Neon Blood, a cyberpunk adventure with absolutely gorgeous animated retro art, highlighted by beautiful lighting and detailed environments…. But I can’t recommend it. I really loved the aesthetics, the vibrant world... but other elements left me loathing the thought of even loading up the game and the more it went on, the worse it got. Sadly, pretty looks just aren’t everything.


Pros

• Stunning animated retro-pixel art set in a cyberpunk universe

Cons

• Extremely boring, repetitive gameplay
  
• Braindead combat

I tend to review wholesome, puzzle, horror and narrative-driven games. If that sounds up your alley, please feel free to check out my curator page Cookie Reviews.

Set in 2053, the streets are filled with people addicted to Spark, corruption is rife, and it is up to our protagonist, Axel McCoin, a police detective to overthrow the evil corporations and being peace to the Cyberpunk city.

The story starts off interesting with some mystery but quickly diverts into a very monotone one-way adventure. The writing just feels…off? It’s difficult to explain but the pacing feels unusual and even though there are some deaths on screen (or a corpses at least), the feeling of the game feels very junior? Add this to the gameplay and overall I was beginning to feel quite sleepy.


Warning: Negative influx incoming.
I love stories. I love cyberpunk/futuristic themes. I love the art.. but I do not love this game’s gameplay. At roughly 3 hour runtime, I don’t think I have ever felt so bored in such a short game. Let me tell you why.

Repetitive gameplay & exploration

Entire settings of towns are reused constantly so you have to back track through them. Gametime is dragged out by the most obnoxious and tedious quests such as search all over the map to look in all dumpsters, now… do this again! Repeat. Talk to X. He says I should talk to Y. He says I should go inspect something right beside him. Walk one step, do that. Character dialogue says I should now go back and report my findings to X. SORRY WHAT? Combine this with the dialogue only taking a few seconds and it not really telling anything of substance and this formula starts becoming very cumbersome.

Ok, a bit of pointless runaround quests is pretty normal, that’s ok, I can forgive that. But no, that is the entire game. Barely anything during exploration can be interacted with besides some notes (and cats which I did like). Meaning that you are really just fulfilling the main “quests” and going from A to B and back again. There really doesn’t seem to be any depth to any of your characters actions. Nothing to engage players in the absolutely gorgeous world around them. What a damn shame.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3418612171

There is a sewer section which I suppose is like a puzzle, but it is infuriating. Not because the puzzle is hard, but because running all over the place to slowly open a dialogue to flip a switch and then run all the way back x 10 is just not my idea of fun. To make matters worse, they reuse the exact same area, the exact same puzzle TWICE. I was around 20 minutes from the games finale, and I just had to call it quits, I couldn’t do it anymore. My gametime is also much higher than it should be because I just wasn’t having fun but was determined to finish the game, so I kept leaving to do some other task to distract me.

Combat

Now, the combat. Well, it’s turn-based and you have items and skills to deploy. You can attack, defend etc. Except, none of this really matters because you can do whatever you want and you likely won’t die. You have unlimited heals that can heal 50% of your health. Your skills can also be used to unlimited amounts and do not have any cooldown. Items have a cooldown but you’re so OP that it doesn’t matter. If in doubt, just heal practically all of your HP back in 1 turn.

QTE's

The last gameplay feature, QTE’s. I don’t mind QTE’s actually, contrary to popular opinion. However, the QTE’s here usually happen at the end of boss fights and cue some really cool fighting animations that I want to enjoy in a cutscene (without stress), yet I have to pay full attention to make sure to hit the right button and not watch what’s actually happening. Also, sometimes the background is far too bright that I couldn’t even read the prompt, which was a problem.

This barrage of criticisms actually saddens me. The game has so much going for it but the gameplay itself just killed any smidge of fun to be had.


Neon Blood’s saving feature is definitely its gorgeous visuals. The vibrant city. The animated cutscenes, although they are too short to properly enjoy. The game is beautiful. But beauty really isn’t everything and this experience was a testament to that. At least for me.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3418061524

There is no voice acting but the soundtrack was perfect at bringing the universe to life and giving that vibrant cyberpunk feel.

This game was played using a mouse & keyboard, and with the following PC specs.:
AMD Ryzen R5 7600x 5.4 GHz
32GB DDR5 5200 CL36 RAM
Radeon RX 6800 XT
2560x1440 resolution
NVMe 3.0 SSD
Windows 10

Neon Blood is a short game that lacks in almost every element besides its visuals and soundtrack. It’s an odd game to talk about as I think of it as “well-made”, I didn’t experience any glitches and the project is quite ambitious, but I just did not find it fun. The art is extremely detailed and there’s lots of different elements to it, but if the gameplay is just repetitive and overly simple, it can really bring down the entire experience, which it did for me.

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