Eternal Core

5/10 As the game is free and only just released (meaning it has scope for improvement), I recommend the game but I also recommend you read the entire review. The game makes a strong first impression. As soon as you load in, you’re greeted with a beautiful cutscene and a clean, stylish UI. The main menu is especially well-crafted. Once you’re actually in the game, though, the presentation becomes a bit uneven. The field of view feels set too far back, which unfortunately diminishes the impact of the otherwise lovely graphics and makes the world look less detailed than it actually is. Audio is another area that feels noticeably unfinished: there are no sound effects for attacking at all. Punches make no noise neither when thrown nor when connecting with an enemy, which removes a lot of the weight and feedback from combat. The game also drops you in without any kind of tutorial or onboarding. It’s recommended to be played with a controller, but even with that in mind, the opening moments are confusing. After encountering the flying enemies, it’s unclear where you’re meant to go next, and the presence of invisible textures you can stand on in that area adds to the sense of disorie…

Honest opinion, I see what this game was going for and I appreciate the time put into the art, environments, character designs and all of the different mechanics for the player to interact with the world and engage in combat with enemies with. That being said, the game reads as an "action-adventure platformer" and ends up being more along the lines of a "perfectionist/rage platformer" due to the sheer amount of enemies battering down the player, who can only as much as jump. If movement was a little more fluid, and attacks either had a little more range or the player had the option of a ranged attack, I could see myself getting past the second level. I speak more on the fun factor than the nitty gritty details, but it is true that there's something to be said about the FOV, as well as certain effects on the player/enemy when being attacked that just don't rub the eyes the right way. It's a good shot, I'd raise this game above "steam slop", and I believe that if this game is still being worked on, that the game has a pretty good chance of raising its fun factor.