Angel's Gear

I really wanted to like this, but the lack of polish and general level of jank make it impossible to recommend. The overall aesthetic design and atmosphere are fantastically done. Enemies being dead for good after you defeat them once was a really interesting choice and could have played well with other design elements... if they were done better. The writing and storytelling is okay. The rest of the game, unfortunately, is less enjoyable. Default controller bindings are a mess. There's a good-enough option provided by the community through Steam, but that does mean needing to fiddle with it to understand what button does what thing since the game descriptions are no longer accurate (not that they were super readable to begin with). Controls in general aren't super tight and with a game as purposefully challenging as this, that can be extremely frustrating. A single dodge roll button press would sometimes lead to multiple rolls, completely breaking the flow of movement. Speaking of movement, general character motion is pretty slow, jumps are "heavy," climbing ladders is a slog, and a later upgrade that lets you reach higher areas is unwieldy to control. Related, there are far too many instant-kill enemies and obstacles for a game that controls so poorly. Deaths should feel like the player's fault, not the game's. I have some other more minor issues with the games including the minimalistic map, many bugs, and some UI choices, but those could be overlooked if the tactical feel of the game and underlying design choices came together better. If you want a challenging, horror-esque, slower-paced Metroidvania, play Blasphemous. It's better and goes on sale for cheaper.