Each one is a glorious bullet hell fever dream, and beating them necessitates learning their attacks and practicing the appropriate dodges and counters, often with lots of trial and error. It's particularly grating once you reach one of the game's bosses. It's simply not worth rolling the dice on that for the sake of a slight increase to your health (in a game that demands you simply never get hit anyway), one of many incrementally better guns, or one of the artifact buffs that, due to their specificity, I found often never came into play at all. Combat is so difficult and punishing that the wrong debuff or too much damage taken ahead of an encounter can easily tank a run no matter how far in you are. Runs are full of risk/reward decisions-should you open this chest, knowing it might give you a debuff? Should you enter this challenge room, attempting a tough fight for extra rewards? Should you brave that dangerous trap to get the health pick-up inside? The problem is, because of that focus on skill over RPG progression, the rewards are usually meagre, and the risk is often too harsh. It often feels like the best strategy is to simply rush to your goal as fast as possible, rather than taking time to explore and search for loot. Combined with the long length of runs, the result is that it's very possible to die after 40 minutes of play having made no progress at all in your overall goal. There's almost no persistent progression, and even within a run, boons that you earn frequently feel minor. Despite the roguelike structure, there's a clear reluctance to let the RPG elements traditional for the genre have too much effect on the very skill-based combat. (Image credit: Housemarque) (opens in new tab)Įlsewhere, unfortunately, the game struggles to find a similar balance.
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