Recent reviews by Shakon_Krogen

Warning this Review is subject to change but this is based on current experience from a guy who plays too many metroidvania games

so the reason i'm giving this game a negative review is because it feels like a metroidvania that doesn't have a primary focus in anything, so an idea is hollow knight's gameplay is simplistic your walking speed isn't fast but it also isn't slow as that game's focus is exploration and platforming, most platformer focused metroidvanias are very fast paced movement and precise timings as for combat metroidvania's your typically slower in movement options but a bunch of animations for attacks and damage modifiers. the problem with this game is at first i thought this was a combat metroidvania within the first hour of playing because of the movement (also the tutorial is very vauge with some things it feels like is should be able to dash through enemies at a specific time but i just eat damage because of the damage box being on the sprite) this game's movement felt sluggish at the start and when doing some platform sections i just get annoyed because i either can't reach a platform that i should be able to or the slow movement doesn't allow me to

one of my personal favorite things in games is the OST and artsyle with the animations which this game succeeds in both.

the other problem is how much of a snails pace the bosses feel, in most cases i don't mind long bosses because i can read their attacks and patterns but i don't like taking 5-7 min just to get to the phase to learn the attacks to die within 5 seconds after... take Nightmare King Grimm from Hollow Knight for example most of the fight you're focused on dodging and hitting the boss on the possible opening and the boss takes 3-5 min to kill usually but they also have more than 3 attacks, in this game (i don't know how far i am pretty sure i'm not even a eighth in yet) i killed the sword boss in the spire to the right of the map and encountered the boss in the grave area and the worm one somewhere around the goblin mines and these two bosses i die at because the first phase just takes an eternity or the adds kill me because i'm focused on dodging the boss and waiting for a moment that i can deal damage

in short so far this game is a Platformer metroidvania with a combat focused metroidvania character and the two feel like they clash too much (doesn't help that the controls for both controller and kbm feel abysmal) i can only play kbm because the movement feels slightly better with it over controller (why can't i use Dpad for movement)

This game is great despite some of the negative reviews I've seen complaining about certain things that are skill based (aka a skill issue), though there are some things i can agree with but most of it is because i can tell half these people don't play as many Metroidvania games as i do. So i will go over both the positives and negatives by an experienced Metroidvania player.

A Warning to New Players as this Review will have SPOILERS for the Later Game.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Positives: The main focus of this game is the Combat that is very apparent when moving through the Outskirts to the main Castle, the combat feels nice to play and isn't too punishing (at the first half).

The Animations are great and the Special Weapon Previews heavily remind me of the Skill/Attack Previews in Castlevania Lords of Shadow.

The Artstyle of this game is Very reminiscent of a Classic Castlevania game.

The Parry System is one i see many complaints about but the thing people never realize is yes the Red Blink is an Indicator as to an attack you can parry but it ISN'T one you parry as the blink happens for a Successful Parry you need to block Last Second as most games have as a parry it's Not GRIME where you instant kill enemies by blocking with your head and having an easier window of performing said parry, personally i find the Parry system in this game to be completely fair except for it sometimes not registering attacks from rapid strikes (like the weird tentacle enemies in the lower castle).

The music is very Atmospheric and fits each area very well.

A complaint i often see is the use of Witchery's being mandatory to kill most enemies that's not the case as i use the main sword the most the only time i ever needed to use a witchery was during a boss fight (usually the doppleganger witchery) to give myself a larger window to heal and the first one (one that's mandatory) to break barriers.

I see a mix bag on Etelag's (the cat) quest as it's one you can apparently fail? i never failed it as i go out of my way to explore to find mirrors and collectibles that i'll never use so i'm more bias on this one as i didn't see much of an issue with it besides locking you out of a mirror temporarily.

The bosses are a fun fight though some seemed a little easier than others for the phases (my only issue with the final boss)


Negatives: As i mentioned just above with the bosses there's no reason for the Final Boss (Second Phase) to be easier than all the bosses and tougher enemies prior as his attacks did less damage, easier to parry and dodge and easier to get hits on.

