Bloom Thrice

I tried a handful of games that all felt and looked very similar with [b]Princess Pomu[/b], [b]Witchroid Vania[/b], [b]Star Rift Saga[/b] and [b]Bloom Thrice[/b]. Despite them all playing competently enough, I found them all to be kind of boring and artistically unappealing. [b]Bloom Thrice[/b] is the more minimalistic looking of this bunch. I admittedly didn't spend much time with, but I was already struggling to see the appeal. As was evident already in the trailer, too many screens are sparse, with little in them, too much empty space like that makes for a boring experience. I saw no light at the end of this tunnel to encourage me to play further.

A neat metroidvania with interesting worldbuilding, abilities, and sense of humor!

I genuinely cannot wait for another game from Neo Pun. I recommend this game every time I get talking to someone who has "played all the MVs". This game is deceptively good, in more ways than I can quickly summarize. I will say this as an underlying fact of the game: it progresses really smoothly, and linearly, in all areas. Traversal, combat difficulty, platforming, story etc are all handled properly. The exploration is there and rewarding without being overly excessive with backtracking but still rewarding players who remember to check back after they get a new ability The combat skills allow for a good amount of experimentation on how you want to build your character, which lends to the combat in the game (once again) being much better than I could've predicted it could be, given its simple presentation. Bosses become surprisingly complex, hectic and are not easy, but you would not see that coming, based on how the game starts off The same can be said for the story. It was much better than I could've predicted and became something worth looking forward to as you moved forward. I always forget to review this game, but I had to, just to remind the devs that I loved their…

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I think this is pretty good.

I enjoyed Bloom Thrice, it shows its inspirations and has fun unique touches to it. there are some fun bits that I am unsure were lost in translation but keep being endearing. the game has its difficulty but did not feel frustrating personally (at least up the normal and good endings, but it makes sense on the bad ending stuff). The game has simple movement, as you mostly just get more dashes, and I appreciate that one of the skill cards counts as an extra dash with special properties (or more if you use the skill card system to its limit) allowing some early out of the way exploration. I also greatly appreciated the quality of life features like the ability to mark the map with symbols so you know where resources can be found or where things you are unsure about are, while a thing a few games do, its still not widely adopted by Metroidvanias at large. Also while it may seem super small I further appreciate the tells about when to start duplicating saves and the like, it ends up reinforcing the generally caring attitude of the narrator through out the game, and in general the game feels kind and caring towards the player, which is reflected in the story and dialog (including at …

Bloom Thrice is a bullet hell Metroidvania set in a cutesy "peaceful world" where the player is encouraged to "play as they please". The bosses here feel very Rabi-Ribi inspired with a repertoire of bullet hell patterns. The approach to combat is very different however, with simple sword swings that throw short-ranged waves that can cancel out enemy projectiles, a pair of castable skills that range from offensive attacks to defense or healing, and a selection of passive badges. As a Metroidvania while there's plenty to do off the beaten path and powerups to scour the world for, the main storyline is actually quite linear. The progression abilities are also rather uninteresting, which is just an omni-directional dash and adding more dashes, however this doesn't erase the shine of the adventure. The setting is very vibrant and upbeat, and the NPCs are very actively aware of gaming terminology, such as one guy having a love of in-world spikes to the point of owning a museum. Its quite reminiscent of Undertale in some ways. However, the path to the second and third endings is where things start to shake up a bit... The only big negative I have to say is that normal enemies have too…