When I laid my eyes upon The Tarnishing of Juxtia, I knew I had to try it out; I adored its colourful, pixelated visuals, as well as its promise of delivering a 2D action RPG with dark-ish fantasy themes. As I fancy such settings, I was keen to explore and immerse myself in this new universe. Sadly, the only tarnishing that happened was the one on my hard drive, as apart from the charming presentation, the execution of other aspects is subpar, mediocre at best sometimes.

While it tries to provide a lengthy, slightly interconnected map – that is undoubtedly varied with its beautiful locations and dangerous enemy types, which is a big plus in my eyes – its respective levels still feel empty—because they are. Simply put, there is not much to find, as carefully placed chests align with your progress, and so-called secrets almost scream in your face. At times, there are even just large, vacant rooms that rather bloat the map, unnecessarily increasing the travelling distance.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856674424
Not even some lore pieces in the form of diaries or other items are present—there is nothing. That tremendously hurts the narration, which is already vague albeit understandable due to its simpleness. Basically, it is just another poor attempt at FromSoftware’s approach without understanding why it is successful in what it does. Here, you only get a few vague sentences, mostly related to your end goal, and that is about it; environmental storytelling? Forget about that! Some proper background of bosses, locations or other characters is barely present, making them just set pieces you interact with before progressing further. That is a shame, as it deserved more love and care due to its intriguing presentation.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856673462
Due to that, it feels as if you only moved forward to kill the next “big bad thing“, which could be enough if the gameplay had a satisfying, enjoyable loop, but that is not the case. In the first few hours, the enemies you meet are pretty uninteresting to fight with; however, you will face various war machines or spellcasters later on that spice it up a bit. On the other hand, most of the bosses look great and have a decent moveset, making a solid first impression.

Unfortunately, the combat system blows out all these little lights of hope. It is a simplistic one, so I am not sure why it is even described as innovative on the Store Page, as having light attacks, rolling around and casting a spell or two is not exactly innovative nor revolutionary in my eyes. Anyway, my main gripe is that it does not allow you to cancel your actions, which is a weird design decision, especially since enemies become much faster in the second part of your journey. Thus, if you manage to get into a safe distance and start healing yourself, yet the enemy suddenly jumps to your position, you are gonna die, and there is nothing you can do about it; the same applies to attacks, casting spells, and so on…

Such a design is annoying and unnecessarily frustrating. Yet, that is not all! The rolls are clunky, without any logic, as sometimes they work perfectly, but the next time you get slapped, adding to the desperation.

Another issue lies with heavy weapons; while there are lots of those, using them puts you at a disadvantage, especially during the second part of the game. Like, I personally adore heavy double-handed swords, so I naturally went upgrading those, yet their moveset turned out to be way too slow when compared to most of the foes. Whereas with faster weapons, I managed to obliterate even some bosses within a few seconds, which was unpleasantly surprising. I mean, it is kinda hilarious, but what is the point of having varied weaponry when it is so unbalanced?

One mechanic I liked is the abilities you gain from defeated bosses, as those allow you to use some of their attack types, at least partially. Yet, most of them seemed useless… again. I only found a use for summoning spam of skeletons, who dealt decent damage to my foes or using a shield that grants you invincibility; keep in mind that you can have only one at a time. That ruins any experimentation, as I always returned to these two.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856675477
Thus, most of the time, I suffered through prolonged encounters until I realised that I should not use most of the items and only wield the broken ones to actually start progressing swiftly. Marvellous. That is not a properly designed difficulty but rather an unbalanced, poorly thought-out mess. Oh, and all the boss-related cutscenes are unskippable. And yes, you have to watch them every single time; most of those do not even show anything, as you just witness a monster standing up and taking its weapon… truly a pinnacle of this subgenre.

So… yeah, I cannot really praise anything apart from its audiovisual presentation, which is truly charming. Sadly, I expect more from video games, especially when they claim to focus on gameplay. Can I recommend The Tarnishing of Juxtia even on sale? No, as its intriguing premise is quickly buried by an almost non-existent narrative, unbalanced combat system and poor exploration elements. Avoid it.