The part that irks me the most was the Earths Bowels area (East) as it has the Flying enemies with Shields now i understand that by this point you would have other Witchery's to deal with them easier but i always decided to run with Scimitars and slowly bleed them to death since the standard bolt was practically useless on them since they were always a 45% angle above you so you couldn't hit the with that witchery unless you get on an elevated platform then cast (something that isn't present in the later portion of the bowels).

Another issue i had was the lack of Enemy Variety as the late game you would expect new enemies per area but the Castle Apex has all the enemies from the Outskirts with shields and higher Damage what happened to the bomb enemy in Depths why is that enemy only there and nowhere else in the entire game? each area needs more enemies for variety as once you know how an enemy works you kind of know how to deal with them for the rest of the game defeating the existing challenge with learning new attacks and patterns.

One of the other things that annoyed me a bit on the later portion was the way the Apex and Bowels were handled with enemy damage and health, what annoys me is when you fail to make something harder naturally so decide to use the same enemy and just increase the damage and health 5x and give it armor while being the same enemy like i mentioned above.

And don't remove Vendor NPC's without giving a second means of getting their pre-existing Stock as i had my inventory filled with memories that i couldn't use for 500 powder each because the NPC for it dissapears.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now one of the things you'll probably see on this review is my hours i'll tell you readers now i have 10-11 hours in this game the reason it says 5-6 is because i lost connection to steam a couple times so it just stopped tracking hours i have 100% the achievements in this game i'm working on grinding all the bone dust to unlock every witchery.

GO FOR THE ORIGINAL

This so called "Enhanced version" isn't what it's advertised it's much more buggy, the so called enhanced graphics are a downgrade from the original on max settings, you don't get the proper Borderlands Experience because of the Golden Keys and increase drop rate for rare weapons (like my overflowing vault of Legendary's in borderlands 3), and worse of all IT IS HEAVILY CENSORED Names are changed, Gore is toned down, some of the sentences are edited.

to put in short you want Borderlands? play the original and 2. you want easy mode with the most misleading child friendly gameplay? play this and 3

GRIME is a great metroidvania for those that want something that looks like something out of dark souls without being majorly tedious with dying and running back to where you died just to die again making a game that's 5 hours turn into 20 because of walking back to where you last died. the way Grime handles this is instead of penalizing you upon dying all you lose is a slight currency bonus which isn't majorly drastic as you will die a lot for some of the combat encounters

the OST is great as well as the scenery, the bosses are all fun to learn and the game has a New Game+ Gamemode that i would say is one of the few that does it correctly without it feeling repetitive like most games where you have everything you had previously just at the start of the game all enemies and bosses have new abilities and attacks and scale with you so you will become overpowered at a point but the enemies will become just as powerful

this Metroidvania is heavily Combat Focused where understanding Builds with weapons will become a guarantee with players at a certain point and there is a large variety of weapons that you can use in this game and it's to a point where no weapon is bad or good it just entirely depends on your play style and figuring out what weapon you flow with best

i played 8 hours... ish... total and i only made it to the last boss before writing this so here's my experience with the game...


it's very visually pleasing the art style is gorgeous and so are the animations but my main issues are the lack of actual exploration because all you basically get per level... 1 rune, 1 apple for a health increase, 1 god power and 1 save point (if you could even call it that). the levels have little to no enemies usually one kind (i'm not kidding Fe's area that the game points you to has a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Zerg Rush of enemies for one of the levels (yellow head) and the rest of the game has practically nothing for enemies.


now for the bosses... oh god the bosses the only one i found half decent to fight and was relatively fun was the one that's considered the Hardest being named Kaunan (red head) because you could get an idea of the attacks by looking at the ground for the fight main issue is 90% of all the boss fights is basically a giant bullet hell and you're so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ small that you might as well go to google paint get the pixel brush in blue have the background a redish brown and have half of the screen a giant green and then try looking for that blue dot fully zoomed out basically what your looking at when fighting the bosses there's way too much to pay attention to while you're so small that you can barely see yourself and the hit boxes overall just suck i've been hit by so many things that don't appear to hit me at all and other times where it looks like i
have to move closer to hit the boss and i don't and then other times the opposite.


