Recent reviews by george

At its current early access stage, you can finish the game in roughly 20 minutes if you know what you're doing.

The game has a very high skill ceiling. The combat is simple enough to understand, yet between its list of launchers, air attacks, combos, special moves, all the ways to cancel attacks, and all the ways to parry attacks, there will be so much to uncover through emergent gameplay. The movement has a lot of momentum behind it, and the blistering pace it can work in tandem with the combat makes it the most difficult, yet rewarding movement system I have used in a while. The style is easily the most striking part. The visuals are abstract, the ambience is melancholic, yet the narrative oozes hope. For me it scratches every itch in that avant-garde PS1 era niche.

As far as early access titles that have spent 2 years in development though, it definitely shows its frayed edges. Solo developer working with a rapidly evolving engine definitely isn't doing him any favours, and it shows in the massive, very frequent freezes. Apparently the issue is to do with the way the Vulkan API works - if an object is spawned for the first time it will compile all related shaders for it on the spot. A quick workaround until this issue is resolved is to go into Steam's Settings > Scroll down to "Shader Pre-caching" > enable "Enable Shader Pre-caching" (and optionally "Allow background processing of Vulkan Shaders")

Performance issues aside, the systems themselves can take some getting used to. Combat is the easiest system to learn: three different attack stances to use (Melee, Weapon, Kick) that change based on movement input and context (Air, Crouch, Dodge), press Crouch, Dodge, or Jump at the correct times to avoid/parry attacks. It feels super satisfying landing juggles and divekicks, letting attacks fly within milliseconds then cancel those attacks into specials or even more juggles. It's frenetic, and I really wish the AI complimented that. The movement is fluid, but again the most difficult system to get used to - there's sliding, dodging, sprinting, wallclimbing, superjumping, bunny hopping, your camera angle determining your jump velocity (which is my least favourite part), etc.

The hub you are first dropped into serves as the tutorial, although if you're trying to figure it out on your own, you will feel like you are bashing your head against a brick wall. Each "tutorial" expects you to be able to figure out its related mechanics, and there are moments where I had to throw ♥♥♥♥ at a wall to see what stuck. Below, I've compiled the solutions in spoiler tags if you need help.

lot of whinging because of server capacity issues. 450k concurrent players coming out of nowhere into a game made by an indie company will do that, and thats not even including console. they're working on it, make a coffee and relax.

boosting the review rating since "mostly positive" isnt enough

Bought for high octane mecha action.
Stayed for "Hey, buddy".

I CANT HEAR MOB DAMAGE OVER THE SOUND OF MY FLAMMENWERFER

this game builds white matter in two different places

Funny how I can write a review despite only playing the trial lol

Fantastic experience though, will buy

oh man. GOTY contender for sure

I should have heeded that addiction warning better.

Enforcer