Think of Vanillaware games such as Muramasa and Odin Sphere, as well as (the non-Vanillaware-title) Mercenary Kings.

Then set it to a post-apocalyptic world invaded by robotic aliens, but dial back the story even more.

And then make the crafting and progress focused on grinding specific enemies, for specific parts, for specific gear. Like Mercenary Kings.

If this sounds awesome to you, you should give this a try. If you hate grinding of any sort, though, you might be disappointed. To be fair, once an enemy has been killed, you know what it will drop, making it rather easy to farm things.

This game is a surprise treat for me when I am bored of grinding in another game. Just played the intro, having taken down the tutorial boss, but I would like share my first impression with you since this game is on sale with a decent discount.

It's a sidescroll 2d hack&slash game with full controller support (works smoothly with Xbox one controller).

I've been following this game for quite a long time, i like its theme being fighting mech monsters in the post-appocalyptic world, and its artstyle.

The bgm is engaging. Cutscenes dubbed in Japanese (if you are into it). Puppet-like animations but not the rigid type. The combat actions are extremely good.

The game has an indepth crafting system with paper-doll system. It also has an customizable skill tree. These elements will contribute to its replayablity.

Definitely recommend it on current sale being 67% off.
Will update review when i finish the game.

I have to admit my expectations for this game were pretty high prior to having played it. Also this is not a staunch "No" to the game overall as it isn't terrible, however this is a cautionary review to anyone considering paying full price for the game. I would only buy this game when/if it is significantly discounted, 29.99 is quite a hefty price tag to be asking for it, and even at 14.99 when I bought it for half off I can't help but feel I would have gotten more bang for my buck from other titles.

While the art and design of the characters and enemies are undeniably cool-looking and the story is full of sci fi tropes fans of the genre will enjoy (requisitioning alien technology for human / earthling use, an imminent alien threat...) the gameplay itself is pretty repetitive. The effects can be cool as enemies explode into colorful "firework" looking displays of sparks and particles, however defeating the same enemies with the same execution animation for the nth time begins to wear thin relatively quickly. A limited moveset for the player (you can boost/dash, double jump, slide, etc...) is expanded as you unlock other abilities, but the movement itself feels quite stilted. (If other players of the game have abilities or weapons they recommend unlocking to make your character's movements / style seem less "blocky" than what is offered at the base level, I'm open to hear them...) Some cool, large boss fights shake up the action, but the overall gameplay loop is pretty basic.

If you're a diehard fan of sci fi / anime and intrigued by the setting or look of the game I might suggest still giving it a go but I would definitely wait to snag it during a sale as what is present feels a bit thin.

TL;DR

Games great, I recommend it for $15-$30 based on what your personal taste for this kind of game is.

If you like side-scrolling beat-em ups with light RPG and easy to learn, slightly hard to master combos and enemy patterns, there's a nice variety of enemies, weapons, attacks and combos. Story is standard, if a little generic. Graphics are pretty, animations are stiff but get the job done. Gameplay is superb for beat-em up fans, lots of "Get all the S ranks" in this game.

I recommend it to fans of 2D fighters, beat-em ups, platinum games as a company, and Ska Studios titles.

IMPRESSIONS:
This game is fantastic. I'm a huge fan of sidescrolling beat'em ups. One of my all time favorite games is Dungeon Fighter Online, as well as Dragon's Crown on the Playstation 3. To give you a basic idea of what my taste is,

My top 5 games as of this review:

1.Monster Hunter
2.Dark Souls
3.Dragon's Crown
4.Dungeon Fighter Online
5.Metal Gear Franchise

With that as a base line for what I like, here's my thoughts on the game.

STORY:
Not much to say here, without any real spoilers, Aliens are a thing, they're bad, humans almost went extinct except they didn't because super tech happened based on aliens. Now mankind bounces back, with the help of YOU! Hijinks and planet eating aliens insue from this series of events.

It's a standard fare with an anime style Sci-Fi. Basic, to the point, mostly a setup for the game. No awards here.

