OTXO Review (Shanker)
If you want Hotline Miami experience, you probably won't get it here in the way you expect it.
Pros:
+ The gameplay is fun.
+ The soundtrack is good.
Cons:
- The fun from the gameplay is completely overshadowed by the amount of repetition you're expected to do. You will die a lot, but this is not the issue - the problem is that you'll have to look at the same 2-3 rooms again, again and again. It got stale after the first 4 hours.
- The repetition of the soundtrack due to you dying again, again and again will make you resent the music very fast.
- The story is complete and utter garbage. I'd say that it's mediocre, but compared to similar games it's a beat up corpse.
- The difficulty is absurd. This, by itself, would not be a problem if the game would respect player's time - but it doesn't. You don't get any checkpoints, and late game sections are difficult enough to where it's reasonable to assert that average casual player would not be able to complete them. Unlike some games of this type, OTXO does not provide you any difficulty-reducing accessibility options, aside from the "show enemy markers when X enemies are left" setting.
Let's address the elephant in the room
OTXO aims to provide you "roguelike"/"roguelite" experience, while completely missing the point of Rogue and roguelikes in general.
Roguelikes are popular, because they provide you a gigantic toolset to solve problems, and each run is often incomparable to the previous one due to their VAST amount of parts for procedural content generation. This, paired with the toolset the game provides, makes each run very distinct. This does not exist in OTXO, where, by the game's nature you have only two major mechanics - shooting and Focus ability. The drinks (enhancers) provide nowhere near enough replayability, because the game still feels almost completely the same, which is antithetical to the core of what a roguelike is.
This leads to gaming experience, that does not feel rewarding in the slightest. if you fail in a roguelike then chances are that you failed to utilize the entirety of the toolset provided to you. You also don't need to be an expert in all mechanics of a roguelike to beat it.
On the other hand, if you fail a run in OTXO, this is very likely because you haven't mastered the very limited toolset you've been provided, and you are expected to master it to actually beat the game.
I wish I could recommend this game, I really do - I liked the gameplay a lot - but I just can't. It's not worth your time and effort if you actually intend to beat it.