izigame.me

This game has a lot of good ideas, but it's not quite where it needs to be. It pains me to give this game a thumbs down. I really don't want to, but I must. You should consider this if and only if you are into indie roguelites like Curse of the Dead Gods, which I think is the closest comparison to this game. I beat it on my third run, and there are some things I enjoy and some things that need a LOT of work.
Ignore the reviews saying the combat is clunky/slow. It's not - it's intentional in the same way that Dark Souls and CotDG are. You need to manage your spacing and attack commitment to do well. Unfortunately, that also means that combat often boils down to finding a somewhat ranged attack and spamming it to stunlock enemies.
The good: you have a lot of combat options which each get their own elemental upgrade options, like your normal attack, weapon skill, boss transformation, valkyrie transformation, dodge, and parrying doesn't upgrade but all the rest do. The animations are flashy and combat looks cool. There are elemental fusions, akin to Hades duo boon upgrades, which are awesome. The metaprogression is meaningful and makes you stronger in between runs. As you pass through the 4 stages, the game gets progressively difficult. Upgrades that directly affect your skills are awesome, like getting a cold/fire fusion bomb on dodge. Controller support is excellent. Boss battles are pretty good, and enemy density increases as you progress.
The mediocre: there are only two weapons from which to choose, and it takes a few runs to unlock the spear, which functions similarly to the starting sword. More weapons would be good. Enemy models and level layouts are okay. Upgrades that affect your survivability, crit, statuses, etc. are so conditional to activate that they're basically worthless and make no difference in your run.
The bad: English translations of the dialogue are very poor to the point of being occasionally hilarious. I don't know if there is a story as I skipped the unreadably bad dialogue. I recommend doing the same. Some explanations of game mechanics are also poorly translated, so you have to intuit what they do. After one or two runs, it's a bit too easy to finish. It only took me three runs, which is bad for longevity. There doesn't seem to be an endgame system in place that makes you want to continue your metaprogression to continue unlocking things and taking on harder challenges. I suppose there's a way to increase the difficulty but no real reason to chase them. I haven't tried.
The awful: co-op mode doesn't apply to the normal game. There's some separate 'shelter' mode where your character's upgrades carry over IF and ONLY IF you haven't finished a run. So, you need to do 3/4ths of a run to get upgrades, stop the run and move to 'shelter' mode with a friend? Makes no sense, and it's some kind of unexplained side-objective + tower defense mode? I don't get it, and it's very poorly implemented. Don't buy this for co-op.
The fifth stage sets up an epic boss battle, and then the credits just roll with no big ultimate boss battle. Why?
To the developer: implement co-op on the main game - highest priority. This would likely change my opinion to a 'recommend'.