Yars Rising

Yars Rising is a fun little mix of simple MetroidVania-style exploration and stealth with arcade minigames from the days of the Atari 2600. All the basics of platforming and exploring are done well as you might expect; WayForward has a lot of experience with the format. You'll pick up new abilities that open up new areas and (thankfully) there are fast travel points to help you when backtracking. Stealth is mostly "move between safe places while they can't see you". You can move quietly but you don't really need to; alerted enemies give up very quickly as long as you get out of sight. The hacking sections are the arcade minigames: most are variations on the Atari 2600 Yars' Revenge, but there's also a bit of Centipede, Missile Command, and Space Invaders in there. It brought me back to my days in front of my little TV and black-and-orange joystick. The music was done quite well; there's a good variety of synth-y tunes (more than I'd expect from a game like this) and nice touches like having it fade in and out when you go into hiding places. I thought the voice acting was fine and enjoyed having Emi throw in a little comment every once in a while while wandering back and forth, though (reading through the reviews) not everyone did. Saying it's a "little" mix was intentional: it's not very long. It took me a bit more than 10 hours to get through with 100% exploration. There is a bit more to do if you want to run the game again in the more difficult mode and/or do some additional arcade minigames, but don't expect 100 hours of content. A couple of minor complaints: while you can hit Alt-Enter to play in a window, the game has no way to change the size of the window and it goes back to fullscreen while the game starts up and whenever you go into the Options screen. Some cutscenes cannot be skipped when you return after failing a boss fight. (You can rapid-fire through the speeches.) Overall I thought it was a fun little combination of Shantae and Yars' Revenge and can easily recommend it. I can understand if you want to wait for a sale, though.

To be honest, this one is not close to games like Ender Lillies etc. In general it was okay and I got the game from a friend as a present. But I myself would not really buy it. Not for 29€. It has some cool stuff in it but it just feels a little unfinished or ... "basic". The main character is well done, I liked her ... the other characters were also fine. The voice acting was fun listen to and they have a lot to say. Sometimes it was just too much. What really drove me nuts: - The controls sometimes felt clumsy and delayed and unprecise. I had several difficulties to grab edges and climb them. Especially the part with the metal press parkour. Boy, I was close to just smash the controller. Also the controls underwater just felt awkward. You cannot swim you just jump in slow motion etc. Sometimes instead of jumping the character used the "fly" skill. - There is no fast travel in the game. You have to walk aaaaaalll the way back and forth all the time. - The minigames (hacking-games) were a nice idea but imho it was not well executed. Some "minigames" felt like torture. Especially since you die with only one hit. - The "pong" part right before the final boss ... great god ... whose idea was that? I mean, if you loose 10x then adding a "skip that part" button would be cool. You fight enemies through the whole game and in the end have to play pong. And it was not easy ... not for older people. ;D - The dialogues were sometimes too long. - This game has also quite some loading times between sections. I do not remember having these in other games. I think Ender:Magnolia had this too where you could switch areas but it loaded faster. The annoying part of this was that sometimes if you loos a boss fight, you get a loading screen and start next to the last saving-station ... then you have to walk like one screen to the right and boooom! another loading screen, then you have to watch the boss animation and only then you can fight for 30s before you die again and repeat that ♥♥♥♥. I think this one triggered me the most that there was no "retry bossfight" button where you could instanly repeat the fight. - Btw. the "pong" game ... you could not abort it ... once started, you had to play it. No "start" and no "options" buttons to just exist/rage quit it. I think, the game has some potential for a sequel. The character is done right and the costumes are cool and stuff. The skills are kind of interesting (nothing special tho). They just need to fine tune the controls and add some QoL stuff. tl;dr I think this game is a 33% clone of other metroidvania games like Ender:Lillies etc. and not worth the ~30€. In a sale for 10€ ... maybe ... the difficulty is too crazy for kids but the mechanics/gameplay is too lame for adults. It was just not for me ...

Waaaaaaaaay too much of the characters just talking at you. I made it as far as a character saying "lol" out loud.

If you enjoy Metroidvanias and classic Atari games then you'll absolutely love this. When I started playing this I didn't see how it could possibly connect to the original game, but it does it in such a brilliant way. At first it seems pretty casual but the deeper you go the more challenging it gets, and the hacking puzzles get more devious. It's definitely more Metroid than 'Vania, and the inspiration is clear, unlike most Metroidvanias I didn't get lost or stuck once - and the weapons feel great! Now I've 100%ed the main game I can't stop playing the hacking puzzles!

ハッキングゲームが糞 で突然始まるテレビテニス、誰がこんなの求めてるんだ？ 開発はちょっと頭がおかしいんじゃないのか

Utterly boring level design, dull combat, and yawn-inducing power ups make this a Metroidvania I could barely stomach for more than an hour. The dialogue is terrible across the board, but that’s the least of this game’s problems. And the hacking mini-games…my God. Almost every door you unlock has some variation of a very easy Space Invaders shoot em up. I was tired of them by like the 5th one, and I’d imagine they spam you with them constantly until the endgame. No thanks. Soundtrack is great though. Listen to that on Spotify and you’ll skip over needing to play this game to enjoy it.