Kotama and Academy Citadel

Fanservice metroidvania is basically what this is. If fanservice is what your after, google the images as that is only what you get. And even at that it is only for a few seconds at best. Combat is pretty repetitive and long with boss fights always being in two stages. Idea was to make them epic but it just got old really fast. Same assets among enemies were recycled with just a new coat of paint. For what little story there is, it makes no sense. Combat controls are clunky as best with a very questionable dodge mechanic that fails to do what it says on half of the enemy attacks thrown at you. The sad part of this game is the lack of full use of said time mechanics it hypes up in the game. The only "time manipulation is a very brief moment where you can slow the enemies down most to unleash a special attack or manipulate the play clock for specific events of the various fetch quests this has. Either pass or pay real cheap for it if you must.

I was liking this game. The game play is fun, and the art style is appealing, if you're not one of those types who look for excuses to get offended by. But unfortunately, this game seems to have some serious issues with memory and is very prone to crashing. It usually involves around the train. The train is where you go in to upgrade weapons and skills, and from so far I've played, it's the only way to fast travel to major sections through out the map. In another word, it's the place you need to visit fairly often. Every time I launch the game and enter the train for the first time, it takes over three minutes just to load the area. Which is strange since the interior of the train isn't that large and there's nothing in there that seems to warrant long loading time. But after that, entering train loads instantly. Then, after playing the game about two hours or longer then enter the train, the game crashes. Some times my PC ended up freezing. This always happens after playing the game for about two hours or longer. This seems to suggest that this game has memory leak somewhere, usually involve around the train. It also seems like other people are experiencing frequent crashes as well, although on different areas than what I'm noticing. For now, I'm going to stop playing this game until they fix the memory issue.

There is a brilliance hidden somewhere in this game, but it never managed to crystalizie into anything tangible. By the first half I though the game is really great, but by the second I was bored and could not manage to finish it. You can technically beat the final boss by the time you 50% the map, the rest of the game is just a busywork with a horrible backtracking and little to no content. Pros: combat is fluid and parries are great. Art direction is great. First few bosses are great. Cons: there is no game around it. Story: this game has none. (It does have characters, and notes and text, but none of it is the actual game story or plot. The whole plot is that you are walking around the building) Characters: this game has none. Exploration: 50% of the game is there, then there is nothing Backtracking: extremely tedious and non-rewarding Bosses: we had a boss which splits in two and instead of keeping it the only highlight of the game we decided to make the rest just more tedious variation that spams you from all the directions but also extra boring Gameplay: you know which game this reminded me? Assassin Creed. The bad one. _THAT ONE_ that you, reader, never managed to finish past 20% completion cause you are not insane.