You'd probably be confused why I put so much time into a game like this and gave it a not recommended. This is because it's such a weirdly interesting game in its flaws that I kept wanting to keep going. If it was just bad I would've given up but it's interestingly bad and even fun some time. It was this back and forth I had from this game is really interesting to this game kinda sucks, but never really in between?
Let's start with what I like. The cosmetics are fun, a little grindy to get a lot of them but they're neat and look nice. I think that when the game gives you some space to breath, it often comes up with some fun levels. There was a reason I kept coming back and it ultimately was because of the levels. I also do think levels about climbing along the fences and walls are actually interesting and fairly unique.
And then there's the bad. The first, and easily worst aspect of the game, are the weirdly floaty and slippery controls. Your character will just sail across and keep any momentum. Not inherently bad but man just tapping a direction in the air could launch you right into a hazard. Which is an issue cause ultimately this game wants to be a precision platformer. Sometimes? It actually is odd cause levels feel really disconnected where sometimes they want to to be way more accurate than you can actually be, but other times it feels like the level is pretty fair in what it wants you to execute. I also had some issues with wall jumps. When you can wall cling it wasn't too bad, but before that there is a weird delay from touching a wall to actually being able to jump off it.
While the levels are often fine, something that almost never felt good was the collectibles. So many are just about figuring out which part of the wall is fake. It was a ton of trial and error and really just not fun. Disappointingly a lot of collectibles not about finding a random part of the wall you can go through are just about redoing sections of the level. There are a handful of actually fun ones to get but I think in the like 120 levels I did, I remember maybe like 10 that were neat.
And there are some things that aren't bad necessarily, but just really weird. You can climb up ledges, but it wasn't consistent. You hold the trigger to cling to walls, but only tap/untap it to cling to fences. The game has random npcs to talk to, without any rhyme or reason? There are also blocks that break, but often very difficult to tell when they would. The rocket blocks are actually really bad about this since you don't get both jumps if it broke on you, I died a lot due to this.
During my time I took notes of some stages and how it ended up changing my feelings on the game. World 2 is when I started liking the game, then flipped at world three where it just randomly added troll mechanics, World 5 is by far my favorite and I almost wish the game was more like it the whole time. World 6 just got frustrating. I gave up at world 7 cause I realized I just didn't actually want to play the game anymore (it's a bonus world so that's fine). But there is one level in world 7 that sums up a lot of my thoughts on the game.
7-32 is one of the most difficult levels I came across. You ride the rockets that have no good indicator of when to jump off and it can lead to annoying deaths. You need to make a lot of weird corner jumps, except a lot of times you bonk off the corners of a block and it kills your momentum. One part makes you drop down a wall to regrab the other side, but despite my horizontal movement being haled implying I hit the wall, I don't get to regrab for some reason. And later I learned despite my head being on the fence, that's not good enough to grab it either. I gave up at the next section when I needed to perfectly fall between two lasers, and man the controls are just not tight enough to do that (again, you fling on any direction press, especially in the air). But the funniest part, you literally don't have to do the level. The end and collectable are just easily accessible at the start. It's seemingly just a random challenge, but it being optional leads to weird decisions like having no checkpoint after segments that really could've used them. I stopped wondering why I even am doing this challenge for something that is so pointless. But it dawned on me... That's this whole game. I kept pushing despite everything and for no real reason. Why was I playing it when I didn't get anything out of it at that point. So I stopped.
This is a baffling game. I think it wants to be everything (precision platformer, troll rage game, quirky npcs, hard as hell, floaty as hell) but it never truly succeeds at any of them. It is too long, very all over the place with difficulty and level designs, yet by doing so much I couldn't stop myself from playing it.
Despite not recommending it, maybe you would get something out of it. Maybe it grabs you how it did me, but you land on the other side of the coin. But regardless, don't 100% it is my biggest advice. I probably could've beaten it in like 4 hours rather than the 17 it took me.
