While the art style is great and I like the direction the beta is taking with it being more of an open world puzzle, I gotta give it 2 out of 5 when I was leaning 3 initially. It needs a lot more polish and a better start to the game because you can't really fight anything for a while until you eventually get the crowbar but even then you might not realize that you can actually swing the crowbar.
I'm just gonna get this out of the way and immediately say the reason this is a 2 for me. This game is not built for active combat and precise platforming, two things featured in this beta at some point. There are segments where you have to jump over death pits that take away health when you fail them and when you first find them its a simple set distance that can easily be jumped over with a normal walk and jump. Later on you really get a feel for how bad it is when you run into sections where you have to make very precise diagonal jumps while also sprinting and it isnt just hold W and D at the same time, its like you gotta jump to one specific direction and make very careful adjustments and then pull back because you can and will overshoot a jump easily. With only 3 hp to your name these sections are the fucking worst parts about this game. This game should never have any majorly difficult platforming sections, theres just no way to make them any good with the fixed camera angle at a 2.5d perspective.
As for the combat it's very plain and straight forward. Swing your crowbar and hit things as they get close to you. For now theres just a simple enemy that walks at you and takes a swing. Most of the time you just stand still and can mash the attack key and kill mobs in like 2-5 hits. However there are times when the AI breaks and they stand completely still and I've had moments where they take a swing, get hit and knocked back, and then walk forward still in the middle of their attack animation which has now been frozen so they're sliding towards me with an active attack box that hits me the moment they're in range. Again, with only 3 hp though you're immediately in the danger zone when you get hit like this because you either only have one more hit or you'll die on the next one. The boss fight itself is simple but the whole back and forth tennis match you have boils down to mashing the attack button because theres no way you can actually gauge how far the projectile is from you when its coming from the background to the foreground and you cant line it up with a camera angle that is left to right. Its not impossible, just annoying and kinda badly planned.
I do like the idea of running around the facility and solving puzzles one at a time at your own pace. Its nice to be able to run out, collect tapes, get a little bit further, and then go back home and heal up.
Prices at the store are way too fucking expensive though. At first you only get 1 tape per box you find but with the price of everything at 300 you're undoubtedly going to have to grind a lot if you want those upgrades. After you get the crowbar you can attack the toolboxes for a +5 tapes each and the mobs will drop +2 but its still a lot of grinding.
Honestly if they just remove precision platforming as a whole from this game it would be so much better. Jumping in this game is so bad in general because you can't even get on top of anything with the default jump height, it's literally there for bad platforming design. There's one section I have in mind in the underground section where the "easy" path is like 30 some odd jumps on larger platforms at weird angles or like 10 jumps on really small platforms that are spaced out just enough that you have to sprint jump but will absolutely overshoot it every time if you don't pull back. Fall once and you restart from the very beginning with your only way forward being that you have no choice but to slam your head against the wall and try to get a singular success.
