I can only recommend this to people who are smitten with the art style and the Eliot/Fraser allusions and who also loved the stiffness of the early Castlevanias so much that you'd play a game that chose to impose that limitation on itself.

For me at least, a Metroidvania comes down to rhythm, and this does not leave room for rhythm. Combat is largely a jumping straight up in the air, seeing if an enemy enters the range of your sword, maybe scoring a hit, then repositioning and jumping straight up in the air. An initial frustration with the tiny hit area of your starting weapon gives way to boredom once you learn the patterns of the three or four enemy types (in the opening stages), at which point everything becomes a slog.

A perfect example: There is this terrifying, gigantic fire-breathing zombie dog that is maybe seven or eight times the size of your character. You walk up to and go "oh man, I am gonna get wrecked by that." After one such encounter, you will have discovered the completely foolproof strategy for defeating it, which is to stand perfectly still and mash the stab button in order to stun lock it until you hit five times. (This does not take precise timing, and because of invincibility frames, this takes a solid four or five seconds. That sounds like a ridiculous complaint, but the time spent standing there just ruins any sense of fluidity or rhythm.)

It's one thing to ask you to grind through enemies that are more annoying than challenging, but there doesn't seem to be any reason behind the grind. There's no experience or money or anything like that. The only thing that enemies drop is food that restores HP that you lost to other enemies you didn't have any reason to fight. They're just an impediment, which is so much worst in an exploration-heavy game that has you clearing the same screens several times in order to make progress.

Oh and the music that plays through the opening areas is just awful and repetitive and somehow both droning and intrusive, yet it goes on forever without variation.

Again, gorgeous game. Lots of beautiful grace notes (there's a brief character moment in the cathedral that isn't to be missed), and maybe for you there's an 8-bit nostalgia factor. I wish I wanted to finish this.

I can only recommend this to people who are smitten with the art style and the Eliot/Fraser allusions and who also loved the stiffness of the early Castlevanias so much that you'd play a game that chose to impose that limitation on itself. For me at least, a Metroidvania comes down to rhythm, and this does not leave room for rhythm. Combat is largely a jumping straight up in the air, seeing if an enemy enters the range of your sword, maybe scoring a hit, then repositioning and jumping straight up in the air. An initial frustration with the tiny hit area of your starting weapon gives way to boredom once you learn the patterns of the three or four enemy types (in the opening stages), at which point everything becomes a slog. A perfect example: There is this terrifying, gigantic fire-breathing zombie dog that is maybe seven or eight times the size of your character. You walk up to and go "oh man, I am gonna get wrecked by that." After one such encounter, you will have discovered the completely foolproof strategy for defeating it, which is to stand perfectly still and mash the stab button in order to stun lock it until you hit five times. (This does not take precise timing, and because of invincibility frames, this takes a solid four or five seconds. That sounds like a ridiculous complaint, but the time spent standing there just ruins any sense of fluidity or rhythm.) It's one thing to ask you to grind through enemies that are more annoying than challenging, but there doesn't seem to be any reason behind the grind. There's no experience or money or anything like that. The only thing that enemies drop is food that restores HP that you lost to other enemies you didn't have any reason to fight. They're just an impediment, which is so much worst in an exploration-heavy game that has you clearing the same screens several times in order to make progress. Oh and the music that plays through the opening areas is just awful and repetitive and somehow both droning and intrusive, yet it goes on forever without variation. Again, gorgeous game. Lots of beautiful grace notes (there's a brief character moment in the cathedral that isn't to be missed), and maybe for you there's an 8-bit nostalgia factor. I wish I wanted to finish this.