May Assassination #5

Consider liking my review on Steam - it means a lot to me!

Crisp gameplay, graphics, animations, soundtrack and sound effects. The pacing is mostly great, with good cooldown moments between the action-packed levels. During these cooldown moments, there's a lot of good world-building, character development and incredible writing. So if you've read everything I wrote so far, you imagine this game is close to perfect.

But then we get to the main gameplay loop, where I believe the game falters a bit.

See, I love the moveset available. Slashing in different directions, slo-mo, bullet deflect, dodge roll, wall jump, everything you need is there. When you die, it's a quick reset and you're back again. What frustrated me were some of the level designs requiring almost pinpoint accuracy to get through. I can only think of Celeste when I think about these harder levels, but the difference is that with Celeste, the level was static. You could work your way through the level bit by bit. Here, there's some level of randomness with enemy placements, whether they see you or not, whether they decide to shoot or not, at which angle they shoot, and so forth. While an argument could be made that this keeps the game fresher and more unpredictable, forcing you to think on your feet, I think that creates a tension, a contrast with the former goal of being a precision action game.

I couldn't stop thinking how great and how frustrating this game was at the same time, and that is a shame. While it's still a great game that I'd totally recommend to people, and I absolutely loved the delicate dance that boss fights were (I wouldn't mind fighting 10 more phases of the Headhunter, what a great fight), I still find it hard to justify this game having a 97% on SteamDB and putting it above Elden Ring, Deus Ex, Stanley Parable, Rain World and other games. It's good, but not to the point I had hyped it up before playing it.