izigame.me

While I feel I should recommend this game on Steam, I cannot earnestly say I enjoyed more than 5 net hours of my playtime. The following is an address on nearly every part of the core game.
The story is strung along untill the very end, told through short, one sentence average notes that you read between level. Every time you play a level, play a minigame, or close the game, you are left on a cliffhanger. And no, I wouldn't say this suspense ever pays off or is realized. Because-
There is an ungodly number of levels in this game. My current playtime, 25.7 hours, is how long it took me to irreverently beat the game. That is, minimal side content, minimal minigames. The levels are all their own, with unique generation and layout and theming, and they are all quite nice, but I could not appreciate every area for what they were when-
The enemies are all very samey, and very uninteresting. It seems lessons were not learned when attempting to evolve what DOOM(1993) gave us. Early (first 7ish hours) enemies are mostly akin to the DOOM(1993) pistol and shotgun wielding zombies. Them, and your first taste of the bullshit to come. Another painfully common enemy is a massive ball of miscellaneous flesh that will toss exploding creatures your way. When you finally dump enough damage into it, it will explode, and release 3 or so more of the creatures. An enemy like this smartly placed with others is fun, but how they were regularly used in groups of their own made a simple enemy into a chore, where dealing with them was boring and ended with an active detriment to the player. Instead of relief at removing a hazard, I was forced to either give up a massive amount of ground or take damage, then move onto the next 3 of them still throwing little fucks at me. Bad.
Midgame (next 7ish hours) enemies evolve this idea better and worse. Now some enemies teleport. They teleport a lot actually. They teleport noiselessly, without indication, and right behind you. Now enemies will inflict status effects that can deal a DoT to you, remove your movement options (dash, jump, slowed movement), or even remove your weapon options(fire, alt, reload). Very punishing for the crime of taking damage. Especially when-
Health isn't very plentiful. Or- rather it is. See, this game contains multiple other games, little replicas of classics you'd find on the GBA SP. Through these games, you can purchase, and play to unlock, different abilities and many stat upgrades. Naturally, this is both good and very bad for the game, as it means a few things.
- The game is even less bound to it's core DOOMlike gameplay, and can buff the player arbitrarily to raise the scale.
- The game's scale is not bound to it's core, and can scale under the assumption you are playing these games. It does scale like this actually, which provides the following:
- You HAVE to play these minigames. It is how you unlock more health, ammo, ammo pickup, luck, damage reduction, weapon quality chance, and far more, all increasing by multiple times their base stat. You are FUCKED if you don't cave and grind the shit you didn't buy this game for. Speaking of buying-
- the 3 different currencies are used in the 3 different minigames to purchase upgrades, which you must complete a challenge in the minigame to complete the purchase. Gold is obtained from killing enemies,
finding secrets, and completing levels thoroughly will reward you with multipliers to your net Gold gained. Topaz is gained upon level completion (and some midgame level secrets have it iirc). Jade is obtained through the wave-base Arena mode. If you do not have these currencies, then you cannot progress in the skill system, even if you actually do want to play these games. However, after a certain point of NOT playing them, you will softly be forced to as the damage becomes even larger and even less avoidable as some enemies don't need line of sight to inflict massive damage in a large area, as more enemies will fly and teleport, as their attacks will seek around corners. You are gated for not playing the minigames, but don't WANT to play them too much because you don't have the arbitrary currency to. This either makes the skills gated by a tedious waste of time, or genuinely nice side content is constantly cut short because you're out of tokens in the game you paid for.
In sum? The levels are really good but there are way too fuckin many in a row, and NO you can't select which you wanna play and when*. The music is good, Andrew's real talented, but it lacks identity and cohesion with the gameplay. The sound effects all sound like they were obtained from a soundbank. I can't fault this too much, just not great. . . The voice acting? Protag's VA did good, no complaints, and Gianni is Gianni. The enemies? It's very easy to make enemies that promote good decisions and punish bad decisions instead of punishing you for playing at all. The weapon variety? Good! I wish a third of em weren't restricted to the last few levels. The skills? Unbind em from the minigames. Both are good, but one forced into the other ruins both.

Swung hard and bunted.

Felt like a waste of my time. Can't see myself coming back for NG+. I did not have fun, but cannot say it is unenjoyable enough to warrant a negative rating. Consider this an essay-length bitching to the devs that they will not see.