Slain: Back from Hell

Do you know what is the most important part of a game, is to play the damn game, this game is a Kaizo trial and error, you don't play the game you just create muscle memory, this was developed by people who never played the arcade Castlevania, the arcade Ghouls'n Ghosts or even Battletoads, people who think old school equals cheap deaths. If anything this was inspired by the late bottom of the barrel games from the Amiga and Commodore 64. Input delay to jump, input delay to attack, input delay to defend, input delay to walk, input delay to "evade", bad timing in the animations that throw off your reaction, enemy staggering is arbitrary, the playable character is slow, attack hitboxes are small and precise, there is no way to recover health between checkpoints, copy pasted level design, copy pasted encounters one after the other, hidden environmental traps that kill the character in a single hit, environmental hazards that can hurt you and are placed far away from the camera, platforms that drop down and never come back unless you restart from the checkpoint, teleporting enemies that can instantaneously reach the player afterwards, the game hammers about the parry ability but then…

This game sucked. Admittedly, I didn't finish it, but I saw enough. [list] [*]The combat was stale. There are basically two kinds of enemies - ones that you just attack, and others that you have to parry and then attack. Most of the enemies are a little on the tough side, so it's just better to keep running and not waste your time. [*]If you die, you get sent back to the checkpoint, which can be a ways back sometimes, especially after having been required to do something tedious, like a long platforming section or an annoying required fight. Not having any healing and living checkpoint to checkpoint makes the loop pretty frustrating. [*]There aren't really any weapons or equipment even though the game tries to trick you into thinking that you have options. [*]If you care about story... don't. The dialogue is basically just two people ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ at one another about how much one is going to kick the other's ass. [/list] Overall, the game is basically just a straight action platformer with no options and frustrating design. Not having weapon or equipment choices is fine, but the rest of the game shouldn't suck otherwise. 2/10

The art of the game is pretty good, that's it tho, the gameplay is pretty boring.

Hardcore platformer with retro graphics, excellent musical accompaniment and a good plot. The dark tones and surroundings complement the game perfectly. The game is not particularly long, but it likes to tickle the nerves, it constantly lacks a health scale).

The artstyle and pixel art is very good with the metal theme soundtrack. Controls can be slow and clunky where you can get surrounded and just ganked because you can't really attack fast enough to deal with the basic enemies and other enemies shooting projectiles at you. It's not a matter of being able to react fast enough but really just needing to deal with some enemies while you're stuck in an animation where you can't knock back an incoming projectile , being stuck in the animation delays. You'll try to get close to some enemies to dispatch them and they will shoot ranged attacks at you in close quarter that you can't really avoid unless you step back and wait for the attacks to happen where you waste time to attack yourself. There's no stagger or flow. The hitboxes are often too big to jump over stuff properly. All ranged enemies like gargoyle statues and elder skeletons are kind of an annoyance more than a challenge in itself. You will be swinging you sword to kill common skeletons and you won't be able to react, either jump or counter, to a ranged attack coming from the back of that row of enemies, the ranged attack hitting you while your sword is in mid-air when you can …

THE GAMEPLAY IS SUPER FUN. WORLD DESIGN IS BEAUTIFUL AND AWESOME. GREAT METROIDVANIA GAME. HIGHLY RECOMMEND