Iconoclasts

Painfully mediocre in everything it does. The artstyle is pretty decent but everything else: Movement, Level Design, Writing, The movement feels sluggish and unintuitive: Grabbing ledges is awkward, combat feels off and WHYYY would you bind moving through doors/interacting with chest to down instead of up??? This might seem like nitpicking, but Iconoclasts is so full of small mistakes in games craftsmanship, which just taint the whole experience for me. The saving system is needlessly punishing, you can only rebind controls in the main menu and a lot of information is conveyed unintuitively. Then there's the level design, which is incredibly uninspired and repetitive. The wrench seemed like it could make for some interesting platforming challenges, but no, the way it works is very static and it's used without much creativity. This game has the Metroidvania tag, but it barely qualifies as one. The (sometimes mandatory) backtracking is tedious and the upgrades you discover are unexciting to say the least. After the slog which was the second area, I was excited about finally receiving a new tool/movement option, only for it to be a weapon for an uninteresting combat system that is ab…

Iconoclasts is fun and creative with its engaging mechanical puzzles, wonderful explosive bosses, and snappy controls. The setting has bright graphics, and bold characters wrapped a story of ideological conflict and energy dominance. Most areas are puzzle rooms that you can use your various weapon mechanics to shoot and spin open passageways that will permanently stay open. There is some retracing but mostly you progress past an area to continue the story. The puzzles keep a good balance of difficulty, and are more about figuring out the mechanisms, without requiring quick reflexes, nor speed platforming. Most bosses are enjoyable puzzles unto themselves as it can be unapparent how to damage them with your various attack techniques. The equipping of "Tweaks" is a neat idea, but is only lightly utilized compared to all the Tweak components you obtain. It is a very clever, tightly woven game. There are Three levels of difficulty; Relaxed Mode, Standard, and Harder, and I completed the game twice to try two modes. I played my first play through in "Relaxed Mode" where you cannot die from damage and will not run out of air underwater or in toxic gas areas. It took 23 hours and …

Let's go, in-and-out, twenty minutes adventure >proceeds to be brutally traumatized by a 15 hour long gut-wrenching tale of religious fanaticism, surveillance state, class segregation, climatic disaster, violence and oppresion, body disfigurement, cosmic horror and existentialism. Oh, and cute, colorful spritework too.

"With two hands we show respect to mother. With one hand we show we respect another. Let's show respect." -Thank you Konjak

This game quickly became my personal favorite of all time. Stunning visuals, fantastic soundtrack, Smooth and snappy gameplay, and such a compelling story with so many characters bursting with life and intrigue. I've had my eyes on this game for several years now, and experiencing it for myself just further cemented my love for it. Hats off to the dev - it was clear this masterpiece took 7 years to make. Bonus points for being able to throw the keys at chests in order to open them, rather than walking up to them.

Ridiculously linear for a Castleroid and needlessly excessive with tugging on the player's heart strings