I was really hyped for this game, I’ve been following it for a while. There’s a lot of these 8-bit-style games around but this one looked really interesting. For a second I actually mistook The Messenger for this, quickly realized they were different games… The Messenger is kinda similar but has different gameplay focuses, I recommend it too.

Let’s go and see if my hype was warranted!
Developer: Mechanical Head Studios
Publisher: Yacht Club Games
Release date: January 26th 2021
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 (Switch version reviewed)
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer

Just looking at a screenshot of this game makes the influences pretty clear, but playing it added some extra influences that aren’t as clear. While it looks like a new Ninja Gaiden game, kinda, there’s some resemblances to the NES Batman game too, for example (some aspects of the attacking is more like Batman than Ninja Gaiden). There’s lots of interesting things you can do that give it a lot of personality. The graphics themselves are super nice. It’s “8-bit NES” style but with lots of big fairly detailed sprites, cool visual effects and a cool mechanical hellscape look to it, with labs and construction sites and stuff. This game looks very good, and for the most part the graphics mesh with the gameplay very well, so you’re not very likely to mistake something for a platform when it isn’t, and enemies tend to have a design that represents what they’ll do in combat, so even the first time you see an enemy type you should be able to figure out what kind of things they’ll do. The bosses look badass as well, for the most part.

The core of the game is simple. You’re this ninja robot guy who wants to save his master (he carries around a locket with a digital picture of her in it, you can look at it in the menu, I don’t think it has a use?). At first, all you can do is jump and slash your sword. The sword slash has a nice range to it that is not super long but not that short, and it’s pretty quick. Feels good to kill things. The jump is also fine, you have a good amount of air control. At first, that’s it. I do find it weird that there’s no ducking, at all. But your sword slash can hit in a decent arc in front of you so shorter enemies tend to be in hit range.

I find it a bit of a shame that you start with such a limited moveset. Jump and slash is fine when the level design is good and enemies are interesting, and that is the case here… but for more than half the game I felt like I was being limited in what I could do and not for great reasons. The funnest move in the game is the ability to run, and then do this super fun dash slash that goes nearly half a screen length and gives you invincibility frames. It gets even funner when you finally unlock double jumping, because the dash slash replenishes your jump if you kill something in it. The problem? The dash is something you get past the halfway point of the game. The double jump you get at the end of chapter 7… out of 11. So at that point the game gets super fun. You can stay in the air for so long with the dash slashes, you go super fast, it’s so fucking cool… But you don’t get to do that for most of the game.

So you start with nothing but jumping and slashing. You get shuriken which are… mostly useless TBH. You get an overhead slash that shoots fire. You get a Zelda 2-style down stab that actually gives you a bit of extra height which is super cool (and of course lets you bounce on enemies, there’s some really cool platforming you can do with this). You get a damage upgrade. You get wall jumps. You get a projectile parry (press the direction the bullet is coming from as it hits you, then slash it to send it at enemies). And finally you get the dash. In this order. Then you get a power-up for all of these abilities that allow you to charge and do stronger versions, as well as double jump. The parry is something to talk about because it’s a weird one. If you’re fast enough you can parry any projectile coming your way, but the timing is super strict. That’s definitely a big element of this game’s skill ceiling, and something I wasn’t very cool at doing. As is better use of charge attacks, which is something you get alongside the double jump. Some of the moves like throwing shuriken or using the upward fireballs cost SP. Some of the moves will use SP automatically when used if you have some available, leading to a stronger version of it (like the dash slash and the down stab). You can still down stab and dash slash if you have no SP, you just don’t get the upgraded versions. SP is a bit weird overall because you basically never actually need it to kill anything, it’s just a nice thing to have if you can keep some extra… but at the same time you auto-use it so much with dash attacks and down stabs you never do have any.