the first boss: is just repetitive it's the same phase just boss get's slightly larger and attack start becoming impossible to avoid.

green boss: is overall annoying for lack of movement and proceeds to corner you on the edge of the map with vines that deal more damage than they should.

yellow boss: just spawns so many enemies that you might as well have a full zerg rush on cocaine while dealing with a giant captain america

blue boss: isn't particularly difficult it's just that why have a ice floor that actually has you sliding around uncontrollably while it can just walk on it perfectly fine and you can barely get a hit in on it.

purple boss: just turn on discord light mode or stare into the sun for 6 hours straight you'll have a similar effect to that fight

red boss: floor is lava... literally (i'm not kidding that is actually the whole basis of that boss)

final boss: unavoidable spears (and there's an achievement for not destroying any so i don't even understand how that is possible without destroying the bloody things) then phase 2 just uninstall... i'm not joking you'll want to rip your own testicles off with your teeth when reaching this part the boss is constantly moving spears are flying everywhere and you have to deal with all the previous bosses from before who's attack cover the ENTIRE arena.


the movement isn't great you are traveling large areas at a snail's pace even with the movement buff that lasts 5 seconds you can't upgrade or change weapons you're always stuck with the same Axe that's slow and doesn't do all that much damage to do basically anything to both enemies and bosses (only exception is the first boss) and the heavy attack takes a good 2.5 seconds to charge before releasing in which you'll get hit out of it.

the game is overall more of a thing that's better watched rather than played the art and animation is great gameplay on the other hand isn't that good if it had better gameplay it would be better, it feels like they focused on the art and ran out of time and rushed the gameplay which ruined it for me (mainly the final boss and purple boss)

i do hope this game does get a remake and fixes the gameplay and revamp all of it overall but because of how old the game is i doubt it'll ever happen if you want a good Norse Mythology game just go with Valheim it's more fun (unfortunately more grindy)

i really like this game the combat is fun it's difficulty scaling is reasonably fair the gun play is great because it makes you never stick with one thing every weapon is useful if you know how to use it i finished the entire game on tough difficulty (hard) and working on my last few levels (about 4) on madness difficulty (very hard),but the thing i really like about it is how unlike a bunch of other games that have firearms if you run out of ammo you have to either run around looking for more or swap weapons what i really like about this is that you can use LITERALLY ANYTHING as a weapon you can throw an empty gun at an enemy and either hurt or kill them... though the game never really specifies how to do the throw so you have to hold SHIFT + Q and press LMB/RMB. also another great thing IS THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MUSIC i literally cannot not head bang to half of the tracks they all fit so well with the chaotic nature of this game, the story is also really good, and my god THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HUMOR IS AMAZING you will want to play the entire game slowly and watch every dialouge play out (even enemy dialouge). there are a bunch of hidden secrets and easter eggs from the original animation and that just makes it all the better.

my main issue with the game is the friendly AI on madness is absolutly retarded instead of them following your lead half of the time and avoiding attacks they run into the attacks and make it so you might as well be doing the entire level with one character. the other issue is the gimik with the final boss's first phase the plugs are so inconsistant where you will throw the plug and it will go in half of the time so you basically have to be face first into the outlet just to plug the damn thing in. and in madness difficulty the enemies are VERY spammy espessially the 5th area of the game (mining sector) one of the enemies enjoy throwing a weapon that is an alternate to Sanfords Meathook that destroy's 1 corpus ((health) by this point you should have 4 or 5) and will fully stunlock you doing it until you're dead. also please make the second level in the 4th area possible on madness the final part is absolute cancer you have to fully rely on GOOD RNG IT'S BAD.

if you want a good experience and don't want to torture yourself normal or tough (hard) is a good start, ONLY MOVE ON TO MADNESS ONCE YOU FULLY KNOW WEAPONS PER AREA AND HOW TO CHEESE CERTAIN LEVELS.

game's great and all but WHY NO UPGRADES FOR CORRALS TO MAKE QUANTUM SLIMES STAY IN THER PEN!!!!!

i was able to play on the 1st try. but it sudinly froze on me. and i quited the game and whet back on but it cept on doing errors so i delited the game on my steam.