The Tarnishing of Juxtia

I just finished my first playthrough of The Tarnishing of Juxtia, which took me about 9 hours. Before diving into the details, I want to say upfront that this is easily the hardest 2D soulslike I’ve ever played. I’ve tackled plenty of tough 2D soulslikes and metroidvanias (including both Blasphemous games), but this one sits at the top for difficulty. It’s important to note that The Tarnishing of Juxtia is not a metroidvania. There is zero ability gating and almost no exploration. The game is extremely linear — you’re almost always funneled in one direction, with only a handful of easily found secrets along the way. Bosses and Combat Challenges The bosses are genuinely excellent and among the toughest I’ve faced in the genre. Traitor Saint Apathia stands out as the hardest by a wide margin — she took me well over 100 attempts across her three encounters. On the flip side, the final boss was surprisingly easy and I beat him on my first try, which felt a bit anticlimactic. Scattered throughout the game are numerous combat challenges, some optional and many mandatory for progression. A couple of them felt particularly brutal (borderline unfair), and after several attempts I eventu…

This game is not necessarily bad, and I can see some potential in it. However, there are quite a few things that need to be fixed and improved. First of all, the gameplay has several issues. As someone who takes Soulslike games seriously and never gives up until finishing a game, I had a really frustrating experience with this one. The biggest problem is the hitboxes. They are inconsistent and need serious improvement. There were several times when I dodged an enemy's attack correctly, but still got hit anyway. This made progressing through certain areas extremely frustrating and unnecessarily difficult. Hitboxes are a fundamental part of any Soulslike game, so this is a major issue that really needs to be addressed. Another big problem is the amount of damage enemies deal. Depending on the area you're in, enemies can take you down in just one or two hits. This feels unfair, especially when combined with the hitbox problems. Players need at least some room to learn enemy attack patterns and react accordingly. The damage should be balanced better so that the difficulty feels challenging rather than frustrating. The lack of animation canceling is another issue, especially for pla…

This is a great game for me. I'm fan of metroidvanias and pixel art, but so soulslike fan, and it has a very challenging, but also very fair combat. Timing is everything. It has beautiful visuals, great animations and soothing score. The backstory is a nice addition, but most importantly the design of enemies is great.

grabbed on sale, actually pretty cool game. really nice artwork, once you got used to the controls/combat it was actually really satisfying

This game is a mess. The character just walks on it's own from time to time. This leads to deaths that should be avoidable, the pause does not pause the game, when "paused" you can still take damage and are kicked from the pause menu or at least what I am considering the pause menu. The controls are delayed and this leads to more deaths

This game has terrible hitboxes. Multiple times I've dodged out of the way, but I still inexplicably take damage. I have completed several Souls-like Metroidvania games such as Hollow Knight, Silksong, ENDER LILIES, ENDER MAGNOLIA, Blasphemous, and AWAKEN - Astral Blade, which all handle hitboxes accurately and precisely.