it definitely isn't in this case. There's no limit to how fast you can move so while you're farming for power-ups to be strong enough to fight the boss, naturally you're going to improve your movement speed. But at one point if you farm too much and increase your movement exponentially, you'll move so fast that even the slightest bump will send your character flying. And since you can't know what power-ups you're going to get, there's nothing you can do to prevent it besides holding off on farming cause you're moving too fast just to get bodied by the boss soon after cause you didn't farm enough damage boosts. The other power-ups do little to help the player and honestly probably wouldn't have made the game any harder if they were removed. What the game needed were some health and damage resistance power-ups. You're character is squishy and can only tank a few hits before being critically injured. Even in later stages, I was so powered up I was basically zooming across the map but even then, I was swiftly killed by two enemies in a few seconds when I tried to go in for a kill. There's little balance when it comes to your character stats but would it surprise you if I said that wasn't even the worst part? The worst part is I'm afraid, the combat. Don't get me wrong, the fighting feels smooth, fast and actually feels satisfying but the programming is where the game is severely flawed. Combat is extremely inconsistent and there is almost no strategy when it comes to fighting. The idea appears to use strategic manoeuvres and blocking/parrying to fight enemies. Even the video on the store page demonstrates this but I find it barely works at all. For whatever reason, regardless of the enemy type you engage with, slashing an enemy doesn't always hurt them. Half the time enemies take no damage but will land a hit on you because they're attacks deal immediate damage regardless of what their animations show. Seriously, they could just be starting their swing but by then you've already taken damage. You could even just walk into them and get hit despite them not swinging their weapon. There's literally 0 strategy you can implement because their animations don't sync up whatsoever with what's actually happening. Sometimes you'll even see a hit land and even the sound of flesh slicing but the enemy's health remains the same. If they were parrying or blocking, I could understand but there's no animation indicating that so half the time you end up just wondering where the hell your swings are going. The blocking is absolutely useless too and there is no parry feature. Blocking doesn't give the player an advantage and even if you block an attack and go in for a counter, you'll sometimes still get hit so what's the point of blocking if you're going to get up getting hurt anyways? The gameplay is just unpolished and not fun or intuitive at all. It all boils down to mindlessly hacking and slashing and hoping you kill your enemy before they do the same to you. The only reason why the game is remotely beatable is because you slowly regenerate health over time so the only "strategy" the game has is to run in swinging and pray that one or two hits actually land, retreat while you heal the stupid amount of damage you had to take, reengage then repeat the monotony. [h1]Controls:[/h1] As I said, the movement and swordplay feel smooth and honestly the slashing and combat feel fun to play which is unfortunate when the programming is so botched. You have your typical slashing on top of two abilities ranging from an explosive sword jump and a powerful slash that can hit multiple enemies. These abilities make fighting a bit easier but enemies don't always get hit by these skills either which honestly I don't understand. Are they blocking them? Half of them are literally peasants and farmers. But I digress. The game fortunately feels okay and there is an option in the main menu that tells you how to play. [h1]Graphics:[/h1] For what it is, it isn't too bad. The maps are colorful and combat effects are cool to look at. Enemies don't have much detail though and are represented as giant sliding pills with goggly eyes wearing various articles of clothing. The entire world takes on a poly style artstyle which works but that being said, there's a graphics option you can toggle to either low, medium or high that doesn't seem to do anything to improve graphical quality. The only thing that affects graphics is the resolution which at least work. [h1]Audio:[/h1] Actually not bad but not great either. The music is okay but it's repetitive and a bit too dramatic for what's literally a sword wielding pill fighting peasants and farmers that are also pills. There also are settings to adjust the music and master volume but when entering a level, the volume will reset to max. I'm just glad it's a meter and not a button that says "On" or "Off". [h1]Conclusion/TL;DR:[/h1] '[i]Gash[/i]' is a flawed first person hack and slash game that although has smooth controls and gameplay, is overshadowed by poor, janky programming that make the game hard to enjoy. On top of two classes that have never got released, the game has inconsistent hit registry, de-synced animations and imbalanced character stats that are the main contenders as to why this game is more frustrating than fun to play. '[i]Gash[/i]' needs serious polishing that it will never receive considering it's release date. There are better titles out there. This one isn't one of them,