Alastor
New Year, New thread, New Me, New Games, New Lease on Life I hope!
Shinobi Art of Vengeance
This is an absolutely stunning looking game with fun combat but if I'm honest, I really started to dislike how damn long some levels were. If they were more compact, you'd still have the fun platforming and combat but they'd be closer together and not spaced by a bit of wondering about like a semi-metroidvania, something I'm not sure enhanced this game for me at all.
And as fun as combat is, it's pretty damn easy to the point of being pretty unengaging after a while, and why engage when the game design has you revisiting old maps with new powers and thus you can basically not fight them anyway? And the bosses were fun in the moment but they all blended into each other because of the low difficulty.
In short, the demo had me thinking this was a 10 but it's more like a 7 or 8, maybe Ragebound is the superior 2D Ninja sidescroller eh? AoV isn't bad, but I beat the PS2 Shinobi a few months ago and it was never boring the way this could be. I still have more stuff to do, it is a (sort of) Metroidvania after all but I'm not sure if I can bring myself to do it, the Goro Majima and Eggman DLC? Now that has me intrigued.