Critadel

Good grief what a wild ride this one is. It's really good! Then it's really bad! Then it's REALLY good! Then holy exploding cows, Batman, it's REALLY bad! Critadel is a game that had an amazing amount of good ideas, but feels like it wasnt tested at all, or perhaps it was tested while everyone was high on like, all of the drugs. I cant imagine how else it could come out in this state. Let's start out by talking about the controls a bit. They are very good. They are very bad. That doesnt make any sense, but I find it to be true anyway. In terms of movement, jumping, and all of that, everything is extremely precise, you're not going to find any moments of feeling like your character didnt do what you wanted. In addition to that, there's a superb dodge system, one of the best implementations of the idea that I've seen. You can dodge roll, or you can perfect dodge roll, which happens if you hit dodge the moment the bullet would hit you. So, a parry system, but unlike so many parry system, it doesnt feel hyper awkward to use, doesnt require you to hit the button slightly BEFORE impact, and isnt on a separate button. You can dodge in mid-air, too. But of course you …

Runs feel very same-y for a roguelike. Not my style at all. This is basically an inferior Neon Abyss.

Critadel is a very competent roguelike, with impactful combat, fair difficulty, and different mechanics. The game basically revolves around having weapons of similar types to boost those weapons qualities. For example, having 3 rifles will increase the rifles cadency, or having 3 pistols will increase the damage of the pistols, etc. It's pretty different and works well, for the most part. The story is a Nothingburger, the tower was seized by some cultists. Now you must go up the tower to save it from said cultists. In the way up you make the optional objective (that I did by accident) and beat the final boss that has a gazzillion different forms but is very easy overall. The gameplay is pretty impactful, feels good to shoot, and some weapons are mind-bogglingly fun to use, and the game has a decent metaprogression system so you won't get stuck for long on the same floor. Some enemies are boring, but most are a lot of fun to fight. The runs are a bit too long tho, 10 floors, almost 1 hour for each run. It can get tiresome if you play without using the teleporters (like I did). The pixel art is very charming as well, I had a little trouble seeing some bullets through the detailed …

This is a good game

Like others have said when looking at reviews, this game has a really good core loop but its systems leave a lot to be desired. I have a lot, but here's the most important ones I could name: The weapon durability system I tried very hard to enjoy, but honestly it just incentivized me to only use my starter weapon since it doesn't run on durability. This one is probably the most subjective, maybe others enjoy it but I felt that weapons with durability ran out pretty fast, and since the starter guns have unlimited durability and aren't bad at all I would only use it for all scenarios. The trait system that guns have is also a system that is a good concept but doesn't feel great in practice. All guns have traits and provide buffs if you have enough that share that trait. However, because you can only hold nine at a time, if you want to optimize one of them you're forced to hold basically only guns of the trait you want to buff. This and the fact that weapons have durability (and not a lot of it) I just hoarded guns that buffed stats good for my starter weapon. Dodging in my opinion also feels pretty bad. Your normal dodge feels good and nothing out of the ordinary for a game genre …

it's alright. buy it on sale if you like one-off roguelikes but a lot of factors prevent me from giving a positive long term reccomendation. i would say most of my 10 hour playtime is "one more time" frustration and not a legitimate drive to play more, and I could do a lot better than that with $20. the gamefeel isn't too bad (just don't use a controller) and the autochess synergies are neat in concept, but lots of small annoyances add up. 9 inventory slots for weapons seems like plenty but when the highest tiers of buffs require up to 7 slots of dedication it makes creative build-crafting really hard. some of the synergies are more minor or support effects (ice weapons give you econ, melee weapons give you damage resistance for example), but taking advantage of these without severely sacrificing damage is almost impossible unless you get very lucky with rare drops. lategame gets VERY tanky, and if you don't have any damage synergies you'll absolutely feel it. bosses felt incredibly off. they have very simple patterns but lategame start dealing extreme amounts of damage, which you COULD argue promotes mastery, but in most cases all it amounts to is whenever you bump into a new b…