BLADECHIMERA

cool pixel art, warp mechanic is a nice qol feature, wish there was more to do post game tho

Another great (short) metroidvania from Team Ladybug! Each game of theirs adds a bit more polish, and they are one of the few studios that I follow, hoping for a new release each year. I liked Deedlit a bit more than this game, but this game is great! Much better pixel art and boss fights in Blade Chimera! If you are having performance issues where the game feels slow, investigate your actual system's framerate settings. I had my monitor at 4k 30 HZ, and swapping to a 60Hz 1080p setting doubled my framerate in-game. This seems like some hardcoded graphics setting issue that all the Team Ladybug games have. Investigate your system frametrate outside of the game, disable v-sync/tearing and you should have a smooth gameplay experience. If the game feels slow, it's probably just a configuration issue - I do wish they would find a way to automatically fix this so troubleshooting wouldn't be required,.

I appreciate that this wasn't yet another Metroidvania with Soulslike mechanics as Soulslike combat is an instant dislike for me but at the same time, I just couldn't get into it. I just found nearly everything to be annoying. Traversal annoying, regular enemies annoying, boss fights annoying. Mostly you are walking down long corridors shooting one enemy at a time in between doing annoying platforming puzzles, many of which require you to re-traverse the boring enemy corridors if you mess something up. After 4 hours of play time, I just never really got into the zone, so to speak, where I was really enjoying myself so I guess I'll go back and play one of the Igarashi Castlevanias or Bloodstained for umpteenth time. For reference: I have played Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth before this and found it to be "ok". I think I liked it slightly more than this one but I played it years ago. I think it helped that I enjoyed Deedlit's puzzle mechanics slightly more than the ones here though I find the ranged combat in both to be a bit of a "miss", har har. Ok that's my one joke for the review but seriously the guns in this game really didn't do it for me just as I found Deedlit's bow section…

Only a little bit into it so far but already it: - is gorgeous. - has more dialogue/story than average for this type of game. - has interesting mechanics that feel good to use. - introduces you to new controls and mechanics in a smart way that doesn't feel forced or artificial, doesn't hold your hand unnecessarily, and gives you time to just learn things by doing them. - is gorgeous.

It's a very good Metroidvania, I have played a lot of indie Metroidvania and I love very few of them (I didn't like Blasphemous btw) but this one's a solid, I'm really looking towards their next game

Another banger from Team Ladybug. A pretty solid Metroidvania, amazing pixel art and very fun movement. The whole story concept is really good, there were some parts that I absolutely did not see coming as they did. Not sure about the decision to put movement skills or the "teleport to any part of the map" ability behind a skill tree rather than usual unlockables on the map, but it wasn't too painful anyway, and once you get them they become second nature.