I wanna give this game a neutral rating (rather than positive or negative) but as of the time of writing this review, it's forcing me to give an up/down recommendation.

Anyhow, TL;DR: this game would be a lot more fun if it weren't for its overdone horizontal momentum effects.

EDIT: I've gotten to what I think is the last world of the game (world 6) and 6-1 has other forms of punishing difficulty. I enjoyed the earlier levels, thanks to their whimsical atmosphere, but the game doesn't feel fun anymore.

Basically, this is a platformer wherein every level you get to take powerups from enemies based on the abilities they use, and use them to your advantage. This includes attack abilities (e.g. a fireball), movement abilities (e.g. jump higher and fall slowly), and accessory abilities (e.g. a light, for dark places). You can have up to two of these powerups with one active at any time.

This is a really neat idea, honestly. Trying out the different abilities, and playing through the levels using them, is actually a lot of fun. Or it would be...

...if not for the fact that its implementation leaves something to be desired:

• Horizontal momentum effects make the movement feel less responsive than I'd like it to be. This goes doubly so in the ice area, of course, but even outside it, I don't feel I have a very precise control of Tobari's positioning. (I wanna call the movement "floaty", but honestly, the jump being floaty is not the problem, it's the horizontal momentum.)
  
• The difficulty isn't entertaining; it's just frustrating and tedious. With just 3 hit points, the player is afforded only two mistakes before being forced to repeat a level or section thereof, and these aren't just quick one-screen affairs of the sort that you might find in Meat Boy or other games reputed for their difficulty. These can be complex things that take a whole minute or two to get through. In some levels you can expand your HP pool to 6, but this gets reset when the level is over.
  
• Actually, you lose all the magic medals you picked up, at the end of every stage. They just get turned into a miniature slot-machine-like prize pool, where you can get one-ups or extra coins for example, but that's not as useful. This by itself wouldn't be a problem, except...
  
• Not having the right spell can mean a turning a mildly annoying situation into an extremely frustrating one. The boss of stage 4-7 is an example: You can steal a few abilities from her, but none of them are particularly useful, with the best one being throwing rocks in a parabolic path starting at a horizontal speed that varies with your own momentum, and needless to say it's rather awkward to use. One of the best abilities to use against her is the ground-hugging spark, but that requires getting it in the beginning of the level and then not dying in either the tedious second section of the level or the hectic autoscroller third section (both of which have instant death pits) -- both of which have checkpoints before them, as does the boss. If you happen to take any of those checkpoints, this means you might start off with far worse abilities, or even none at all, going into the bossfight. So ironically you might be better off NOT using the checkpoints.

This one stage was horribly annoying, but other stages also have similar annoyances, albeit to lesser degrees.

Aside from these criticisms, I have no others. The game runs smoothly without bugs, the controls are decent and reconfigurable, the music is generally pleasant (though not necessarily particularly memorable), the graphics are clear, and the script/story makes sense and uses proper grammar, and so on.

If the gameplay weren't so frustrating, I would love to explore the stages for the alternate exits. But it's just that after playing it I feel burnt out on the gameplay, particularly the movement. If the movement weren't as annoying, trying out the spells and playing with them would be so much more fun.

(Disclosure: I bought this game discounted on Steam.)

I wanna give this game a neutral rating (rather than positive or negative) but as of the time of writing this review, it's forcing me to give an up/down recommendation. Anyhow, TL;DR: this game would be a lot more fun if it weren't for its overdone horizontal momentum effects. EDIT: I've gotten to what I think is the last world of the game (world 6) and 6-1 has other forms of punishing difficulty. I enjoyed the earlier levels, thanks to their whimsical atmosphere, but the game doesn't feel fun anymore. Basically, this is a platformer wherein every level you get to take powerups from enemies based on the abilities they use, and use them to your advantage. This includes attack abilities (e.g. a fireball), movement abilities (e.g. jump higher and fall slowly), and accessory abilities (e.g. a light, for dark places). You can have up to two of these powerups with one active at any time. This is a really neat idea, honestly. Trying out the different abilities, and playing through the levels using them, is actually a lot of fun. Or it would be... ...if not for the fact that its implementation leaves something to be desired: [list] [*]Horizontal momentum effects make the movement feel less responsive than I'd like it to be. This goes doubly so in the ice area, of course, but even outside it, I don't feel I have a very precise control of Tobari's positioning. (I wanna call the movement "floaty", but honestly, the jump being floaty is not the problem, it's the horizontal momentum.) [*]The difficulty isn't entertaining; it's just frustrating and tedious. With just 3 hit points, the player is afforded only two mistakes before being forced to repeat a level or section thereof, and these aren't just quick one-screen affairs of the sort that you might find in Meat Boy or other games reputed for their difficulty. These can be complex things that take a whole minute or two to get through. In some levels you can expand your HP pool to 6, but this gets reset when the level is over. [*]Actually, you lose all the magic medals you picked up, at the end of every stage. They just get turned into a miniature slot-machine-like prize pool, where you can get one-ups or extra coins for example, but that's not as useful. This by itself wouldn't be a problem, except... [*]Not having the right spell can mean a turning a mildly annoying situation into an extremely frustrating one. The boss of stage 4-7 is an example: You can steal a few abilities from her, but none of them are particularly useful, with the best one being throwing rocks in a parabolic path starting at a horizontal speed that varies with your own momentum, and needless to say it's rather awkward to use. One of the best abilities to use against her is the ground-hugging spark, but that requires getting it in the beginning of the level and then not dying in either the tedious second section of the level or the hectic autoscroller third section (both of which have instant death pits) -- both of which have checkpoints before them, as does the boss. If you happen to take any of those checkpoints, this means you might start off with far worse abilities, or even none at all, going into the bossfight. So ironically you might be better off NOT using the checkpoints. [/list] This one stage was horribly annoying, but other stages also have similar annoyances, albeit to lesser degrees. Aside from these criticisms, I have no others. The game runs smoothly without bugs, the controls are decent and reconfigurable, the music is generally pleasant (though not necessarily particularly memorable), the graphics are clear, and the script/story makes sense and uses proper grammar, and so on. If the gameplay weren't so frustrating, I would love to explore the stages for the alternate exits. But it's just that after playing it I feel burnt out on the gameplay, particularly the movement. If the movement weren't as annoying, trying out the spells and playing with them would be so much more fun. (Disclosure: I bought this game discounted on Steam.)