Rating: 8/10

Oniken is a fun little platformer that pays hommage to NES titles such as Ninja Gaiden and Rygar; however, takes all the elements that makes those titles good and makes it it's own, even the difficulty. It has a lot of polish in all the right areas; however, it does have it's quirks. Here are all the noticable pros and cons I picked up while playing this wonderful, yet difficult game:

+ Has a fully animated opening cinematic shown before even seeing the main menu.
+ Super tight jump controls that feels just right.
+ Diverse repertoire of enemies offer a sense accomplishment when defeated.
+ Hidden breakable walls offer reward for exploration.
+ Level design polish in the form of animations on breakable things that normally wouldn’t be breakable, such as falling rocks. Some developers would simply program them fall vertically and damage the player accordingly; however, JoyMasher goes above and beyond, and as a testament to the quality of their game via polish, you can slash their rocks.

- Oniken launches in a windowed launcher that lets the player have access to features should have been handled in the main menu instead.
- Limited supply of powerups diminish the player experience, there are literally two: Sword Powerup and Grenades.
- Where Oniken did succeed in learning from it's predecessor's mistakes, it falls short with it's convoluted grenade throwing mechanic.
- Unbalanced gameplay difficulty makes for more of a three-yard hurdle by the second stage, forcing the player through three long unique sections of the game that feel like they should all three be their own stages.

Rating: 8/10 Oniken is a fun little platformer that pays hommage to NES titles such as Ninja Gaiden and Rygar; however, takes all the elements that makes those titles good and makes it it's own, even the difficulty. It has a lot of polish in all the right areas; however, it does have it's quirks. Here are all the noticable pros and cons I picked up while playing this wonderful, yet difficult game: + Has a fully animated opening cinematic shown before even seeing the main menu. + Super tight jump controls that feels just right. + Diverse repertoire of enemies offer a sense accomplishment when defeated. + Hidden breakable walls offer reward for exploration. + Level design polish in the form of animations on breakable things that normally wouldn’t be breakable, such as falling rocks. Some developers would simply program them fall vertically and damage the player accordingly; however, JoyMasher goes above and beyond, and as a testament to the quality of their game via polish, you can slash their rocks. - Oniken launches in a windowed launcher that lets the player have access to features should have been handled in the main menu instead. - Limited supply of powerups diminish the player experience, there are literally two: Sword Powerup and Grenades. - Where Oniken did succeed in learning from it's predecessor's mistakes, it falls short with it's convoluted grenade throwing mechanic. - Unbalanced gameplay difficulty makes for more of a three-yard hurdle by the second stage, forcing the player through three long unique sections of the game that feel like they should all three be their own stages.