Skul: The Hero Slayer Review (Goat-kun Senpai)
Probably my most played roguelike ever. I won't say it's entirely balanced in it's mechanics (revenge is op and is practically necessary to beat the harder difficulties/some skulls just feel objectively better than others), but the way the system mechanics work with eachother and the feeling of empowerment once you find a build that hits is a dopamine rush that always hits. This is also a skill based platformer "hack and slash" i guess you could call it, where your skill is just as important as your build and the feeling of improvement learning how to dodge enemy attack patterns is very satisfying.
A standard run of skul from start to finish will run you about 40 minutes (it saves every room so you can quit and come back whenever). It has a sort of maplestory vibe once you get later into the run, bigger damage numbers and crushing waves of enemies with singular spells, while still having it feel really meaty as you do just from the effort you spent getting to that point. The boss fights are also extremely challenging and it feels good to finally kill one after being stuck on it. I would say this game lands on the harder end of 2D platformers, you really need to master the mechanics to beat the end game bosses.
Having beaten the hardest difficulty possible and pretty much exhausting all of the content of the game, I got a good 120 hours out of it. Good game. DLC is pretty nice too, just a gives more options for skull/items per run and a new final boss.