First of all, I love this game. My friend and I had a blast playing through this. Even so, this is objectively a bad game. Let's start with the asking price: It's daylight robbery, especially in Europe, even though from what I've heard you get two copies of the game (I got mine for free). The Co-Op is obligatory, so there's no way to play this alone (unless you have very limber feet..).

The controls feel like a swamp; jumps are floaty and attacks feel neither satisfactory nor fluid; there is a lot of animation lag , so even if you want to quickly jump away after attacking you can`t.

The sound design is a mixed bag. There are only a hand full (literally; I counted less than five) different tunes, though I really like the first exploration theme and the boss theme. On the other hand there is this piano tune every time you hit the enemy which, while distinctive enough to tell you if you've done damage, is not to everybody's liking, though I didn't mind.

The game, however, is NOT a Metroid-Vania. There is little to no exploration; you progress through the game in a mostly linear fashion from room to room, complete with a world map, even though you can backtrack once or twice to get optional objectives. There is no real level system either; You do have an experience bar which fills from killing enemies, but all you get upon leveling up is extra lifes. You restart the current room as long as you have extra lifes; if you don't you are thrown back to the last save point. However, there is a huge problem with this: When you save your game you also save your current number of lifes, which means that if you go game over you respawn with the same number of lifes you saved your game. Even worse, due to a bug if you die in the same room the save point is in you respawn at the save point and immediately save after. What this does mean if you go game over in a save room you respawn with ZERO extra lives, no matter how many you had when you first touched the save point, since your lives are always decreased by one.

Speaking of bugs, this game is riddled with it. Platforms don't work for one player while playing over the internet, hit boxes of fireballs, and spikes are seemingly arbitrary, which is especially bad with spinning platforms which sometimes decide to kill you outright even though you only touched the side without spikes. Even worse, sometimes when you die your partner dies immediately after even though he was in a safe spot, which means you lose two lifes even though you only died once. I even got the local co-op trophy despite only playing online...

The voice acting in this game is fair, and I found myself really getting interested in the story. There is a branching story system which, while really simply, is pretty engaging: You chose your own backstory for the game by your dialogue choices: The princess is either your sister or your betrothed, though most of this is fluff. If you can't get engaged in the dialogues this game won't be for you. I found the characters to be interesting enough to continue, though most of your choices don't matter much - though I'm really curious if you could have saved XXXXX by not mentioning her to YYYYY... You and your playing partner make choices for your characters, and at the very end of the game there is a pretty big choice which I won't spoil.

Sadly, though, you can not continue the game with a different partner when you're playing online - at least I didn't find a way to.

Again, most of you won't like this game, this is why I think you will be better off with not playing it. For myself, I will continue, even though I hope the very buggy last boss battle will be patched soon so my buddy and I can finish soon...

First of all, I love this game. My friend and I had a blast playing through this. Even so, this is objectively a bad game. Let's start with the asking price: It's daylight robbery, especially in Europe, even though from what I've heard you get two copies of the game (I got mine for free). The Co-Op is obligatory, so there's no way to play this alone (unless you have very limber feet..). The controls feel like a swamp; jumps are floaty and attacks feel neither satisfactory nor fluid; there is a lot of animation lag , so even if you want to quickly jump away after attacking you can`t. The sound design is a mixed bag. There are only a hand full (literally; I counted less than five) different tunes, though I really like the first exploration theme and the boss theme. On the other hand there is this piano tune every time you hit the enemy which, while distinctive enough to tell you if you've done damage, is not to everybody's liking, though I didn't mind. The game, however, is NOT a Metroid-Vania. There is little to no exploration; you progress through the game in a mostly linear fashion from room to room, complete with a world map, even though you can backtrack once or twice to get optional objectives. There is no real level system either; You do have an experience bar which fills from killing enemies, but all you get upon leveling up is extra lifes. You restart the current room as long as you have extra lifes; if you don't you are thrown back to the last save point. However, there is a huge problem with this: When you save your game you also save your current number of lifes, which means that if you go game over you respawn with the same number of lifes you saved your game. Even worse, due to a bug if you die in the same room the save point is in you respawn at the save point and immediately save after. What this does mean if you go game over in a save room you respawn with ZERO extra lives, no matter how many you had when you first touched the save point, since your lives are always decreased by one. Speaking of bugs, this game is riddled with it. Platforms don't work for one player while playing over the internet, hit boxes of fireballs, and spikes are seemingly arbitrary, which is especially bad with spinning platforms which sometimes decide to kill you outright even though you only touched the side without spikes. Even worse, sometimes when you die your partner dies immediately after even though he was in a safe spot, which means you lose two lifes even though you only died once. I even got the local co-op trophy despite only playing online... The voice acting in this game is fair, and I found myself really getting interested in the story. There is a branching story system which, while really simply, is pretty engaging: You chose your own backstory for the game by your dialogue choices: The princess is either your sister or your betrothed, though most of this is fluff. If you can't get engaged in the dialogues this game won't be for you. I found the characters to be interesting enough to continue, though most of your choices don't matter much - though I'm really curious if you could have saved XXXXX by not mentioning her to YYYYY... You and your playing partner make choices for your characters, and at the very end of the game there is a pretty big choice which I won't spoil. Sadly, though, you can not continue the game with a different partner when you're playing online - at least I didn't find a way to. Again, most of you won't like this game, this is why I think you will be better off with not playing it. For myself, I will continue, even though I hope the very buggy last boss battle will be patched soon so my buddy and I can finish soon...