PsiloSybil

When is a game "too hard"? I'd say never, if you have the right concept of what "hard" means. This game is never unfair. There are no kaizo blocks or things that demand absurd reaction times, just patterns to learn and relatively precise jumps to master. People have no empathy for those of us who have played so many games that normal difficulty becomes boring. They expect to be able to beat everything they buy, so they end up saying they don't recommend a game like this simply because it's too hard for them, even though it offers a free demo so you can gauge the difficulty beforehand and it openly advertises itself as brutal. I think anyone can get value out of this game. Even if you don't finish it, you should be able to make at least a little progress without an unreasonable amount of effort. The presentation is excellent too. At first glance you could mistakenly think it borrows too much from Crash Bandicoot, but it actually has its own identity and is tasteful with its inspirations. It's also nice to see mechanics be brought to their logical conclusions instead of immediately being abandoned in favor of more variety, like many modern platformers tend to do.

I'll be up front and say that I did not complete this game. I made it all the way to the final boss after doing nearly everything else before finally deciding I wasn't having enough fun to justify the frustration. Let me be completely clear. This is not a bad game. I'd say it's a good game. But Steam asked me if I would recommend this game to other players, and I wouldn't recommend a kick to the groin or a slap to the face, so I'm not recommending this game. I don't really know what this game's mission statement was, but if it was to be a linear platformer that makes the original Crash Bandicoot look like Hello Kitty Island Adventure, then it succeeded. Nothing wrong with a good challenge, but I think this game takes it a few steps too far, especially with the bosses. I mean, first boss ain't so bad because you can be very proactive if you're skilled and understand how the fight moves, but every other boss has you jumping and dodging some really tough patterns as you wait for the boss to finally reveal its weak spot. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for some questionable hit boxes. There were a lot of times where I died and I would go "Okay, that's my bad. I screwed that jump up." However, it felt like roughly 10% of my deaths were a mystery. I'd make a jump in seemingly the exact same way as the previous time and somehow would die. Other times I'd die and not know which of the three things on screen touched me. The confusion was what really made me frustrated. 10% might not sound so bad, but you die fast and respawn fast. I sometimes died 200 times, and by death 120, it really started to eat away at my motivation when a mystery death hit me. So, would I recommend this game to a general audience? Probably not. At some point, it no longer feels rewarding to beat a hard level, but rather like a relief. I recommend this game only in two scenarios. 1.) You're a tough-as-nails gamer looking for a real challenge where there is a real possibility you will die upwards of 150+ times attempting a single level (thank the devs for infinite lives in standard mode) 2.) You have a friend who thinks they're hot stuff cuz they play From Software Soulsborne games, like Elden Ring and you want to show them what an actually hard game looks like by gifting them this game. Like I said, still a good game. I could do with more information about what is actually killing me in this game and better hit boxes, maybe make the bosses more fun to fight like the first one was, but other than that, it's good. Just too hard and frustrating for me to honestly recommend to most players.