izigame.me

Pass on this one for now

I got excited for this game after watching some content creators I know play and review it, all of who had pretty positive or even glowing things to say about it. I will say this now before I go any farther, if you're like me and thought the game looked cool based on the marketing or press, PLEASE read on.
My absolute first impressions were "Oh wow, this feels...slow." Your attacks come out slow, you move around the stage pretty slow. It's not just that the game is slow, there is a run button and speed powerups can be purchased later, it's more that the game feels sluggish, a problem that is much harder to rectify. This is compounded further when you play as the boss characters who, while powerful, feel like pushing a bike through mud.
But eventually, you push past it. You notice the game has pretty cool tag mechanics that let you interrupt almost anything, and that you can chain your special moves together if you're fast enough. After I experimented around enough, I found a sort of flow and yeah, when you get here, the game actually feels pretty fun. So fun, even, that you might ignore the red flags up until this point or just on the horizon.
See, every level you beat, the others get longer and more difficult. Where the first one you tackle has 1 stage and pretty easy difficulty, the next will have 2 stages with the second being considerably longer and more challenging. The last 2 will have 3 stages each, and this is where I have to talk about the difficulty. While the first 2 stages aren't bad, with the second being a reasonable challenge, the 3rd starts feeling a bit unfair around when you fight the boss and the aggression levels and damage start ramping up. And then with the 4th and final stage, you smack headfirst into an unscalable mountain of difficulty.
Late bosses have this habit of spawning goons, and they're all extremely aggressive. So aggressive that it's not uncommon to get stunlocked and killed from full health. You can tag as a defensive option though, which can get you out of those situations!
...Except, tagging isn't invincible. In fact, pretty much nothing in this game is. If you tag, you will bring out your partner, but they're fully vulnerable as soon as they jump in. And to add insult to injury, the character you tagged with initially is ALSO not invincible, since they have to take their time jumping off the screen first. In that time, again, it's very common for them to be annihilated by the constant enemy onslaught. So the best defensive option you have turns into a prison that can cage you into losing BOTH your characters rather than just one.
So, inevitably, you die. But it's ok, the money you've built up to this point can be used as continues! Which you'll really be needing if you wanna see those credits. Oh uh, by the way, even CONTINUING IS NOT INVINCIBLE. You read that right, the INSTANT your character is back on screen post continue, they can be hit. Leading to unavoidable damage as you fall helplessly into enemy fire below, losing 2/3rds of your health before being able to fight back.
SPOILERS BELOW!
But hey, enough continues and some good fortune and you can beat the final stage. It's now that the game tries to sucker you into its bad ending; if you refuse, you go to the final stage, by far the most BS of all of them up until now. I have no idea whose practical joke this stage was, but I'll say in a game with permanent consequences to failure and limited continues, it felt like quite the kick to the unmentionables. Basically, it's a hallway gauntlet filled with a "who's who" of the most obnoxious enemies in the game. The guys with the twin uzi's win that particular "worst enemy" award, as their bullets not only cover full screen and an INSANE amount of vertical space, but they can fire while offscreen! This means that, before you even see anything, you can get gunned down for over half your health.
This slog of a stage goes on for at least 5-10 minutes as well, as you plow through what feels like hundreds of these goons. Finally, you reach the big bad at the end, and the game devs have one more practical joke for you. Remember how I mentioned how unfair the bosses can feel? Well, what if we just...summoned them all back again and had you fight them all at once?! It's exactly as ridiculous as it sounds, and once again it's insanely easy to just be fully combo'd to death from any stray hit on a screen filled with attacks.
Did I mention yet that your credits go up in price with every one you use? By now, after how unfair Level 4 and its boss were already, you're probably starting to feel that burning a hole through whatever pocket you've got left. And if you run out of credits, it's Game Over. You can use whatever tokens you've accumulated to fund a Continue, but once you're out of those...the run's over. Back to the title screen.
Well, it WOULD be threatening, if you couldn't just quickly pause and choose "quit game" before the credit timer counts down. The game has autosave, so you'll be back at the start of the final stage, but you can in theory challenge it as many times as you'd like, though granted you'll be limited by the funds you came in there with. And without at LEAST one or two credits, your odds of beating it aren't terrific.
So, say that you do beat getting jumped by every boss at once, congratulations! Now you can fight the silliest boss in the game, complete with a health pool over 2 times that of even the 4th stage boss, and moves capable of hitting for 3/4ths of your health in a single strike! He can also spam moves that hit fullscreen, and finding a moment to hit him isn't easy. If it was a 1 on 1 fight, it'd be annoying but doable. But that's just not this game's MO; instead, mobs constantly flood the screen! All the same extremely irritating enemies will swarm you nonstop, and killing them just makes more of them appear. Couple that with this ludicrous final boss, and you're left with an almost unintelligible screen to manage, filled with all different flavors of death.
If you somehow, SOMEHOW navigate all of that and come out victorious, then congratulations! You've beaten the game. And that's when that red flag I mentioned earlier suddenly hits you...
That's all there is.
No other modes, no time attack or boss rush, no randomized mode that shuffles things around, no online. There is nothing but a threadbare story mode that, even with all the difficulty leaps and frustrating design, will take you just over 2 hours to complete. But there's the rub; once you're done and realize that, beyond unlocking other characters, you just experienced the entire game...it's too late. You've played for over 2 hours, rendering the game ineligible for refund.
Now, yes, because of the "roguelite" nature of the game, if you only beat it once you are missing some content. Every level has its own 3 stages, so to see them all you'll need to play the game a minimum of 3 times (since the last 2 stages you pick always have all 3 stages in them). All told, that is maybe around 6 hours of content unless you REALLY want to play all the characters. And while they are kinda cool and have their own quirks, you'll still be taking them through the same exact content with little to no variation, barring whatever lite difference you can squeeze out of the powerup system at the end of stages.
For $25, I think that's a very steep ask. I understand the devs put their all into this one, and I really do commend what they've done here. Make no mistake, there is a solid core underneath the issues and barren presentation. But I have to speak as a consumer for a review, and as a consumer my time playing was unfortunately wrought with frustration and emptiness. For everything I enjoyed, there were 2 things that held that enjoyment back.
Please, if you've read this far, wait for a sale or a substantial update. That $25 can get you much more.