It's a very nice Serious Sam spin-off, but it needs some playtime (4h+) to fully blossom with the last difficulty.
The first difficulty is very mild, very easy. The second one is normal, with some more enemies but still — relatively easy once you unlock some new weapons.
Now, the third one is pretty much HORDES of enemies swarming at you from everywhere, the legit Serious Sam experience, as much as a roguelite can offer. In small spaces it becomes cramped, but not too much, and in big spaces, there's no space to walk — it's all enemies of different kinds around you. Power-ups become INCREASINGLY more interesting too, with dual wielding, stacking ultimates, some other smaller stuff — it becomes a lot more fun!
The highest difficulty positive experience is somewhat diluted by an obligatory choice of an anomaly bane — many of them can ruin the whole fun in an instance by making the game too hard to play. I think it should be optional, there are enough enemies to make the life hard without this bs.
There are definitely balance issues here and there, with some weapons and ultimates clearly being better than others. For example, a magic book requires a lot of catalysts spent to get it, yet its performance is abysmal, it's easily the worst weapon in the whole game — its magic doesn't even track enemies, it just fires straight with awful speed, awful damage! It felt... VERY dissapointing. The cannon also feels like it's not worth it, it's too slow and the damage doesn't feel high enough for that rate of fire — overheating for a very long time in just 3 shots, each lands around 500 dmg. A sniper rifle, at the same time, is easily one of the best investments — you can shoot through multiple enemies right away, with a good DPS too! And then, Alien Sam can dismantle a boss in 2-3 seconds from 100% to 0% HP with his upgraded quad wielding.
Some power-ups are... underwhelming in comparison to others. But at least with them it's part of the "random" nature of the game, whilst the guns? The ultimates? Could have been balanced better than that, but still, it's not like it's too bad. Just "normal", I guess. It's not good, but not bad.
Bugs exist, but they were pretty rare. One or two enemies can get stuck, but also rarely. The annoying obligatory bane anomaly on the highest difficulty should have been optional — and the game would have been very good, despite its cons. Still, it IS good even now, in its current state.
And they DID improve the game since the beta: for example, now a golem boss can spawn smaller golems (yet for some reason, it doesn't always spawn them), also you can pretty often find weapons you haven't bought yet, in the wooden chests.
I had reasonable hopes for this game, and they were pretty much fulfilled. I find it idiotic that many players expected an original Serious Sam experience from a spin-off — spin-offs that were historically different from the main games. These guys infested the reviews, and it's a pity that a good game got bombed just like that, out of unrequited "nostalgia" — a nostalgia that was never promised to them. For now, I hope the game won't become abandoned because of this mass hysteria.
