Rose and Locket

the first hour of the game is great, and the art style is beautiful. This is genuinely one of the most beautiful games I've played. Story seems good for now, I haven't finished the game. My review may change later, but my current opinion is that the game needs more work. I'm excited to see Ninja Kiwi go from some folks making games about monkeys popping balloons to becoming a serious publisher. I think most of my issues could be fixed in updates, at which point I will change my review to positive, because I REALLY want to like this game. now for the downsides. -the movement feels like I'm covered in vaseline, slipping constantly but not moving freely enough to take advantage of it, and tar the next. If there was a "run" button, maybe connected to the roll, this would be fixed. Just something to not make me feel like a snail when enemies are chasing me. -the shotgun has potential to be a movement option, but isn't. Just enough knockback to throw me off, especially since there's a delay between firing the gun, and getting the knockback. -combat is annoying. you can swap guns to avoid reloading but there's a second of delay before you can shoot, meaning it's often better to just hold onto the gun you have -you can actually see this in one of the gifs for this game, but sometimes enemies spawn on top of you or below you, and there's nothing you can do about it. You just take the damage. -combat with a ton of enemies in tight platforming sections where you're trying to focus on both and end up dying a lot -enemies that chase you hug you meaning if you get hit you need to run away before you can shoot at them or you just miss because the bullet comes out IN FRONT of you instead of from you directly or better yet, slightly behind you. -no level select, no easy way to collect everything. even the lore cards are shown alphabetically in the collection meaning you have absolutely no clue where the lore cards are. -sometimes enemies are hidden behind foreground objects, like the boat. This is supposed to look good but in practice I just get hit a lot and get frustrated because I died for the 20th time against a worm that I didn't see. -the pink bombs. sometimes they give you health, sometimes they spawn an enemy, but the enemy spawns underneath the smoke, so before you can even react they're already charging at you -rolling edge cases, such as literally rolling off a ledge. -SLOPES. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SLOPES. -bosses often launch breakables at you that require a full clip/magazine of ammo, but if you were shooting something else you don't have enough ammo to break it. -green super juice or whatever it's called doesn't consistently last through screen transitions, sometimes gets reduced. -green super juice too hard to get, especially for how rare it is. sure, there's lost souls all over the place, but they require a bit of effort to get. I would be fine with this, but it's not even like, 2 lost souls for a strong attack, you need to get like a bunch. -dynamite can't be aimed. doesn't have auto aim either. not good when dealing with small corridors. -dialogue is attached directly to rooms, meaning if you complete a room before dialogue finishes, you'll never hear what the characters had to say. Also, when you reenter a room, which happens a LOT because you're trying to dodge enemies right next to the door, dialogue replays which can be annoying. -NO KEY REBINDINGS. This is a massive issue. if you want to change controllers because one of them is bad, you can't see which buttons lead to which input. Also, this is a disability issue because some folks need specialized controllers because regular controllers don't work for them.

I'm not sure what all the positive reviews see in this game because to me this game is just poorly designed for the most part. While the game has a gorgeous art style and solid voice acting, that's all it really has going for it. In short, this game is basically a platformer where you also have guns and use those to deal with enemies. The platforming can be kind of awkward because your double jump also has this mini dash as part of it meant to get you through obstacles or attacks, but it can be annoying when you just wanna jump directly above you. In this context, everything up to and including the first boss fight I would say is genuinely good, then the lead up to the second boss is a bit clunky because you're riding this bird in autoscroller screens but you can't really move backwards at all, but even that's manageable enough. The game really starts to deteriorate once you get to the lead up to the third boss though. The level design just starts to rely on frustrating decisions like putting guys offscreen that can shoot you from offscreen even though you can't even see them or forcing you to fight loads of enemies in extremely cramped spaces while barely any of them drop health. The third boss is especially egregious because it's hurling these blobs at you that can randomly spawn enemies when they land or you shoot them, so you can either have an attempt that feels way easier because you got barely enemy spawns or an attempt that just feels ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ because the game decided it's gonna spawn like four enemies that all attack you by charging at you in melee, in a cramped ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ arena where the floor is basically a conveyor sending you back that occasionally has spikes on it and the boss at the front who can lunge forward. Oh yeah, the back wall in this arena also has spikes on it, which granted do kill the enemies the boss spawns but can just as easily kill you. I still managed to beat that boss on hard mode, but even when I lowered the difficulty afterwards thinking to myself maybe I'm just ass, the game still didn't feel any more fun to play. The instance that made me turn the difficulty down is this boat ride autoscroller in the fourth boss's level where enemies are constantly spawning, but the camera is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ zoomed out I can barely tell what's happening half the time all the while you die in four hits on hard mode and basically none of these enemies are dropping health. There's also a ton of these samurai ghost enemies in the area after the autoscroller that I still don't really understand the intention behind in terms of fighting them as the player. Your options seemed to be a) use one of your weapon's "charge shots", which takes a limited resource b) use dynamite which uses the same limited resource c) get up close with the shotgun which almost guarantees they're gonna charge you and get a hit in d) randomly be able to land a normal shot with your pistol or rifle instead of them blocking the shot? Maybe you have to shoot them from the back with normal shots but if so that's pretty damn difficult to do. Even with all this said I actually was turning around a bit on the game when I got to the fourth boss because I thought it was a pretty fair well designed fight, but then it turns out there's a second part (with a checkpoint granted) where the boss disguises himself as a samurai ghost. You have to figure out which ghost is actually the boss, avoid aggroing any of the actual ghosts, and then repeat this multiple times because once you find the boss and get your chance to damage, he'll disguise himself again. I'm also not really sure what the logic is to finding the boss among all the ghosts. There is a pair of circles in the bottom right that blink which I assume is meant to show you the boss's view of you, but even with that I don't really feel like it helped me figure out where the boss really was. This is where I just tapped out because I couldn't be bothered to keep up with this game's frankly infuriating design. Overall this game just feels like it's relying on its aesthetic and the fact that it has an easy difficulty to get people to ignore its multiple glaring flaws, from poor level design to annoying enemies and boss fights to awkward platforming due to cheap enemy placement. If you REALLY feel like you HAVE to play this game, get it on sale, but even then I wouldn't recommend it.

