Why the so negative rating?

[ArcadeVault]

I dont own the game, but i was interested, than i sad this red rating. I read all the reviews and while i can see, its not a perfect game, but how is this THAT BAD?

[Andrew R]

I try to avoid spoilers but I have seen a You Tube review or two.

The game seems to be a 6 out of 10 or 7 out of 10 which I still find respectable. You can always try it out and refund it if need be...

[Kelrycor]

I am playing it right now. It is ok and does make fun.

But there are still a lot of minor technical issues and bugs, and everything does not feel really polished. Those issues were fine in the demo version, but in the release they nearly didn't changed anything but adding new places, enemies and bosses (the variety of all together is good). But then again the whole hitboxes and fighting systems still feels a little bit off like in the demo. I really hoped they overwork a lot of things people already mentioned back those days.

From my perspective I will still give it a thumb up, but just barely because it is entertaining enough and the fact you can play it with 4 players in local coop is awesome.

[Andrew R]

I guess "mediocre" doesn't cut it these days.

[Kelrycor]

True. Unfortunetally, because the whole idea concept is awesome. And you notice that they put a lot of love into the game too.

But honestly, the game could have been much more. And it still can be. A lot of issue can be patched out or balanced later on. Even some urgently missing features like a difficulty setting or hard mode (which would be critical, because it is already too easy for one player, playing in coop results in a clean sweep and kill gamestyle) can be patched in. But I guess it needs a very polished "Definite Edition" to lift it to a level what it should have been from day one.

[Andrew R]

Would love to hear from the developers. :)

[DragynDance]

The developers traded a lot of QoL and player control over forced animation lock, as the core focus of the game was ooh, pretty hand drawn animations, so a lot of gameplay is sacrificed just to let animations play out. Every character is a turret who has to commit to an animation to attack, and a lot of their animations move them, but also enemies deal contact damage and it's a coin flip whether your attack animation damages you or the enemy. There are hugely glaring balancing issues, with the characters being wildly apart in power differences. Playing as the fire rat basically wins the game for you with very little effort, while in comparison the water and wind rats are very, very weak, with the earth rat being kind of in the middle. The worst thing though is that the game features teleports and lots of backtracking, which is normal for a metroidvania game, no? Well, except during the endgame/postgame all teleports are disabled and 90% of the paths are blocked off with barriers, to lengthen how long it takes you to backtrack from the final boss back to the beginning of the game, and to slow down how quickly you get 100% map completion.

[Kelrycor]

I totally agree on your judgment over the fight system and the character balancing.

David is badass and a real gamebreaker, with him the game becomes a breeze due to his vampiric sword later on. Just go berserker mode and hit and slay, and no boss stands a chance because they can't kill him. Bussa has also a magic healing, but Arcane and Buffalo Calf have to rely 100% on item healing. Which is basically not a big issue due to the massive amount of gold that drops (I have currently 58000 gold absolutely no use for it because I play David mainly). Fill up you healing portions in the shop before a boss battle and do the same hit and slay tactic (just eat some items in between) and win anyway with ease. Buffalo is the best character at range, making her a formidable support character in coop game mode. I do love Arcane for her unlimited energy (auto-refill). You can actually use her strong water wave attack to get rid of complete rooms of enemies. She also has a lesser effective but unlimited usable ranged attack as well.

I do like all the backtracking stuff. It is part of Metroidvania games anyway, and there are a lot of shotcuts here and there to the different areas which can be unlocked. And they give you a lot of freedom where to travel first or in which order you beat the bosses and gain abilities. So exactly what I expected. Nothing I complain about.

I just reached the story spot where you start the "endgame". Of course the devs had to take away the teleports or give you some kind of a route to make it more challenging to get back to your starting point. And they offer you a reason for it. But yes, they should have made this part more exciting, to justify the method why they chasing you through a mice maze.

If you ask me, they should have also given the player a warning that if you proceed, you'll start the endgame (like in Monsterboy and the Cursed Kingdom) and they advise you to do unfinished business before you go further as you can't return to normal state again for quite some time if you do so. Then it would be totally fine.

[Andrew R]

heck, I'll give it a go.

[Kelrycor]

Go for it. I think you will be still entertained.

If you have issues with the difficulty or like to go easy mode, just take David Douglas, level up only the left tree with his weaponry first and try to get the vampiric ability (30% of dealt damage you regain as health) asap - it actually breaks the game. No items or specific tactics are needed anymore, just hack'n slay everything, even the bosses. You can use berserker mode and the fire wave once unlocked too to even beef things up. He is such an imba character that kicks a** :)

But the whole difficulty is not very high if you ask me. It is like a beginners Metroidvania type of game. The same as the metroidvania Itorah was. Not a bad game either, but if you can play through a metroidvania on your very first playthrough without dying at all, things are a little bit odd I guess :)

[Suvitruf]

For metroidvania it has big problems with controls and combat itself is not enjoyable.

[Kelrycor]

The whole combat system is a little bit stiff due to attack frames and hitbox issues, true. But I have no big issues with it. The only thing that is a pitty are the boss fights. So many cool bosses in this game, but so few different tactics are needed to beat them. Compared to other genre similar games they could have been more worked out.

But again, as soon as you nerf Douglas vampiric attack (and also Bussas healing a little bit), and give the player higher difficulty settings in which you have actually try to avoid enemy or hits rather than just tank them, they are becoming more interesting. Usually for correct Metroidvania bosses, you need to learn their attack patterns. For this game it is absolutely not necessary at this point.

I guess it would be even sufficient to raise the HP of bosses to double or triple in higher difficulties (damage dealing is not needed to raise much, no one likes to be killed by one or two hits alone in my opinion). This way they get more challenging because you have to focus much longer and sooner or later your healing items will run out if you are just careless in dodging. Some mistakes should still be tolerated. The tank thingy atm is the real issue that makes the actual difficulty a kind of "easy mode", you really have to break this to make it interesting on higher ones.

Also, for every player joining, the health of enemies should be increased by a multipler also, to make it still interesting. Playing with a 4 rat group is fun, but the enemies/bosses don't have the slightest chance. It doesn't help much just to rely in XP sharing to balance things with buying perks. This is not enough as you can just farm XP easily also.

I hope Petoons will overwork some of the things in the next couple of months. From my view, they released the game a little bit too early and should have done a closed beta for backers pre-release to gather some extra opinions and feedbacks to be able to polish it correctly for everyone else.

Neithertheless, I still think the game is not a waste of time or such. I do like it, but expected a little bit more. For a Metroidvania it just doesn't stand out too much.

[ArcadeVault]

Thank you for all your replies! I guess, i can check it out once, as a filler metroidvania after some harder ones :)

[Mroj]

F**K the reviews, the game is great and you will enjoy it from start to finish. 11/10 for me. In addition, it has no serious bugs or shortcomings, nor frustrating places, just pure fun for unwinding, I recommend it!

[Yaman]

Probably the very harsh starting, or the insta deaths from later on.
And the whole combat feels stiff, so over leveling feels like a must.

[Yaman]

I also spend like 30min on the first rat pirate, to level to 8+
So I did not die in 3 hits, and could kill in 3 hits.