This game is a pretty fun short experience to get through one playthrough. The combat feels great and the game run time is about perfect. The first run is a bit light on the story which is mainly reserved for the second time through. This is honestly a huge part of the experience making it a bit tough to recommend for people who just want an interesting story/lore. Fortunately there's lots of options to tweak difficulty to get through this second time without much trouble.

Combat is brutal but stupidly satisfying when you git gud

Every once in a great while there comes a game with a seemingly endless amount of love put into it. Lucah: Born of a Dream is one of these games. As you likely saw from the images on the store page, the game is drawn in this almost chalkboard style, visually distinguishing it immensely. It also helps to contrast with the game's subject matter, which is often very dark. The game heavily discusses religion, human morality, and also serves as an excellent allegory for being transgender. This game will disturb you to at least some degree, hitting you in the deepest recesses of your heart, that highly emotional feeling that leaves an impact on you. This game is also VERY difficult. You will die, and the game punishes you for dying and not using your resources properly. There is a steep learning curve you will have to accustom yourself to, but it feels incredible to get into a groove in this game. The game plays like the tags would suggest, it is very fast paced, and you spend combat trying to break your opponents' defenses to begin to deal substantial damage. To do this you gain abilities you put into presets, a main ability, and a secondary which changes the function of the primary attack. You also have companions to keep up pressure when you run out of stamina. There is an optional parry system, though it becomes exponentially more useful later into the game when dealing with stronger and stronger bosses.
I cannot stress enough how good this game is, and how little justice I can give it. The team who made the game poured their very hearts and souls into this game ABSOLUTELY deserves all the support they can get. There are few games I can recommend to the same degree as Lucah: Born of a Dream. This game will kick your ass in the gameplay, then do the same to your emotions in the same breath. I have only come across a few pieces of media that made me cry, and this is one of them.
Please, buy Lucah: Born of a Dream today. It is a beautiful, fun, thrilling, and emotionally gripping story all in one that while I can't guarantee you will love as much as I do, you should at least experience for yourself.
Just remember,
everything will be okay.

this is a truly hauntingly beautiful experience. there is a trauma at the center of the world, festering and bleeding. it is a raw and deeply personal story that puts the guilt and self-loathing brought about by religious, conservative upbringings on full display. it is a story of queer pain, and queer healing.

i can't overstate how much i love the art direction, too. i can see why some would be put off by it, but i find it so striking and stylistic that i can forgive any occasional hiccups with visual clarity during combat. speaking of the combat, it's not as refined as the followup game's, but it is still very dynamic and frenetic. i'm a big fan of being able to mix and match together aspects of different movesets, it feels very deep and full of creative expression. really my only gripes would be that i think the stamina system doesn't add as much to the experience as it should, and that parrying is overly powerful to the point that it is often better to wait for an attack to be thrown out so you can parry it. both of these aspects are massively improved upon in the followup.

this sort of game could never have broad appeal, but i implore anyone reading, if it looks at all interesting to you for any reason, please check out this game, and then death of a wish if you liked it. this is a developer whose work is worth keeping tabs on for sure.

This game is so good why does no one know this exists. It's got an aggressive, sketchy art style and a story that fits that artistic theme. And while the game is short it has tons of replayability (i want to get all the endings/achievements). Plus it nails the one thing that makes or breaks a game: the gameplay. It took a bit to get a feel for but its so satisfying once you figure it out.

This game is just... its great. It is frustrating, very frustrating at times, but its all worth it in the end. Its pretty rough around the edges, but if it looks interesting to you, just buy it, believe me, it is worth it.

What a truly unique and intense experience.

Some people might find the disjointed storytelling to be confusing, but I enjoy the theme of piecing together a memory of who exactly you might be making things the way they might be.
It's a visceral experience full of impact and violence within an extremely unique art style that personally speaks to me from my own way of drawing things. It's distinctly beautiful in its readability and sometimes, lack thereof, fully embracing its nature of depicting memories broken apart.

Ultimately, you are who you are, and you evolve and you fight and you keep going.

As for the actual game, customizable controls are very welcome, although the heavy attack being linked to the exit menu button is somewhat funny.
The Virtue system is really interesting in its point-buy and different unique effects, the various different combinations of Paradigms and they way they can interact lends well to different playstyles and movesets, and the Familiars all have their little advantages, although I find that Heal's value is significantly higher than most, considering its low investment. I find myself returning to it sometimes, and just enjoying a quick violent romp as my little angel. My only complaint is feeling like the parry response was somewhat inconsistent at times, but for most enemies it was perfectly fair. I really enjoy the Sekiro-esque reflect and stagger system.

If you enjoy "soulslike" gameplay and want a surreal, heartfelt, and both figuratively and literally impactful slugfest of a game, then do check this one out. I logged like 6-7ish hours just going through the game on Normal, and Hard/Challenging exist for the more intrepid martyrs who want to go for more.

I don't know if the devs check out recent reviews, but I do want to provide a heartfelt thanks for the message at the end of the game! This is one of those experiences that will stick with me and inspire things going forward.

Perhaps I wasn't in the right head space, but I got largely bored. I couldn't find enough to keep me engaged here. Perhaps it was the samey feeling combat encounters, the visuals, etc.

Really unique art style and heavy story. Loving the game play and putting together the elements of this story.

this game somehow took the contents of my brain, extracted it, then made it into a game. Which I played.
12/10