Yowza, what a game this is! Of all the things I was expecting from Pico-8, it wasn't a stylish character-action game that reminds me of Scourgebringer, but here we are!
As if it wasn't impressive enough that the game has an incredibly stylish combat system with tons of weapons movesets, satisfying hit feedback, and rewards aggression and variety with resource gain, but the game was no slouch on the menus and presentation, which are almost as if not more stylish! While the story and vibes were certainly edgy as all heck, it did escalate the game's coolness effectively, and I enjoyed getting the chapters as I played. Fascinating stuff and I absolutely loved comboing enemies enough to get my meter and then blast them all to hell: never gets old!
Having said that, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows:
*For one, I had a bit of a rough first impression as I really didn't gel with the two starting weapons, being the sword and the spear. They just had such an awkward moveset with so many diagonal stabs: when I'm trying to attack an enemy above me with an upwards heavy attack, the last thing I want is for my weapon to stab everywhere BUT above me and completely goddamn miss! Thank god I had the patience to stick with the game and eventually come upon the axe and hammer, which felt great due to their much more intuitive movesets!
*While the feedback for attacks was very satisfying in terms of hit-freeze and visuals, I was really disappointed with the sound, more accurately the complete lack there-of. Really felt like it extinguished some of the satisfaction.
*I had a much more fun time fighting the boss gems instead of regular enemies, as with regular enemies, it was so annoying with how they fly all over the place, particularly with the way they completely ignore some platform collisions but don't in other cases! It was just impossible to tell how the heck they were going to pinball around and by the time you try to intercept them, they reset and you have to sit on your thumb and wait for their damn invincibility to wear off, argh!
*Power-ups were a mixed bag: obvious ones that increase your dodge distance or invuln, give health or meter regen on kills, increase size and so on all felt immediately great, but the other ones like hitstun, duration and recharge were tough to even notice at times and felt really vague, unclear and unsatisfying.
Again, despite the issues listed above, really great stuff you got here, and I'm having a ball!