izigame.me

Now that I've beaten the game I understand why it has mixed review but I think the game deserves a recommendation honestly. I haven't watched the Secret Level Pac-Man episode so I haven't gone into this game with any expectations based on that either.
For starters, I'll go over the things I think the game does right. I feel like the swordsman controls well on foot and overall combat even if a bit simplistic feels good for the most part. It can be a bit finicky to try to parry or dodge right after doing your combo but overall it's nothing you don't get used to and learn to play around. I think the soundtrack is pretty good too and I honestly really like the art style. I get the criticism that sometimes there's elements just obstructing your view in the foreground but the actual quality of the art is high, so I'm not sure why the art quality itself is receiving so much criticism. This game also does have some legitimately tough platforming segments which is nice as I feel a decent amount of more recent metroidvanias don't really have those. The world map is also huge in a way that doesn't feel artificially inflated which is always a plus in my book. Once you get both the double jump and the grapple I really like how the movement feels and I'd say the game's at its strongest once you're at that point.
Quick aside, I'd the story is perfectly serviceable. I generally don't play metroidvanias for the story but this one's was fine. Maybe if you've already watched the Secret Level episode you won't enjoy it as much as that's the impression I've gotten from seeing other people's opinions, but for me I thought it was enjoyable enough.
For the negatives, the first and foremost is the amount of HP bosses have. Even early on when I upgraded my attack power to the max level bosses felt unnecessarily spongy. The controls when you're on the purple lines and you're going along as Pac-Man are also way worse than the on foot controls and as a result any segment that heavily focuses on those controls can feel varying degrees of less fun than the on foot segments depending on the level of precision. The save system is also weird. Basically, there's "checkpoints" and then real save points. You cannot fast travel to checkpoints unless you use a consumable, and even then you can only fast travel to the last checkpoint you used. Checkpoints also do not refill your healing flask unlike real save points which is frustrating. If all the checkpoints had just been real save points the game wouldn't have been too easy at all imo. In general the game could have also done to just have more of both checkpoints and save points.
Overall, despite the flaws I did enjoy my time with this game and I do think 30 bucks is a fair price for the amount of content you get out of this game. If you can look past some jank and put up with the save system it is a genuinely good game that feels good to play once you have some tools besides the basics at your disposal.

Basically everything about this game has been frustrating.
First of all, my controller (ps5 dualsense pro) didn't work at all. I had to disable steam input, but all of the in-game button prompts are still for keyboard. So every time I get to a new power or get to a new mechanic the game explains the controls for keyboard and I have to memorize all of the keys mentioned, go into the controls menu, and then find the action for that key so I can look the corresponding controller button. And sometimes that doesn't even work! The menu doesn't list any controller button for the mecha transform power you get early on. I literally had to sit there trying every button, and then every pair of buttons until I figured out that it was both thumbsticks at the same time. And if you didn't understand the controls immediately or forget something, well too bad there's no way to review the explanation and you just have to push buttons until you figure it out.
There is no ultrawide support.. fine, a lot of games still don't have this. But instead of putting black bars on the side they stretch the image which looks horrible. So instead I have to use windowed mode to get the proper aspect ratio and either just deal with the fact that my desktop taskbar covers up part of the game and the bottom half of the text every time pick up a new crafting material, or lower the resolution even more to not use the full height of my display.
All of that is super annoying, but the actual gameplay is just not fun. Immediately the movement and controls felt super clunky and unresponsive. The "D-Line" magnetic rail sections are awful. Your character has no momentum so if you change your movement even a moment too early you will just come to a dead stop. And of course if you change direction a moment too late you also come to a dead stop. You can only jump off in three directions, straight up, straight ahead, or diagonally at an angle. But for whatever reason you can only jump diagonally if you come to a complete stop!! In a combat situation the forward goes super far and in most situations would propel you straight into an enemy where you would take damage, you are mostly limited to a single option.
Combat has the same sluggish feeling with no fluidity between different animations. That said, the enemies are equally terrible so you won't really have any problems. The enemies that don't die before they can even attack just cycle through the same telegraphed move. The bosses aren't better and have 3 or 4 super telegraphed, easy-to-dodge attacks with a lot of time to counter in between. So far I haven't gotten hit during a boss fight.
The level design is boring and uninspired and just feel like long slogs to the next checkpoint. And you don't even recover your healing charges.
I could go on with how bad everything feels but I think I've said enough. Total disaster.

I'm completely removing my previous early glowing review. It's not a terrible game, but it's got a lot of jank. And not the fun kind of jank.
There are some odd decisions made in terms of level design, often time the main path forward is illusory wall, there are entire paths that just sort of lead nowhere, or to a tiny amount of resources. It feels like the world was crafted and then they threw darts at a board to decided which rewards would go where.
Bosses come back to life after a while, there was one case where I defeated a boss, saved, opened up a shortcut to skip the boss area, died, and when I came back the boss was back and it turned out the shortcut I opened up (cut down a rope to climb up) was part 1 of two ropes I needed to cut down and I had to refight the boss.
Sadly I cannot recommend this game anymore at this point. All the enemies act in the same ways, there is variety in artwork but not in attacks. Your options for upgrading are limited, there isn't any skill tree or real customization other than some very typical charms.
Platforming is bizarre, you often fail to grab on to things except when you don't want to grab on and it forces you. The slide move is fast but you can't slide off of a ledge. Jumping horizontally will cause you to jump very far sometimes, but not others. If you touch certain hazards that cause damage, you take damage and then need to wait 3 seconds to void out and be placed back on the map, in most games it's more like 1 second. Momentum is non existant in this game. Attacking stops all forward movement, air dashing does this weird thing where it pops you up a few pixels and changes your elevation a bit.
There isn't any knockback so when you attack something it just sorta slows down, if something flys at you and you fly at it, hititng it just stops both of you in place.
If you use all of your stamina in a boss fight you are essentially dead, it takes maybe 15 seconds for it to recharge and you cannot dash while it's recharging. Some bosses force you to dodge very frequently and the charm to reduce dodge stamina consumption is mandatory, not optional.
I'm going to keep playing but I'm really disappointed in how quickly the game fell a part. It's almost like they put all their effort in the first 2 hours so you couldn't refund once it falls off a cliff.