The levels are generally well set up to take advantage of whatever abilities you currently have, so the first level is simple and not too dangerous while later levels may have lots of holes and more enemies and such. Second level adds switches to throw your shuriken at. And so on. There’s some solid not-too strict platforming but there’s lots of traps to insta-kill you. Enemies are generally pretty easy to deal with though some require learning their patterns or having specific strategies/attacks that are good against them. You main attack is very good, so it’s your bread and butter to deal with most enemies. The one attack I almost never used was the shuriken, only a few enemies I found that it was a better strategy than getting in their face with the normal sword attack. Every level has hidden power-ups, which you can find by breaking walls leading to new screens, solve simple puzzles to access them or find hidden screen transitions in hard-t0-reach areas. These will increase your HP (if you find 3) or your SP (if you find one).  In some levels those may be originally inaccessible, but most beginnings of levels have teleporters that allow you to get back to previous levels, so you can collect power-ups you may have missed by replaying old chapters.

A fairly under-utilized element is the subweapons. You can find those by breaking some walls or crates. Most of them float around you and have different effects. Some may shoot projectiles, generate a rotating shield, increase your slash range, recover SP for free, there’s a really cool one called the Swag Blade which moves around similar to the big shuriken in Ninja Gaiden but you can hit it to send it flying in different directions… but those are pretty rare and they disappear if they get hit enough (or you, in the case of the extended sword range).

There’s several checkpoints in every level. Those are interesting in a way. Most of them heal you, but there’s a bit more to them. Enemies drop these orange things that you can pick up. Let’s call it money. For 50 bucks, some save points can be upgraded. Some of them don’t actually heal you and can be upgraded to do so. Some can be upgraded to provide you with a specific subweapon which can be nice if it’s the swag blade or the rotating shield. And some can be upgraded to recover SP. 50 bucks may not sound like too much when you first get to the point where save points can be updated, but soon enough 50 is harder to get by. Not a bad element, could’ve done without it pretty easily IMO. It’s the only use for money in the game, unless I missed something.

The boss battles are almost all really cool. I think the only ones I didn’t  really like were Scrambler and Biohunter which I feel didn’t quite work that well with the abilities you have at the time… though Biohunter is the only one I think that you can use the swag blade to fight, so that’s… something. Also the first fight against Apparitor is… dumb. WAY too easy, you just stand there and slash and win. The rest are really fun classic bosses where you need to figure out how the avoid their attacks and how to time your counter-attacks. Even the tougher ones like Mekadragon and the 3-stage final boss are a blast.

Difficulty-wise, this game will kill you. A lot. A lot a lot, in fact. And every death is gonna be your fault. Some of the deaths may “feel” cheap, in the same way deaths in Castlevania “feel” cheap when you get hit by an enemy and get knocked down a hole. I don’t mind those deaths too much myself. One thing I do find is that things deal a shitload of damage eventually. I found that I died really in some places, and there’s very few healing items. That said, even if the game will kill you a lot, it’s not hard. It’s difficult. You will finish it at some point. Because there’s infinite lives, you just go back to the previous checkpoint if you die and you get to learn how to deal with whatever obstacle killed you. If you’re not just shit at games, you will get through this. I will say though, some of the checkpoints feel rather far apart, while some feel way too close to each other. I feel some balance wasn’t reached here. Also also, some minibosses die forever if you kill them, even if your checkpoint is before them. Fun!

Overall

I’m not quite as hyped for this game now that I’ve played it, but I did REALLY enjoy it. My problem with it is mostly the fact that you don’t start with the fun upgrades. I mean, the best, funnest move in the game (the dash-slash) is literally the last you unlock. It’s so good that it’s basically criminal to not let you play with it for more than half the game. Once you get the double jump, you get only a few levels of the best gameplay in the game.

Fun boss battles, fun gameplay especially once you get all the good stuff, good music, really nice graphics, good challenge… It hits all the notes. It just has pacing issues.

I do recommend this game, but know that it takes a bit to hit its stride.