PC Specs and Performance

I played it with an i5 8300H, GTX 1060 6GB, and 16GB RAM, at high settings, at 50-60 frames per second, at 1920x1080 resolution. The frame drops were rare and I would not notice them without the Steam overlay showing them to me, so the optimization is sweet. Unsurprisingly, given the game’s audiovisuals.

Acknowledgement

This game was provided for review purposes by the developers. Thank you!

Curator link

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Overall 5/10. I'd like to give a positive review because the art direction has a lot of heart, but I just can't. Having played for what feels like half of the game, I feel like it's just okay. It's got decent combat mechanics that hit hard but are very clunky and unresponsive. There are no movement powers to really speak of minus a relic based dash that is worse that your dodge roll. Basically the game feels too clunky for the genre. In addition this isn't a metroidvania type game at all. It is extremely linear, and there is no real reason to back track because of new abilities. Basically the abilities you have at the beginning of the game, are the same ones you have later in the game with pumped up numbers. Nothing gets easier, nothing gets harder it just stays the same. Sideways thumb. Just a meh. Go play Ender Lillies instead.

The Tarnishing of Juxtia is a solid souls-like metroidvania, much like its modern competitors like Blasphemous, Salt and Sanctuary, etc. - with a focus on slower paced "attack and dodge" style combat, rather than the blistering "charge through everything" combat you find in more traditional metroidvanias.

Pros -
- Excellent pixel art style, with distinct areas and creature designs.
- gameplay is a nice balance of reflex-oriented and steady paced.
- More story than similar games of its type, though a bit more linear as a result.
- Ran smooth on my system as far as framerate and controls, even while streaming.

Cons -
- A couple minor bugs cropped up (most annoying one was being killed by a boss's summon, after killing the boss, due to cutscene, causing me to not get the boss skill).
- Audio can be glitchy at times if you are running it on low in-game volume, it's uncommon, but happens for about a tenth of a second.
- Some weapons are too slow to use in boss fights, making them slightly pointless to invest in.

Generally, the best game to compare this to would be Blasphemous - if you liked that, you'll probably like this. I don't think this title will be something that breaks through and is considered a "classic" or "genre defining" because it does stay within its comfort zone, but it is still an enjoyable experience, well worth the time investment.

Full Video Review: https://youtu.be/g89EsA1KG6U

One word to describe the game: annoying.

Pros:
+ Pixel art is decent, good even in places, but far from the level of other similar games in the genre
+ Character / enemy animation is pleasingly fluid
+ Platforming is decent although, again, far from the bar set up by other games (e.g. Blasphemous, Dead Cells)

Cons:
- By far the game's biggest sin - you cannot interrupt your own attacks by either dodging or healing. In a genre that depends on reaction, and especially in this game where enemy attacks are particularly fast, you are left completely unable to react
- The second biggest drawback - low attack speed and/or short range render your arsenal useless against most enemies and *all* of the bosses. It is completely irrelevant that the game provides a plethora of weapons if you cannot realistically, successfully use any of the hammers or daggers and can only rely on the middle ground weapons such as the swords to carry you through the entire game
- Also, weapons completely lack any form of visual or audio feedback, a missing feature that further ruins the already slim combat enjoyment
- Third - the world is one step away from being derelict. Room after room after room filled with nothing but air. Pretty, yes, but empty. Because of the grind and lack of a decent fast-travel system the world's emptiness will become painfully apparent rather early
- No possibility to respec, ever. Whatever you invest you skill points in is there to stay
- Exclusive reliance on dodges as a form of reliable defense. Late in the game blocking is introduced as an ability dependent on mana (!), which renders it completely useless
- Inconsistent hit boxes. Hits against the player will sometimes register even when the enemy attacks animations clearly do not connect
- Ranged enemies can attack from out-of-screen
- Unskippable boss cutscenes and dialogues that you'll have to go through countless times. Similarly, the end-game credits are unskippable
- Annoyingly long death and healing at the fountain animations. Entire seconds of black screen before the actual healing animation even begins. Pair this with the previous point and it becomes clear that the game does not respect your time
- Recovering your 'souls' results in a blinding two-stage full-screen red explosion that leaves you exposed to enemy attacks. Particularly aggravating during boss fights
- Clunky fast-travel introduced way too late in the game. Almost useless at that point
- Dialogues with NPCs that loop on themselves instead of simply repeating the last line to indicate the end of the conversation. Annoying
- No music other than boss-battle music. Environmental sounds are sparse to the point of non-existent
- Story is 'meh' at best, derivative and quite predictable, which wouldn't be a negative if not coupled with a barren world and a lackluster combat experience

