Storytelling

The evil pupil and his 5 associates killed your master, who is also your father. So go and kill them. The premise is extremely simple to understand. Which is fine as it isn’t the focus anyways. So let’s get into the focus which is the gameplay.

Gameplay

Stage design

The game has some gorgeous design, all 5 locations have a color schemes and themes making them distinct, on top of that all the mooks involved are also dressed differently. Even though the core concepts are the same, the dialogue is able to make everyone feel different, from the slurring among the initial druggies, to the professional bodyguards hunting down the player later. The visuals are outstanding making use of camera angles, such as the replication of the corridor fighting in the first stage, or the second stage with a narration of rain.

Many stages also have shortcuts later on, allowing you to skip past the stage to fight the bosses. I like the dilemma here as it is possible to clear stages using the shortcut to avoid potential death, however it means not being able to access upgrades at certain parts of the stage. It ensures that later on it doesn’t become skip the entire stage and fight the boss.

Difficulty

Overall I felt that the game difficulty curves relatively well. The game starts off with druggies who come in groups but use big telegraph attacks, then it moves on to introduce special enemies, finally it combines the special enemies as one. It uses an aging system that acts as the time limit of how many times you can die and generously saves the lowest age. This incentivizes me to try to clear previous stages with less deaths so I can die more in the later stages when the difficulty rises, however this also makes the player better at the game and improves their skills later on.

Enemy and boss design

For the game duration I am really happy to say that all the bosses feel distinct. Even if I feel that the bosses’ difficulty is not that well balanced. In my playthrough, I will rank the bosses’ difficulty as 5th Boss>3rd Boss»4th Boss»1st Boss>2nd boss

To cover each, the first boss uses relatively basic attacks, with some bladed attacks mixed in at phase 2. Whereas the second boss essentially acts as a more advanced version of all the mini bosses that the player likely fought in the entire stage. The third stage new enemy type does not feel related to the boss. I think she has some very long attack chains, as well as a mix of lower and upper swipe attacks. Surprisingly, her second phase is easier than the first because her attack chain becomes easier to read. The fourth boss uses long range attacks, however she is relatively fragile, I was able to beat her.

The fifth boss, in my opinion, strictly enforces a single playstyle that is contrary to how the mooks teach the game. For both the first and third boss, the bladed weapons encourage dodging instead since missing a parry means either blocking and taking chip damage, or taking damage. In the regular game group fights, parrying isn’t the best because most of the time there is too much shit going on to focus on one enemy. The fifth boss is much easier using parrying compared to everything else.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed my time with this game, because it taught me patience and a variety of playstyles. It is a game that truly rewards skills over all else, and everything is in service of the gameplay which I am glad to say feels good to play.