Clockwork Ambrosia

I played the demo for this game and it was kinda fun, so I bought it a while after it's released. Turns out, the developer couldn't fix the gamebreaking bugs that were found and reported on the forums back in may/early june. At some point your ability to heal (mend in game terms) simply stops working. At first only certain armours are affected, but over the course of the game every single one breaks and you can't heal anymore at all. There is a work around to this - switching your armour, but what it does is completely refills your armour (the part of your HP that can be healed), which means it makes your HP infinite as you can reequip your items at any moment, even mid boss fight. But what about the game itself? It's kinda ass. Back in may people were complaining that it doesn't give you any direction of where to go and people are getting stuck. The developer acknowledged that, but still there are plenty of places in the game where you might miss a minor detail and get stuck aimlessly wandering around. Besides that, the core of the game, weapon customization, is very bland. You have 4 weapons and you can apply various modifiers to them, which sound cool. But some modifiers are …

This metroidvania has one of the most open worlds I've ever seen. This is normally a good thing, but when paired with a near complete lack of warp gates in a giant world, it becomes a backtrack nightmare of epic proportions. level design is also really poor in the mt yore area. The armor bug is also really annoying.

THIS IS A GAME THAT ASKS YOU TO WANDER AIMLESSLY. Know that going in. You’ll wander a lot, you’ll be rewarded in lots of small, interesting ways, but it will take patience, lots of map-marking, and lots of gear tinkering. Each time you find the next major progression point, the game will scope up exponentially. This game delivers on that thrill more than any other. I don’t think I’ve ever had my opinion of a game bounce around so wildly only to somehow land in absolutely loving it. The launch of this game was quite rocky for quite a while, but it’s in a very stable, very easy to recommend state now, and the core content of what they delivered was incredible from day one, even if I didn’t see it at the time. The best thing about this game is its gear and weapon customization. There are so many possibilities here, it’s honestly staggering. I wish there was an option to randomize all of it because I expect builds to be wildly different. You can find setups that bust combat, puzzles, or even exploration in some areas wide open. I can’t wait to replay this game in the future in this full stable state and have the experience of building from nothing, and having a better idea of where t…

Great Metroidvania. Huge worlds, crazy customizable weapons, fun lore, balanced fighting, responsive controls, and lots of collectibles. Big recommend.

A surprisingly meaty (20 hours!) Metroidvania that I enjoyed a lot! I saw the lack of direction and fast travel listed as the primary reasons for negative reviews, but I personally did not have that problem at all: I LOVED the open-endedness and non-linearity of the map, I actually enjoy it loads when a Metroidvania lets you get lost in every single area you can manage to access. However, if you take a moment to talk to NPCs, they do give pretty clear textual hints as to where you can progress. Fast travel is actually available. The "main" method takes a bit to unlock, but there are several other forms of fast travel available. Additionally, you unlock shortcuts (gates, switches, keys, et cetera) as you progress through areas that make backtracking much, much faster. Beyond that, there's a measure of detail and care put in to the pixel art and presentation that I absolutely adored, and you can concoct some truly outrageous combinations effects on your gear, and your weapons, especially as the primary reward for exploration is additional modifiers and modifier slots for your weapons, gear (which is visually represented when you equip it!) with meaningful, gameplay-impact…

I enjoyed the variety of areas, enemies, optional content, weapon modifications. All in all, great game, would recommend. Only downsides, its near impossible to actually fill out the map because some high areas and getting the upgrade components is too much of a grind, even with gear that boosts drop rate.