Scarlet City of Devils

[b]TL;DR:[/b] Just an average run-of-the-mill metroidvania with nothing standing out, aside from fanservice. If you're a fan of the genre, nothing here will be particularly novel. If you're not a fan of the genre, it's not really a good introduction to it. I would give this game a '[b]mixed[/b]' review, if it was available as an option on Steam. As of now, 35 out of 36 reviews are positive and the only negative review so far is made by an idiot, so I'll make my own a negative one and focus on the game's flaws. 1. You can't rebind movement controls, only abilities-related ones. If you wanted to use WASD to move, it'll be impossible to set in-game. Most importantly, Jump is set to UpArrow and you can't rebind it either. Why would anyone put Jump on the UpArrow instead of Z or Space? 2. There are too many abilities and almost all of them are set to different buttons. At the end of the game you have eight buttons (not counting Arrows) which do only one given thing (or one main thing and completely irrelevant second thing, which is not worth mentioning, except for Gun). You have two separate attack buttons - one for quick attacks (sword) and one for heavy attacks (axe). Axe is large…

[h2]Scarlet City of Devils is a rather short but soulful Metroidvania that is remarkably charming in its presentation, perfectly solid in its mechanics, and an overall good experience for a couple of hours.[/h2] [h3]Story and Setting[/h3] SCoD takes place in the titular city of devils, “Elovelle”, in which players control Scarlet. A character with very little investment in the grander schemes of the supposed devil clans vying for control of the enigmatic Fountain of Elovelle. Her quest rather innocently starts off by beginning to do mercenary work for a local devil bathhouse but swiftly ropes her into a missguided ploy to heal “Ferality”, an inevitable state in which a devil falls into a feral state due to spiritual imbalance. The game is all over the place when it comes to its story. The game is far too short to really develop the bigger story surrounding the Fountain of Elovelle, nor really to develop any worldbuilding at all, as even the intro suggests much more strife among different devil clans than is actually presented in the game. The writing varies a bit between the different characters and overall suffers from side characters not really having any space to express…

I don't usually play these kinds of games but I really enjoyed this one. The exploration is fun, combat and movement is satisfying, and the difficulty is high while never feeling unfair, and it actually encourages you to improve as you play. The only issue I came across is that the achievements don't seem to work on Steam Deck, so keep that in mind if that's what you'll be playing on. Great game overall, and I'll definitely keep playing to beat the extra bosses and maybe do the boss rush mode.

I love the art style, the characters, the setting... but the game is just too difficult for me! The precise timing needed to survive against pretty much every enemy gets exhausting. About an hour in, I kept getting curb-stomped by the second boss, and it just didn't feel worth it to continue, so I refunded it. With some difficulty settings to let me make the game easier, I would happily buy it again.

Overall good but far from perfect

AyyEmTee Honest Review: TLDR: This game for being a metroidvania style game is very fun and can be partially brutal even with the demographic based artwork, Sale price yes, regular price maybe 8/10 GAMEPLAY: The gameplay does lean in heavily into the metroid style maps and maps you will want to try and memorise as much as possible if you don't want to be lost, the enemies will re-spawn once you have left the area which is good but can get overwhelming at low health situations STORY: For an indie game i did enjoy the story for what it was worth compared to other indie games of similar styles ARTWORK: Simply put the artwork is clean but there is more cleavage than a builders butt. OVERALL: For a indie thrill with jugs its a fun game for the target demographic only as i would not recommend as my first metroidvania game