I'd love to reccomend Titan Souls, I really do, the single recalling arrow gimmick is a great concept and is fun at times, the designs are awesome, the boss fights are creative, but...
Many gameplay aspects are horribly executed and make it a frustrating, unfair experience rather than hard, unlike many other souls-likes.
First of all, the control scheme can't be changed in any non-external way, and it's annoying especially when paired with the fact that default control are arrow keys, for both movement and shooting. The game itself tells you a controller is heavily recommended, but being on PC, I don't like being forced to use one just to make my experience better, most games usually offer the option to switch control schemes for this exact reason, because user comfort can vary, and while that wouldn't fix the 8 direction shooting (cause this game wasn't made with the intention to use the mouse), it would at least allow for more comfortable and smooth movement.
Speaking about movement, and second of all; On PC, X is the button for both dodging AND running, but unlike other games, you can't dodge roll upstairs, sure, it's not a big deal... except it is because there's an enormous amount of stairs in this game, and 99% you'll press X to go faster back to whatever titan you're fighting, they'll be up some stairs, and since you roll first before running, no matter what, you'll smash your skull head first into them and stumble backwards, which gets increasingly frustrating within time.
Third of all, the map doesn't help either, and only aggravates the prior issue, it's massive and diverse but you won't really appreciate it since most of the time you'll be confined to whatever zone you're fighting titans in, and, even worse, you only get 1 checkpoint/save station/whatever per area, which you respawn on, and you'll have to make your way back to the boss that just killed you many, many times, and again, cause of the rolling up the stairs thing, it gets very annoying.
Finally, there's the bosses, like I said, they're creative and very diverse, with each one having a different mechanic, but they all only have 1hp, hitting them in their weak spot (anywhere else and your arrow deflects), will instakill them, but if the boss so much as breathes on you, you're toast. I wouldn't be complaining about this if it wasnt for the fact that to kill the majority of bosses you need inhuman, split second reactions, usually dying a few dozens of times just to kill them in 10 seconds next attempt, and that sucks, they feel more like reflex tests or puzzles than real bosses. And the fact you HAVE kill them so quick takes away a lot from the game, mainly the music; since you both die in 1 hit you'll most likely end up listening to the first 30s of each boss's soundtrack, whether they kill you or you kill them, and that's it, and it's a shame, because both the enemies and their themes are very unique.
Overall, it's a great concept and I'll still play it, but a few crucial parts have been poorly executed and anything in-between the the actual boss fights ends up being tedious.