SOUND:
Soundtrack is a standard deal here as well, mostly electric and synth, combat sounds good. Guns have decent bang and boom to their noise, blades feel nice, attacking gives you different sounds based on if you hit a CRITICAL or a back attack, or if you BREAK the opponent. Good feedback here, music is plain.

Good job on the combat noise, not so much on the soundtrack.

GRAPHICS:
What you see is what you get, nice particles, good character sprites and the enemies all look cool. Despite their messy looking details, they stand out easily. The "Trooper" tyle enemies stand out amongst all the others, and you can tell them apart from the rest in a crowd. Explosions and bodyparts go flying, honestly if you like the look of the screenshots, you won't be disappointed. The whole game looks like that.

I personally like it, so great work here.

GAMEPLAY:
The gameplay to me is pretty straight-forward, you have two buttons. One for each hand, then you can jump, boost, and use the "EXCEED" ability, which is a fancy name for rage mode. The fun comes when you learn how to start juggling enemies, chaining certain attacks with bullets, knocking an enemy in the air, striking them 5 or 6 times, then stopping just before your slam dunk attack, and shooting them with your gun to keep them floating in the air, boosting under them and repeating the process with any variation you choose. The combat is what I love this game for, it's really well done. Simple buttons, grand experience.

This is the meat of the game, and my favorite part of the whole product. (Perhaps, arguably the ONLY part of the product)

HOW IT ALL COMES TOGETHER:
The way the game plays, you start in a menu of customize, craft, settins and missions. You always return to this menu after a mission, you only fight in missions. You can recieve items and rewards for your own use in crafting new gear, and since each and every enemy drops their own materials, this adds a nice level of learning "Gotta kill this creature to get his claws" in order to build new equipment. Each mission has it's own individual objective, ranging from "RACE TO THIS SPOT" to "Kill everything ever"

You can find these blue orbs in the stage similar to coins or rings in Mario or Sonic respectively, except in this game, they boost your maximum "Skill Capacity." As you kill enemies, you get Experience points to level up, which boosts your characters stats over-all. However, you also get this blue substance that boosts your "Skill Capacity" Missions can rewards you with stat boosts that you spend this maximum capacity to activate on whatever loadout you are using. These abilities range from Stat boosts, resistances to certain ailments, bonuses based on situations and equipements, and brand new attacks and movement / combat options.

The other options on the menus is customization, which is where you use the money (energy is the currency) you've earned to upgrade your gear, or make entirely new gear. There are ways to customize their stats with elements and status debuffs. You can also unlock and craft new cosmetic items, although these are fairly limited. This is a fun feature, and I enjoy it's use in the game.

Settings is standard, graphics options are limited, multi-language support, all voice acting is japanese only, resolution and effects changes are available. Nothing special here.

OVERALL:
I'm a fan of this game, and I wanted to buy it on Playstation 4 for a long while now, however the $30 price tag kept me from doing so. However, I never knew it came out on steam, and the moment I found it then saw the price at $15 on sale, I jumped on it.

I am so glad I did. This game is so worth that price to me. If you're looking for a recommended price from someone who likes this game, I'd say it's worth around:

$15 - $30

The game is priced JUST RIGHT for me to say it's worth the money.

2D arcade side scroller with a realtime Darkest Dungeon feel. Set in a great futuristic environment with tonnes of nasty beasts to chop, slice, dice, shoot and splatter. Crafting galore too. Certainly worth a look for fans of Arcade, Fighter, 2D and Anime fans. Excellent fun!!!

8\10

Extremely poor game.

It feels and plays well initially, but once the gear scaling kicks in, it feels like the worst version of every genre that it borrows from.

The skill system is completely overdesigned and adds next to nothing to the game, it's entirely unclear what parts come from where most of the time so farming for gear is extremely unreliable until you do isolate a particular item, and being stun locked is just a part of life.

Weapons ranges are garbage, weapon descriptions are misleading, and controller input generally errs on the side of "you wanted to do something other than the thing you were attempting."

