Xanthiom 2

Very fun with a lot of different weapon combinations. A few too many upgrades to the point that you sometimes forget that you had something but overall a very enjoyable experience. I 100% the game in about 6 hours playtime and am about to go into the remake of Xanthiom Zero that is also included.

It's fun, the weapon customization system feels like they just through some things at the wall and let you just have fun with it, because it's very, very unbalanced, but also there aren't a lot of places for that to manifest outside of bosses, so it both feels like too much and also unobtrusive, but also like you want more despite knowing it's ridiculously broken. The game doesn't seem to have a sequence to break, there might be an intended one, but it does feel like the levels are designed that you can do them earlier with specific gear. Feels like could have benefitted from more bosses, and maybe more use of certain mechanics, but it all comes together feeling pretty decent without too much frustration. No mechanics are overused, there are very few frustrating skill checks, it just feels fine to good all around. Relatively short (100% in ~4-5 hours) and it exists in that valley of both not having overstayed its welcome but could have been a few hours longer. Also, comes with a remake(?) version of X0 (X1?), which is cool, and both games have replay modifiers that include modifiers (including randomizer) that give reasonable built in replay if you want. One review mentions something about "getting stuck" and being forced to restart, and I'm not sure what specifically they would be referring to, but I ran into one case of "stuck in what turned out to be a tutorial room" and had to shut down the game and restart, but it appears that it saved my progress despite restarting, so it feels like saving only sets your respawn point, picking up items (and dying) might checkpoint your progress, so it's pretty generous in that. Also might have some speedrunning implications.