Until You Fall Review (Faux)
UYF is a rogue-like melee brawler centred around a pretty rigid attack and defence system. You go through a sequence of maps interspersed with a boss every couple of stages, and at the end of each stage you get to select a reward (be that upgrades, health, or out-of-combat currency that you can use for the roguelike elements). The most important thing is that the game is fun, but I am only four hours in and are starting to see how enjoyable (and truly repetitious) the core gameplay elements are. I've played from the start on the hardest difficulty which should place some context for some of these criticisms and explanations.
The combat revolves around a guard meter and health meter mechanic where you have to deplete the opponents guard meter to perform a guard break, then you get to do a small combo to deal damage to their health. Each enemy has a preset number of specific strikes that can only be blocked by aligning either of your weapons in a specific direction, and once you get some familiarity with these sequences the game is pretty easy. This doesn't get much harder even with multiple higher difficulty opponents as they just circle you and let one opponent attack at any given time with clear movements in and out so you always know who you're gonna be attacked by.
The game has some artificial difficulty spikes that push your ability to react to the strike indicators, such as the Red Knights in the middle of the game who unleash a flurry of attacks when down at low health. This is fine as a design decision, because the weapons in the game are designed around you managing two meters and weapon "weights" to give you options. For example, heavy weapons move slowly but deal more damage on blocked attacks, so you can try to block a few attacks which will cause a guard break. Light weapons move as quickly as you can, so can be used to block and deal out rapid strikes even between opponent attacks. Each weapon has a different ability which is built via meter, and these range from freezing opponents to pushing them back to poisoning them with DoT. In the case of the Red Knights, you can take the early fight easy to build meter and throw out all of your abilities to blow through or stall the rage phase. It all makes sense.
Each of the stages pretty much has the exact same number and type of opponents regardless of the run, with very little deviation. Though you have the option to move about, the terrain and navigation is quite clunky, and to be honest I don't really know what the purpose of you being able to move in the game is. You dash to engage every time, and there's very little advantage between two different positions with environmental features since ranged attacks pass through other opponents.
Overall I do think the game is worth picking up, but be wary that there is likely only around 5-10 hours of content in this game - still noting that it is well polished and deserving of your time.