izigame.me

Slave Zero X is a niche game with a lot of issues. However, if you are part of that niche target audience I have to recommend Slave Zero X because there isn’t really anything else quite like it. Slave Zero X has a unique combination of fast paced game mechanics and an underutilized art style of mixing 2D sprites and low poly 3D models.
I think there is a lot of untapped potential here, and I hope that we eventually see a sequel or other games like Slave Zero X.

Positives


I love the graphics and art style.
The combat is fast and unique. There are a lot of beatem up games out there, but none that control quite like Slave Zero X. Specifically, the parry system uses the parry system from Street Fighter 3 where you press directionally towards an attack at the right time to parry it. I have never seen that control scheme in a beatem up before and I want it to be explored in more games.
The music is good. Probably not something I will listen to outside of the game, but it fits the game well.
Runs on Steam Deck, but I ran into even more crashes on Steam Deck than I do on my desktop. Still, I was able to play the entire game on the Steam Deck.
I am really enjoying the difficulty of the game. A lot of people are calling this game hard, but I didn't think it was all that hard to complete. However, getting the "S" ranks has been really challenging so far, and I appreciate that. I am enjoying grinding out that "S" rank so far.
This game is Linear. There is no backtracking. There are no puzzles. There are no metroidvania progression blocks. I prefer linear games.


Negatives


Multiple bugs including crashes. The game hard crashes nearly every time I try to open the video settings menu. There also seem to be some bugs in the input handling/queuing such as I would sometimes lose the ability to move right until I moved left first which reset something allowing me to move right again. There is also some weirdness with the mouse; when I play in "windowed" mode and click on the game window to make it my active window, it scrolls to the bottom of the current menu even making my current selection off-screen, but the game doesn't support mouse controls in the menu at all, so why did they leave some mouse event listeners in there? It seems like a bug/oversight.
The game forces compound inputs like having to press then at a precise timing to trigger "EX moves" or + + to trigger a burst. However, there is no setting to disable those compound inputs in favor for another single keybinding instead. In a single player game like this there should always be granular input settings so players can customize the controls to fit their preferences, but now I will have to go to the trouble of creating a complex custom controller configuration in Steam.
The game also has some timing based inputs that I found personally annoying. For example there are two dashes/dodges: if triggered during certain actions it will cancel those actions at the cost of meter and perform a very short dash, or if it is not canceling another actions then it will perform the normal long dash/dodge that doesn't cost any meter. This just isn't very fun to learn, because I always want to perform the long dash/dodge, but sometimes the cancel dash/dodge triggered instead and I ended up taking damage because my character didn't move as far as I expected. When you get more experience in the game then you can learn to play around this but it is not a fun learning experience and the game doesn't even explain it, so at first I thought the short dashes/dodges were a bug rather than an intended feature.
While there are a decent number of combos you can perform, the game never really encourages you to use anything other than the basic , , combo. Your basic combo is fast, it keeps you on the ground which is safer than being in the air, and it still hit stuns enemies. I beat the entire game without learning any of the more complex combos, and you don't even need to use diverse combos to get "S" ranks as the ranking system appears to prioritize not taking damage over doing diverse combos.
The aerial gameplay sucks. The gravity is way too low. Your jump arc feels like you are on the moon with how slow it is and you can't turn around in mid air so you cannot parry and are extremely vulnerable. This is just weird considering how many aerial combos there are, but you just never want your feet to leave the ground.
Enemy sprites overlap. They are 2D sprites and there are often numerous enemies on screen. The problem is that some enemies have moves/states that grant them armor so they will not be hitstun, but the game doesn't render armored enemies over other enemies; it just renders the enemies based on distance/z-buffer. So you could be attacking a group of 10+ enemies, but one of those enemies is winding up an attack that cannot be hit stunned, but you can't see it coming because other enemies are being hit stunned and being rendered over top of the threat. Essentially there is visual clutter and the game should do something like render a red outline around enemies in groups that are winding up an attack.
The game has multiple sections where it obfuscates your vision such as a pillar being in front of the camera or a room with very little light. Preventing the player from seeing is just a bad way to add variety to gameplay in general. In my opinion restricted vision should only be in games that give you counters to it like RPGs that allow you to carry a torch so you can bring your own light. In this game there is nothing you can do about the low light sections; you just have to play through it. It doesn't feel very good. It feels cheap.
While the game is 2D plane, that 2D plane sometimes turns 90 degrees and the camera will whip around to maintain the side view. I really like this effect, but it just needs to be more gradual. Right now all the turns in the map are sharp turns, and that makes it really hard to judge distances or see enemies. The turns just need a wider arc so that it wouldn't distort the players view as much.
They included shops in the game where you can buy some upgrades and refill your health and ammo, but... why? There was no reason to include a progression system in this game. Not every game needs a progression system, and the fact that the one they did include here is so inconsequential is just leaving me scratching my head. Also when you enter the training room from the main menu, it will refill all your ordnance ammo, which will persist into missions, so you can go into every single mission with full ammo for free, so why are the shops there? The shop menus should be removed from the game, and if you still wanted to provide players the ability to heal at the current shop locations just instantly heal them.
There is a "Restart Stage" option in the pause menu, but it doesn't seem to work. It seems to restart from the last checkpoint more often than it actually restarts the entire stage.I have to exit to the main menu and in order to restart the stage from the beginning, which is annoying because it causes a loading screen.
There are leaderboards, but the UI is terrible. There is even a "find self" feature on the leaderboards, but it just flat out doesn't work. I love that there are leaderboards, but this UI needs a complete overhaul. In the current state it is nearly unusable.


Other Games On Steam To Consider


Ninja Saviors Return of the Warriors
Capcom Arcade Stadium: STRIDER
Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising (Note: Primarily a fighting game, but includes a single player beat-em up story mode.)
BlazBlue Entropy Effect (Note: Has 2D plane beatem up gameplay but includes randomized roguelike mechanics)