Recent reviews by MockingTurtle

I love this game so much. It's even better on my second play-through after being more accustomed to the mechanics. I was fortunate enough to win a steam key for this game in a giveaway on Twitter. And when Adam Kareem found out that I didn't yet have a PC capable of playing the game, he gifted me a key for Xbox One. So awesome. Now I am finally able to play the PC version of the game.

First things first: It captures the frenetic fast-based energy of a Mega Man X game sooo well, especially after increasing the camera speed to 2x. I found myself locking into the game mechanics of running, jumping, shooting, and dashing around enemies and obstacles in the same way that I used to with the Mega Man X series of games. And this game wears its influence very clearly on its sleeve and makes no effort to hide what it's paying homage to. Despite this, it does a wonderful job of standing out and feeling like its own thing, with a colorful and expressive cast of characters, unique challengers, and an arcade shoot-em-up style boss fights.

The graphics are gorgeous and colorful, with a "Solarpunk" flare. The controls are tight and responsive. The music is amazing, and captures vibe of the various cultures that are represented in the game, with an electro-metal feel. The stage design, platforming, boss fights, and enemy attack patterns are well thought-out to reward you for tactical positioning while offering a few punishments for taking a seemingly good position for granted. The lock-on mechanic is very well implemented, it keeps your aim focused where it should be without feeling like it's holding-your hand and making things easy. And this game is not easy whatsoever. It's a very challenging game. I'd even go so far as to say it is "Nintendo hard", with long stages with lots of platforming and combat challenges thrown your way.

I do have some criticisms, however. While the sound design is very effective, and the majority of sounds are pleasing and satisfying, there are a few sounds that are just too loud and poorly balanced, such as the "BZRRRRRT" sound that the special blade attacks uses. It sounds like a buffer overflow of sound, and it's just loud and jarring compared to everything else. Also, at times you can tell that the voice acting was recorded under uncontrolled circumstances with microphones of varying degrees of quality and specifications. I feel like some mixing and mastering could be done to bring them into a more unified and hi-fi sound. I also wish that there was an in-game database of enemy names to refer to as we encounter them. A gallery or something. I find myself wanting to refer to the robots I encounter by some name, but I don't know what their names are. I also found some of the hidden bonus stages to be unbalanced compared to others, with very little if any HP healing items or checkpoints. Especially the first one I encountered on the left-most stage on the stage select screen. It was a pain to be at the mercy of low RNG for heals drops, especially with how difficult the final platforming challenge was.

Overall, this is an amazing and wonderful challenging colorful game. It's got a few rough spots, mostly in audio fidelity, but other than that. It's top-notch if you like challenging fast-paced Mega Man style action in 3D.

A very evocative, suspenseful, and atmospheric game.

I really like it. Wish it had ever been completed. It's very fun for a family of gamers to get together and yell at each other while struggling to navigate the tricky platforming tasks. My only gripe is the control setup is atrocious. There's no reason to have Keyboard be the only option for player 1, and to have to set it up every single time you start a game. Also when Player 2 was Red, she lost her ability to dash for some reason. I hope this game gets finished someday because it's frustrating chaotic platforming fun.