There’s no review on the store for this game yet seemingly so I figured I’d give it a try. Found this game through YouTube, and I thought hey this looks cool, wish listed and bought it. I love samurai stuff and I like a good parry.
There are some positives here.
+ When you parry, the noise is satisfying. I like it.
+ The visuals are mostly okay, but some of it is very pretty. The pixel art has nice attention to detail and I love the japan vibe. The lighting and boss attacks both stand out visually. I appreciate that.
+ Boss rushing as a samurai being the entire game is an idea you won’t see too often. In general, I do feel like a cool guy.
But I do have grievances and thought it might be helpful to try and list things that bothered me. Again, a lot of this is my opinion, and I could be in the wrong.
- In Key Bindings, changing something to right shift is overridden by the dash, which is also Shift. So, if I want attack to be Right Shift, it can’t be done.
- There's a weird stop after the dash in mid-air. That is probably intended but I would say it doesn’t feel good to control. It might be better if your momentum is carried, and you keep going forward as you descend, like Mega Man X or something.
- There's some missing punctuation and a few spelling errors, in the text when you meet a boss. Would make the dialogue better to correct that.
- I would love to be able to immediately restart after dying and not walk back into the door. It intrudes on the pacing for me, but I guess it is supposed to be a punishment to die.
- You can’t cancel your attack with a parry or a dash, so you must commit when you attack and only attack when the enemy has an opening, of which there are few as bosses are relentless.
- The parrying is weird. I’m not sure if there’s a startup lag or not. Meaning you prepare it before being hit as opposed to something like DMC where it's pretty much immediate.
- Unless I'm wrong and just suck but pressing parry RIGHT before getting hit seems to be too late. It’s very specific timing. It personally irritates me, but again, it may just be designed like that.
- However, I’m pretty certain that there’s a buffer between hitting and parrying. I’ve attacked enemies and pressed right button before the animation finishes, and ronin has just stood there. In fast paced games like this, having to constantly press the right button as soon as the animation finishes, doesn’t feel good to me.
- Parrying needs to be done in front of the enemy and you can’t move when parrying. Maybe this should be changed so you can turn around after pressing right click.
- I still have not actually beaten a boss so my opinion may hold less weight but the big thing I’ve noticed that you don’t deal much damage. I decided to just parry and wait for the special attack. I did that, and it was really disappointing to see that the thunder attack basically has as much damage as 3-4 slashes.
- So, it’s a little too harsh in every aspect. I think if you’re making a game where it’s high risk, but high reward, you should make the player also feel powerful so that when you do finally hit a boss, it’s that much more impactful. I play a lot of difficult games so I’m not saying it should be dumbed down, just made more fair. As it doesn’t feel great when the boss has 3 times your health and hits twice as hard as you. It will surely be rewarding when you do win, but that’s because it took so long.
This game is clearly designed for a specific audience, and I think it’s cool, for sure.
Probably not for me, but the fact that I can recommend it says you should at least try it out.
Low entry fee, so you have nothing to lose. Games like this can only improve when they get more and more feedback, so give it a chance.
Hell, I’ll probably change this review if the game gets updated.
EDIT: So, this game DID get updated, and I did come back to the game months later and I do have some things to say. The dev did change the damage values and health values, which is really good. I do appreciate that.
I maintain the visuals are still great. They're easily my favourite thing in the game.
But after just finally beating the game and the final boss, this game is kind of just poorly designed in areas. I have nitpicks here and there but there's moments where i can accept the death is my fault and other times when the boss is to blame.
It's just so cheap. It's just so hard to tell what the enemy is doing either because of poor choreographed attacks, or because the ai is just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ random. then when they get close it's even worse.
The updates helped but missing a super because it's got horrible range and because the enemies randomly teleport around the map is infuriating. That crap takes 10 years to charge with parries because it'll run out of meter far too quickly.
If you want something that scratches the Sekiro itch and don't mind BS or a real challenge, definitely get the game. This isn't unity slop or anything like that, just lacks polish in areas.