It's a lot of fun. I picked this up right after finishing BLASPHEMOUS, as I was craving similar gameplay. It's a touch slower, more methodical, but it's a lot better than many of these negative reviews are making it out to be. The attack commitment can get you in trouble, but it seems like any other Souls game in that regard. (I'm not comparing it to a FromSoft game generally; I'm just saying that attack commitment is rather severe in this game, just like in those games).

I don't write a lot of reviews. I think this is only my third one? I just think this game is better than its current status ("Mixed" at the time of this posting), so I decided to chime in.

Happy gaming.

I bought this game because it reminded me a fair bit of Blasphemous, a game I absolutely adore. I'm have a strong dislike for souls-influenced combat or game design but I really love good Metroidvanias. After playing this game, I can safely say that it wasn't what I had expected at all.

This game is incredibly linear and pulls very heavily from the souls genre. The Metroidvania influence is mild at best. The combat in this game, despite being pulled from the souls cloth, rewards offensive plays instead of defensive ones. Each weapon has a 3/4/5 hit combo and if you're able to land all of them, you will be rewarded with ridiculous mana and stamina regen. Additionally, you will also get to use a magical when you land those hits. This results in incredibly aggressive combat which is quite a far cry from the typical reactive combat of soulslikes.

The art in this game is absolutely breathtaking. Parallax scrolling all over gives it a lot of depth and there's foreground elements that pop up adding to that. Sometimes I'd just linger in rather unforgiving portions just to admire the art a fair bit. The animations are also great and weapons feel fairly distinct in their feel. The particle effects are nice and my only complaint is that during certain visually "noisy" fights there is a lack of clarity on specific things. I'd like to be able to see telegraphed attacks even if there's ten different projectiles of various colors coming at me. I really hope this can be addressed because thus far, the rest of the visual department has been fantastic.

I've had absolutely zero performance issues, screen tears, fps drops, unresponsive inputs, etc. The game works well and seems fairly well optimized.

The story/lore/ambience is pretty standard fare for the genre. Ruined world, nameless protag, corrupted bosses, and a cleansing of the world that demands your action. There's a fair bit of dialogue and none of it is bad, really, it's just painfully generic. It's a pity because the art is stellar and so is the gameplay (for the most part). Perhaps not everything should be inherited when pulling from genres. This game deserved a better story. It doesn't detract from the experience at all since the focus is mostly on combat but it sort of nags at you, knowing that this could've easily been as great as the rest.

Remember when I said that this game was a lot more souls than it was Metroid or CV? Well, that's another place where I feel the game faltered. See, this is a *very* linear experience but it's still a good one at that. The problem is that the game is practically begging to have had more Metroidvania influenced level design. The dev holding back from that despite still referencing it in the game's design is incredibly obvious and frustrating. Nothing has been gained from forcing this to be a linear soulslike but so much has been lost. There's no reason to revisit most locations and see the gorgeous art or world or enemies. You plow though and you're done. I beg the devs to go back and infuse the level design with the more interconnected feel of a Metroidvania. This game would benefit so much from it and lose very little.

