izigame.me

I was 15 levels below the final boss. I brute forced it out of stubbornness. Don't do what I did. It took me 4 hours to succeed, with a lot of cursing and shouting. Unless you just like the challenge, level up your characters. That being said, I did it. Now, I might have missed something prior to getting to the end, but I'll have to double-check. EDIT: LOL I GOT IT
CRYMACHINA. This game is pretty cool, man. Beautiful setting, lovely characters, interesting premise with some good themes, simple-but-fun combat system. I welcome this new IP. Difficulty-wise it's about as hard as you make it. As I said earlier, I was clearly underleveled. Despite that, I was able to make it work. I imagine staying at the recommended levels make things substantially easier. EDIT: APPARENTLY you can make yourself absolutely busted, but I haven't learned how to do that yet, lol.
The story plays out primarily in dialogue between segments, which are largely slice-of-life conversations between characters. There are few cutscenes in the game, so if you dislike reading you can just skip through dialogue. Obviously, I wouldn't recommend that. Due to this, you can progress through the game at a pretty steady pace. There's no walking segments or hidden loading screens. It's nice, since it doesn't take long to get back to the action.
Battles move quickly. Damage output is high, so there's a lot of "kill or be killed" scenarios during combat. Provided the enemy is in sight, attack animations, as well as other visual and audio cues make it possible to react to what the enemy does. It's not as dodge-heavy as, say, Bayonetta, but you will need to use your options to mitigate damage and counterattack. There's a good enough variety of enemies to keep things interesting. Even the "recolors" behave differently and gain new abilities. The bosses are all pretty fun, and they get damn near nutty in the lategame. They definitely force you to utilize your defensive options well. Of course, like with any RPG, leveling up enough will allow you to steamroll the game.
Characters have their own fighting style, and I found it fun to get a good idea of where each excels. The auxiliary weapons are helpful in adopting new approaches to fighting. Hell, they pretty much made the final boss possible for me. You get a decent variety to choose from with some freedom to experiment. There's not much in terms of combos. You have light attacks and a heavy attack/launcher. That combined with your other weapons is your arsenal. You make it work from there. Enoa provides support as well.
The levels are short and arcadey, which makes for pretty quick pacing in most cases. I enjoyed that, as it rarely felt like the game was dragged out longer than it should be. While you don't explore levels, you do at least get a chance to look around the environment. As I said, the setting looks nice. Increasing the camera distance and FOV will probably do you well. My only real issue within the mechanics is that the stat parameters are vaguely explained. While I don't expect whole formulas to be provided, I would appreciate, for example, being told the difference between Willpower and Strength. It's difficult to determine how you want to develop your characters when you have to reload the game to see the effects of stat changes.
The game seems to get dunked on for being a budget title, but that's what you get with Furyu. It's a solid game, and there's little that I dislike about it(outside of that bug that I frequently ran into during the final boss that had me mysteriously getting stuck in corners of the stage, left to facetank the next attack). Am I getting a sequel? Probably not. Does it need one? I don't know, as I think there's still more left for me to discover. It was a great time, and never overstayed its welcome. The OST is very well-done as well. I'm probably going to buy the album whenever that becomes available for purchase. EDIT: It's actually available for purchase through Sakuzyo's(the composer) website as well as his bandcamp page.
If paying full price for a new game is a problem for you, you can wait for a sale. If you're looking for a game to dump hundreds of hours into, this ain't it. If you're interested in a short run through something new, and you like sci-fi themes mixed with some anime sensibilities, then you might enjoy this. It's probably not going to change your life, so if you're on a budget, you don't have to spend your last 60 bucks. Regardless, I'm going to give it another playthrough and do more of the optional segments. The DLC is optional, and I'm not sure how much more value it brings to the game, but do as you will. I do wish that Trinity were more fleshed out as playable characters. Anyway, solid game. Would play again. Will play again.
It works on Linux. Unlimited frame rate is nice.