This game looks incredible and it has some gimmicks that are actually fun, but it gets ruined by what I feel is bad pacing and bad level design. The game feels like it wants to be longer to fully develop some ideas and utilize previous gimmicks, but it just ends up feeling rushed at some parts and slow in others. When its not having those issues its instead makes you feel lost. For instance, it will want me to jump on a platform, but all I'll see is an object that appears to be floating in the background. The entire time while playing, I was trying to give the game the benefit of the doubt the entire time, but I finish the game feeling like something is missing.

Rose & Locket в моих глазах сразу выглядела как то, что непременно надо проходить. От одного трейлера я словила вайбосик любимого Darksiders (визуальный стиль и тема грехов), а по визуалу напомнило West of Dead. Ну комиксы и ковбойская тема мне всегда нравились в играх Я закрыла первую главу, завалила Гнева и сижу в полном восторге. Это тот редкий случай, когда мне понравилось всё: и геймплей, и музыка и визуал. Ощущение, будто ты попал внутрь ожившего, очень стильного и мрачного комикса про Дикий Запад. Цветовая гамма, рисовка, анимации - эстетика запредельная. Настолько красиво, что хочется останавливаться и разглядывать каждый кадр (чем я, разумется, не занималась в силу торопливого характера) По геймплею это очень необычный гибрид. Тут вам и динамичный экшен, и платформер, и элементы симулятора ходьбы, когда игра хочет рассказать историю. Но не думайте, что это легкая прогулка ради красивых картинок. Игра весьма сложная даже на среднем уровне. Механика завязана на таймингах, рывках и точной стрельбе, так что расслабиться не получится вообще. На боссе первой главы (том самом Гневе) мне пришлось включить максимальную концентрацию, чтобы не улететь на тот свет. Каждая ошибка наказывается моментально. Как перфекционист, который любит выбивать 100% ачивок, я уже предвкушаю, как буду тут страдать на пути к идеальной игре. Поскольку я играла в предрелизную версию, ачивок чего-то я не увидела, может добавят позже. Но сложность здесь честная, она не бесит, а наоборот — зажигает азарт. Пока это один из самых стильных и драйвовых проектов, что я видела за последнее время. Если любите крутой визуал, шотганы и хардкор , но при этом трогательную историю - берите, игра шикарная, несмотря на кусачий ценник. А я пошла дальше раздавать люлей местным грехам, на очереди моя (и ваша) любима Лень. Ну и уже был намек, что Глуттони тоже неподалёку...

This game looks fantastic! The first few minutes already tell me that this very likely could be a great game with it's gorgeous artstyle and also the otherwise high-grade presentation values. [Update] They listened to my complaints - key rebinding is on the way! Switching my review to positive because of that, but will leave the rest of it as it was for context. //Sadly it's missing basic functionality. There is no key rebinding for keyboard and mouse. This is NOT some nice to have accessibility stuff for convenience - it's basic functionality for many gamers. There are left handed or disabled people, those with different keyboard layouts like AZERTY or those conditioned to a certain layout through decades of muscle memory - many of them cannot play a game without key rebinding. I'd be happy to switch it to positive if the game could be improved.

Absolutely loved this game, played it from start to finish in one go, which I don't usually do. But it was amazing. The gameplay was difficult, but I could probably sum that up into get good. The story is amazing, I love the soundtrack, the gameplay is fun and self explanatory, I love all the bosses. The voice acting is amazing. Though listening to the death sound got old kind of quickly. Don't even get me started on the graphics. It's beautiful in it's own way. Amazing game, will be adding to the games I play more than once.

Amazing visual style, solid gameplay loop and an interesting story packaged together to create a truly breathtaking and unique experience. Gonna have a lot of fun collecting all the lore cards!

Didn't know what to expect but this game absolutely delivers. Samurai Jack vibes meet Wild West gunslinging and it works perfectly. Combat feels slick and satisfying once it clicks, and the Underwest setting is genuinely cool. Two person studio, six years in the making — and it shows. Worth every cent.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☑ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☑ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☑ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10

Stylish as hell. Feels like playing through a gritty, supernatural comic book with smooth run-and-gun combat and tight controls. The western-underworld setting is a great hook, and the presentation is unmatched. Runs great on the Ally—perfect handheld game.