Something this game does right are bosses. They're not stupid tough but they're a fair challenge. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who has a strong dislike for souls games. The bosses usually have two to three stages and are imo the best part of the combat. It's where the combat really shines. If you've played Metriod Fusion then many of the bosses here are like Nightmare in terms of difficulty. That isn't terrible or bad - it's a fair challenge that is quite fun!

I want to say something about the music of this game but I really can't beyond the fact that it's servicable. It sets the scene and conveys the emotion properly but that's about it. I wish there were melody driven motifs that would stick with me but it's very inoffensive and soundscapey. It does the job but it isn't as great as say the art or the combat.

Ultimately, this game is an easy recommend. It looks gorgeous, the combat is a remarkably aggressive spin on the souls formula, and the bosses are a lot of fun. However, it's a tragedy that the game settles for "good" and doesn't reach for "greatness" despite it being closer than an arm's length. So much of this game is phenomenal that it's a bummer how much ambition this game lacks. The straight forward level design makes the game feel a lot simpler than it is.

I sincerely hope that the devs are able to recoup costs and release a few updates greatly expanding on the obvious yet repressed Metroidvania influence. Additional optional bosses, shortcuts, secrets, etc. would all be welcome additions. Honestly, this game is so close to being amazing that it hurts. I will still happily recommend it but I'm hoping that it can get the additional attention it needs to go from "good" to "phenomenal".

So, this is what I call a ROOKIE GAME. The Art is the best, but anything else... is bad.
When its demo came out, I tried it, and all problems I found in demo are still here.
1. The whole map is a collection of big, empty, boring long road. No thing to explore, nor expect. Almost everything you found is merely junks. Not going to help you, nor fun.
2. Story is, well, broken. The setup is great, but the expression is poor. Information is very short, hardly see anyone say more then 3 sentences, no equipment description, no letters, no milestones telling the tale.
3. Combat.. I see you are trying new thing, that is cool. And you are trying to learn from Hollow Knight. But in the end, it does not make it. PC is too slow in movements, and weapon reach is too short. Most time, I am chasing the boss with my greatsword, and in this game that "great" sword is as short as a short sword in Castlevania...

So here is some advise about how to make this game feels better.
1. Make sure the invincible frame is covered the whole animation, this is the only game I always found myself dead in rolling
2. Shorten enemy`s move distance while attacking. Or making player go farther. Or lengthen the weapon reach
3. We can only equip two brands at the same time, so, there is no REASON to use one key to use brand, and the other key to SWITCH it, just one key for brand_1, and the other for brand_2
4. Give more Solun Flakes and Solun Bar, so players can try more weapons. Or make the shop selling those things.
5. Enemy should drop more exp. in the second half of the game
6. Well, I think the map problem is beyond control now. We can not remake the whole thing, and not all of it are bad. Some rooms still feel good. So we can add more teleport points and a brand to enchant player`s move speed.
7. Move HUD into the mid, because this game`s boss fight is very tense, it hard to get those info in fight, right now

The Tarnishing of Juxtia is a challenging action RPG with a soul influence.  Combat feels great as it should for this type of game and boss fights are fun.  Levels are well designed and a joy to play through.  Game overall presents a challenge, but nothing unreachable. It's obvious that a lot of time went into this game.

I really wanted to like this game, but sadly it just gets too many things wrong.

----- TL;DR -----

This is a perfect example of one of those games where the form of Dark Souls is copied into a metroidvania, but not the understanding of what makes Dark Souls work in the first place. The frustration and boredom doesn't lead to big enough rewards to justify the experience.

----- Pros -----

First the pros - the platforming is surprisingly snappy and sharp, and there are very few unknown drops that lead into spike pits (or the damaging equivalent), which is something I appreciate greatly. The platforming feels fair, if a little pedestrian. The puzzle platforming sections in the Verdant Gardens are the best platforming parts of the game, I wish there was more in the rest of the game.

Some Boss fights are very well done, when they come in the form of a singular puzzle boss. I particularly enjoyed the first boss and the Drowned Brother, which reward good observation, goading the boss into certain attack patterns and then punishing them for falling for it. Some big mini-bosses with well telegraphed attack patterns are also fun to fight.

