Just started playing it after
Unworthy. I have very high hopes in this one after falling in love last year with
Touhou Luna Nights from the same developer. The pixel art and animations are precious and the Ikaruga-style combat system seems very interesting, though the healing mechanic allowed me to easily sort of cheese the first bosses. I didn't like that it resorted too much to text boxes to explain all the basics. It also looks a bit linear, but we'll see.
Update 1:
I'm a bit over 60% of the map discovered. The pixel art and animations are truly fantastic, this game's a visual treat. Music is also amazing. The combat system seems interesting at first, but I feel like it's not working completely: You have 2 elements (wind and fire); Attacking with one powers up the other up to level 3. Being in level 3 heals you. While in fire mode you can absorb fire attacks to replenish your magic meter (same with wind). Getting hit makes you lose 1 level of your active element. When fighting regular enemies, they fall too soon if you're in level 3, but the game becomes a lot harder if you're below this level. This quickly spirals because as soon as you take one hit, the game becomes much harder and with every other hit, you deal less and less damage. IE, cruising when you're at max level is "easy", but if you make a mistake the game stacks penalties against your favour.
There is a weakness/resistance system with enemies, but it has a couple of problems: First, it's shown with some dice numbers on the bottom of the screen in a very weird an unnecessarily complex way. Second, only some enemies really take advantage of the element system, but it's nothing too complex as once you factor in level geometry or other enemies it can easily become a mess. Third, apart from fire and wind there are a lot of other elements you can use with magic, but most of the time it's just better to use the regular elements + your current magic (magic seems a bit OP) even if the enemy is not specially weak to it. Bossfights are good, but it's very easy to cheese them. If you get hit, just switch to your other element that is still at level 3, run away and heal, then go back to attack. With the bow and magic it's easy to keep your distance and attack minimizing risk. I'm beating almost all bosses on my first try this way and I'm not really needing to understand their attack patterns.
The combat system is good on theory, but I feel like there's some missing piece to make it click in practice.
Also, there are almost no differences between both elements movement-wise. Wind can hover and fire can make an invincible (sometimes?) dash, but you won't be using these skills too often (specially the dash). Same with the Symphony of the Night-y back-dash, it's almost useless. They tried to make both elements play differently but that would wreck the combat system, so in the end the differences became minimal and insignificant.
Exploration is a bit simple as well, you're mostly exploring linear paths with not too many secrets. The paths are often blocked by color locks that disappear when you kill a boss and hit the corresponding switch, but I feel like this could've been communicated better. Same with a puzzle that required getting 4 or 5 spirit keys: As I collected the keys I had no idea what they were for, until I stumbled into a room and they suddenly interacted with a device on the wall and opened the way forward. It felt very random, I couldn't understand the relationship between the keys and the device, specially because each key seemed to be for a specific door and not for a global puzzle. Apart of the double jump and the slide-dash, there doesn't seem to be any other ability-gates and everything seems to rely on these color locks and special doors. It's a it underwhelming for a Metroidvania.
So overall I'm enjoying the game, but when comparing it with Touhou Luna Nights, I feel like the combat has taken a step back in order to allow for the RPG elements, a bigger map and more Metroidvania-y elements, but these aspects haven't been realized enough to compensate for the loss of TLNs amazing combat systems.
BTW, the game lacks Coyote-time and it feels awful until you get accustomed to it and unlock the double jump. It's specially bad because a lot of jumps require you to jump from the very last pixel in the platform so they're easy to miss. Note that this is a Metroidvania, not a platformer, so you'll have to repeat some of these jumps a lot of times as you backtrack through some screens. They should've added Coyote-time and given more wiggle rooms to jumps.
Final update:
Wrapped up the game, I feel like I blazed through it. The game is very linear, so you won't use a lot of time getting lost and finding the right path. In fact the game is divided in chapters and, even if the whole map is connected, you rarely have to return to a previous area, except for some optional pickups. The combat system also favours that you steamroll over everything when you're fully powered up (and conversely, it completely destroys you in a blink if you're not at max power). Bosses are very easy to cheese thanks to you begin able to infinitely heal yourself and having enough movement skills to be able to run away and safely heal or fight from a distance at any moment. I think I beat 90% of all bosses on my first try
I also didn't have to make a lot of hunting for secrets, I was at 97% of map completion without doing anything special.
Overall, nice game, there was nothing "bad" with it, but I'm a bit disappointed after how good Touhou Luna Nights: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth expands on the Castlevania elements by reducing the gameplay system focus that TLN had and, in my opinion, it loses more than it gains.
BTW there is also a boss rush mode which I didn't even try because the last-to-final boss is actually a boss rush of everyone in the game so...
. So I'm tempted to do another run.
