Cogen is a simple yet decently fun time mechanic game that could use some fine tuning in the difficulty department in certain ways but is otherwise a really well done overall dood.
Okay onto the meat of the review, so the first part was simple because this game is simple, you wake up as a girl with a talking sword, you're told you have a job to do and you go do it! it's pretty simple even in story although it's interesting and funny enough at times that it's totally fine lol dood.
The gameplay consists of simple sword play, you can do a three hit combo on the ground or a singular upward strike, a dash attack, a two hit aerial or a singular upward aerial and you can dash, dodge, (but only backwards) aerial dodge, double jump and finally you can rewind time, this is a particularly awesome technique but not without some later issues which I can't spoil but will say this, the game is already hard devs you really shoulda left that to hard mode lol dood.
Enemies are versatile sometimes to a fault in that you will probably feel like you're up against a brick wall and with only three seconds of rewind that slowly charges back up you will often find yourself in what seems like an impossible situation but surprisingly is not, some bosses on the other hand suffer from mechanics where you need to wait to even hurt them as they attack you at times relentlessly, you get used to them somewhat but it's frankly a nightmare at times, I'll say this, on the latter half of the game I had no gripes playing on casual as the conditions the devs gave became frankly more frustrating than fun in terms of difficulty, which is a shame because the bosses are cool in their own right and have some fun attacks and mechanics themselves along with their patterns dood.
Talking about difficulty I would say half way is around where the sweet spot of difficulty is where it is frustratingly fair to that level of fun but then it goes overboard in the later half, that said you do have casual mode which is a shame in it's own right because I don't like having to play easy modes and it really is an easy mode giving you three hits before you can go down, faster recharge for time gauge and a third jump, the start of the game had that perfect balance that they just kicked to the curb, is it possible? Yeah sure but I'd have chewed my fingers off in the meantime and that's where I gauge a game as too hard dood (To note I had some boss fights where I'd die and rewind 30+ times but let's just say you don't get that leniency unless you play casual later on)
Talking about how the bosses and even enemies felt varied, I think the devs did a great job there but in future games may want to consider doing the same for the protag, she felt boring overall regardless of time mechanic because everything else had a whole arsenal but you just swung your sword, it's fun enough but it just needed a little more dood.
Final stuffs to say is despite the balance issue the devs do something after you beat the game I wish more devs did which boosted my like for the game overall and that although I wouldn't spend a whole lot on this game personally, especially with how short it is, I do think it's a game worth people's time at a decent price range, I hope the devs continue to make games like these which are challenging but remember from this game to keep things fair in terms of genuinely hard difficulty vs obnoxious difficulty, thank you for reading and hope you all enjoy the game if you pick it up dood ^-^7