Visually, the game is very pretty and the environments are well varied. The stages with waterfalls and rain were particularly well rendered in my opinion.

----- Cons -----

And that's it, there's all the fun I got.

Combat is a hot mess. Your character's attack animation is far too slow to make anything outside of daggers, rapiers and longsword worth considering. In addition, you need to juggle stamina, which WILL run out because of the next issue.

The only defensive move you have is to dodge roll. There is no block, no Parry, even the shield spell and relic only absorbs 1 hit. This is manageable against one enemy, but the moment you have two or more enemies, they will simply march up to you and start wailing away. In Dark Souls, enemies would have to circle around each other to attack, but in a side-scroller, enemies will usually just commence attack through each other without collision calculations. This is the case here, leading to marching columns of enemies in different attack chains, basically resulting in a moving area of un-blockable, un-dodgeable damage.

Enemies can also chain combo / knockdown your character repeatedly in a nearly unavoidable hit-stun cycle at times. The worst offender is the giant plant creature that comes out of the ground, has an attack frequency perfectly timed to hit you as you are getting up, and the area sometimes has spike pits which it will proceed to chain hit you into.

Unlike other side-scrollers and metroidvanias, there is very little verticality to the combat. Your character can't double jump, normal jumps are too low in combat to be useful, and there is no special way to attack downwards.

Weapons variety is very disappointing. There are very few special animations between weapons, and all of them result in a committed attack, meaning you are going to be stuck in an animation loop for an extended period of time. Practically guaranteeing you will get hit, especially with multiple enemies on screen. Upgrading weapons is only a statistic exercise, no new moves unlocked and no enchanting ability. Given that enemies get stronger as the game progresses, this results in combat that feels very, very samey, since all you're doing is matching stats to keep up, with no thought to strategy or combos.

The worst offenders are polearms (spears and halberds) and enemy weapons. Polearms don't bring enough reach or damage to justify their painfully slow animations (the slowest I've seen in any side-scroller game). The chakram used by enemy cultists can be thrown - imagine my excitement to finally have a ranged weapon, and my utter disappointment when I realized the player can't do it.

Armour is almost as bad, with no upgrades and hardly any consideration between armour sets outside of "just slap on the one with the most overall resistance".

Almost all the special rewards for backtracking to open locked doors and getting through tricky rooms results in armour pieces with zero defense (that's not hyperbole, all the armour literally have zero in their stats page). I don't know if they have any special use in the later parts of the game, nor do I have any more interest in finding out.

What all this boils down to is clunky, boring combat system where you would rather eat hits and power your way through enemies, using basic attacks, aiming to kill them faster than they can kill you. Because attempting to do fancy dodges and clever moves will only result in more heath loss. This unfortunately also applies to other bosses that have multiple characters on screen, like the Wraiths, Herald of the Crowned an The Rotting King. Straight up grinding for levels an then DPS-rushing them feels like the best solutions, which does not make for a good boss fight challenge.

----- Conclusion -----

The Tarnishing of Juxtia tries to be Dark Souls in a metroidvania setting, but forgets how to do either one properly. The careful pacing of Dark Souls combat, and strategic crowd control aspects aren't here. Staples of modern metroidvania movement and attack angles (I mean, even Zero from the venerable Megaman series has more angles of attack and attack animations) are painfully absent. What you're left with is a frustrating exercise in trying to DPS your way through the game.

I'm writing this review because of the mixed reviews already on Steam. Put shortly, if you like Blasphemous, Salt and Sanctuary, Forgone etc. you are going to enjoy this experience. You do not get a double-jump along the way, nor a gliding technique as all fans of this genre would expect, but with occasional room for improvement, the gameplay is fluid and it plays well on a controller / Deck. Not too long nor too complex. The full price is slightly above its value, but on discount, I would not give this game a thumbs down. 7 / 10 or more.