Sooo, I'm a bit of a fan of a previous Kosmic91's game - Moon Rhapsody. I truly think that game is one of the best NSFW games to ever exist. So when developer just abandoned it and started working on a new project I felt rather sad and a bit betrayed.
(so this review is heavily biased)
This game is awful to the bones!
Let's start with the
levels. There are only three: two of them are in the city and one - in the "sewers". City levels are very-very unimaginative. Sewers are slightly better(at the cost of annoyance) aaand they are also the color of
dull gray! There is one thing that is common though and that's the lack of any exploration value. There are, in fact, reasons to return to previous levels with new equipment, but there are only one-two secret spots and they are
Not worth it. Also, you
Have to find such a spot to beat the game in its current state, which got me stuck for a while. If there is one redeeming quality of level design, that would be the fact that you can't see the blocks, the level was(or wasn't) copy-pasted with.
Next,
gameplay. So, on city levels you run from point A to point B, killing enemies in between. In sewers it's more like going from point A to C to B with more annoyance and enemies. Oh yeah,
enemies are awful too! There are:
1) Bats that do nothing(but I still love them).
2) Ghouls that can pose a bit of a challenge at the beginning until you get a baseball bat in 5 minutes. Btw, baseball bat allowed me to have the most fun in this game by absolutely ICBM-launching bats to the closest wall(sorry, bats)
3) Random puppets throwing scythes at you.
4) Ghosts that are just bats that do damage and have more HP.
5) Demons, which will absolutely ruin your day. They are not hard, by the time you meet them, you already have magic that can two-shot them. The problem is that they are attacking the moment they see you and are placed in such locations that prevent you from seeing them before they see you. You
WILL take damage from them(and they do a lot of it). But the worst part is that they can instakill you by grabbing if you are naked.
6) Ghost-ladies. They are absolutely the worst. They have two states: corporeal, in which you can attack them and they usually don't attack; noncorporeal, in which they are invisible and they are literally *teleports behind you*, "nothing personal, kid". After dying three times from her I used cheats for the remainder of the game(so not for long). Also, they seem to be sentient and are saying something, but it's just squigly lines.
7) Two bosses, but they're boring.
So, how are you fighting them? At first, you actually have to think about that. Even with the aforementioned baseball bat you can still get hit\grabbed. Then you get magic and just run through the entire game. Ah yes, magic. It is implemented as a weapon. You can only have two weapons at the same time. Yet you need different magic for different situations. See the problem? And don't forget that the "more interesting" way to play through the use of baseball bat and katana also uses up a slot. After getting the katana I was only able to use it for 10 minutes until I was forced to switch to two magic types. I hate it!
Graphics.
While levels and backgrounds are, in fact, fine, the sprites in this game are simply awful. The fact that enemies have two-three sprites is alright, whatever(albeit these sprites are still devoid of any character)
But having main character upclose and personal in this type of game with less than 50 sprites is a literal crime. Yes, the use of "afterimage" is cool and gives it some character, but with so little sprites it's more like a lazy workaround than a design choice. And the sprites themselves! Ignoring the fact that they seem slightly out of place, they are just so boring yet again! Even the "funny" parts are just so dumb-melony that there is literally no incentive to look at your character.
And finally,
animations. I... actually don't know what to say about them. I want to compare to the first game(in there they were at least stylish) and say that they are bad, but... I guess they are alright. They are not made to be fapped upon(as there is no gallery), so for their purpose they are, once again, alright. Still, most of these platformer games tend to have animations 10 times better, so it's not a plus.
In
conclusion, I really don't get it. If that was the developer's first game, I would be understanding, cause NOTHING in this game seems to be working fine. But it's his second, and it's, forget my bias, maybe you will like these sprites, maybe you will like these animations, but you will not like these levels and gameplay. It is actually worse than his first one!
Post scriptum, in a way, this game is trying to be both the runner-platformer and metroidvania. These genres are really not working great together, so I wish it just stuck with one.