Unless you can demo the first 5 hours of this game to make sure that the later aspects of the game appeal to you, avoid, because it'll be a sudden shock, and you wont be able to refund it. The game presents something promising and then just crashes and burns once you've comitted any time to it.

It *could* have been good, had it more variety in scenery and enemies, less difficulty spikes and allowed for less reliance on linear gear progression / more build variety. Controls are fine, even with keyboard, but each boss enemy represents a gear check for which you need to either grind components to craft better weapons (in terms of raw damage ourput or required mods like, for example, defense down), or grind enhancement materials to upgrade existing ones.
Not as hardcore as it could have been, and thanks for that, but way too grindy for my tastes.

A repetitive HackNSlash that is easy to get both lost and bored in the superfluous skills system and oversimplified combat.

Some of this game is just strange.
- The story takes place in america but everyone speaks japanese.
- There are 3 random followers that disappear once a fight starts and serve no other purpose than running behind you while out of combat. They look like the player character except THEY HAVE NO EYES.

The skills system is feels unimportant, allowing only minor attribute changes that don't seem to make much of a difference. Unlocking a +1 dmg to a single attack for one of the hits in a 7 hit combo is just dumb. Navigating the skills tree isn't difficult but it displays all the skills you don't have leaving a ton of irritating space to wade thru.

The combat system has combo's and you can link attacks between enemies but it still feels limited in that the gun doesn't mesh well in combo's leaving you to a lot of X button mashing. You do get a "special meter" that charges up and when activated gives you a few powerful attacks.

After completing the first two story missions I'm now stuck waiting on a 3 hour in-game timer to advance the story. The timer only counts down while you are in the game and unpaused....

In the mean time there are "free missions" with OP bosses. The game suddenly feels like Dark Souls.
Overall the game feels scattered. Maybe if they lent the art style to another project of theirs with more fluent gameplay something could work.

Not recommended; especially at its current price tag (~30USD).

Pros:
+ Artstyle
+ Music fits the genre

Cons:
- Limited enemy types
- Directions/ tutorial unclear and brief.
- Having to wait in-game for hours to advance the story missions. Complete with countdown timer.
- Grindy
- Repetative levels
- Vague story concepts that feel like somewhere, something got lost in translation. (What is with the american general masterminding in perfect japanese the invasion of Wisconsin through the underground network???)

This game is just awesome! :)

It's like a mix of of 2D RPG, metroidvania, fighting game and bullet hell with crafting and kinda "monster hunter" elements. I really like the art, it looks original and really fits to postapocalyptic world setting. It feels a little bit like Odins Sphere but with different setting and not so deep RPG elements.

Combat - well crafted. You can use double (even triple later) jumps, boosts and air boosts (kind of fast dashes, you can even improve it's distance or add homing through point investment). You can use swords, guns, broadswords (2h great swords combined with gun), shurikens (great fast and deadly weps), crossbows, combinations of 1-h sword and gun or dual swords. Also you are not limited to 1 weapon set, later in the game, you'll get skill which allows you to manage 2 different and switch them even in missions (combat).

Skills - you can manage 5 different skill sets, each with maximum of 200 points invested. You can improve your attacks, learn new abilities such as sword shield, homing boost, max air jump increase, you can raise your imunity to several efects such as burn, paralyze, freeze etc. up to 100%, increase your HP and stats and so on.

Craft - craft is really good, sometimes you need to grind to get rare materials, but it's not that bad since combat is really enjoyable. You can craft and upgrade weapons, armor, accessories and costumes (avatar armor and head gear with no stats / effect). Once you beat the game main missions and final boss, you can start with "endless" mission where you can gain some special materials and boost your weapons even more with extra stats.

Story - story is good - i mean like background story for this kind of game. Nothing epic with movies and tons of cutscenes, story of Earth's Dawn is about few pictures displayed and narrated simply by text and Japanese voice actors (very good imo).

Music - i really like it, great tracks

Overall: original action mix with really good combat system and great and original art. Gem! :)

For those of us who lusted over Odin Sphere but couldn't play it cuz we didn't have a PS2, this is an amazing game.

Sony plz release Odin Sphere on PC!