Omega Strike

If this game ever comes back up for sale, know that it's stolid for the most part. The main issue is that one character gets the majority of the upgrade abilities, and it can be tedious to switch to him what feels like constantly. I just want to play with the double jump shotty guy who gets a dash the whole time!

This game is ok, but I can't really recommend it as a metroidvania. There are some positives, like the art, but I feel there should have been a lot more to it. The three playable heroes stay mostly the same throughout the game. I thought they would get much more powerful weapons and abilities, but they just get some minor upgrades to mainly fulfill the metroidvania aspect of the game, and that's about it. Also I get that switching characters is the gimmick in this game, but the unique powers the characters get would all normally be incorporated on a single character in just about any other metroidvania. These guys also don't get new weapons (only upgrades to range or power), so the fighting mechanics don't change much throughout the game. The exploration in this game feels lacking since all you find are gold, healing items, and heart pieces. Initially, it is useful to find gold to upgrade gear and a few heart pieces to increase your life bar. However, after you upgrade your gear enough, you will quickly see there isn't too much point in exploring everything, since the items you find are only those three types. This is not helped by the fact you can farm gold from monsters, buy more healing items than you'll probably need from the shop, and those healing items can make up for any hearts you miss. The game is pretty short, 4-7 hours. The art does look pretty nice. Enemy variety is ok. However, the story is basically non-existent past the initial blurb. The characters don't have any distinct personalities, since they never talk. The game almost feels like it's level-based, since you can only transport from town to the beginning of each area. (You can warp back to town with a consumable item). There is a fair amount of backtracking. Exploration quickly becomes unrewarding. Gameplay doesn't fundamentally change much throughout the game. Bosses were ok, but are trivialized by the cheap and abundant healing you can carry on you. Overall, the game is alright as a 2D run-and-gun platformer and is reasonably fun and short. But evaluating it amongst metroidvania, there are too many shortcomings for me to recommend it.