Well, I gotta say I was not expecting this. Trailers for this game weren’t very exciting, so I almost ignored it. But a few people on the twitters were putting up gameplay videos of it and I thought it actually looked better than the few trailers I had seen, so I figured I’d pick it up (plus, with the coupon deal on EGS a couple weeks back, it was 30$ Canadian around launch). Well, I fell in love with it. This game is good.

As to what this review is, I’m more willing to call it an “impressions” post rather than a review if you want. The reason is that I’m not 100% done with the game, but also there’s a bunch of games coming out very soon and if I don’t review this great game now, I might forget to do so. So it’s basically a review, but I do want to be clear that I have not gotten the true ending.

Well anyways, let’s go!

Developer and Publisher: Sloclap
Release date: February 8th, 2022
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5 (PC version played)
Genre: Action Martial Arts Beat ’em Up Aging Simulator

Review

At the start of the game, you’re some dude going through a dojo to fight the master there, alongside 4 other people. After you beat the master, there’s a perspective change, you start seeing things as the child of the master. The man you were previously playing as, Yang, kills your father and kills you. Game over! But no, you received a talisman of coins kinda… thingy. And it has magical powers that revive you. For the next 8 years, you train to get revenge on Yang and his group. At age 20, you go off for what I guess is a day, to fight each of the bad guys in their hideouts. And that’s about it as far as the story. Not much to talk about here. Nor is there really graphics-wise, though I will say I quite enjoy it when the game starts going supernatural. If there’s some real complaints graphically, it’s for the functionality, as the camera system likes to give you really bad visibility.

What there is to talk about is the gameplay.

Combat is the core of the game. You have 2 attack buttons, one for light attacks and one for heavier attacks. There are different combos based on button presses, and you can aim at separate enemies by just pushing the movement in their direction. You have a button to pick stuff up (and also holding it lets you punch an enemy in the face if they’re laying on the floor). You have a button to vault over low-enough objects or jump up certain walls (not something that happens a lot, don’t worry about it). Attacks will hurt both an enemy’s HP and their “Structure”, which is like “Posture” in Sekiro. When an enemy’s Structure bar is filled up, you can press the 2 displayed buttons for a cool kill animation. Some enemies MAY fight back during that animation, which actually buffs them AND heals them, making them hard to deal with and basically giving you an extra enemy to deal with. But killing enemies this way is how you heal a bit, so it can be a risk worth taking over just punching enemies to death.

Just quickly to note is Focus Attacks. Focusing slows down time a bit so you can take a bit of extra time to think or whatever, but the most important part here is the attacks you can do from there. Those attacks take 1 to 3 focus bars (which fill up as you dodge attacks and hit enemies and stuff). Primarily, the strong sweep attack is extremely strong, as it will always knock an enemy down. But you do need to learn that attack. More on learning attacks later 😀

Attacks can be blocked, parried, dodged, or avoided. Holding the block button will block the attacks, though it may negatively affect Structure. Timing the block button to certain attacks causes a parry, which deals a pretty strong amount of Structure damage. Parrying can be pretty tough and some attacks just plain can’t be parried, but it’s definitely worth getting good at. I named dodging and avoiding as 2 different things, and that’s because they kinda are. Dodging is what I call the dodge roll mechanic. You choose a direction you want to dodge roll, and you dodge roll. Enemies tend to step towards you pretty fast so you may need some continual dodge rolling to avoid longer combo strings. Avoiding is different. While you’re holding the dodge button, pressing directions will not make you avoid attacks. left and right avoids are the same thing and largely function like avoiding down. You need to time your avoids, which is fairly similar to timing a parry but probably a bit easier. Why you would use avoids over dodging is pretty simply that it leaves you right in front of the enemy, ready to strike them right away once their attack is done, while a dodge roll is useful for getting away from a situation but not for actually beating enemies where you are. One note on avoiding is that attacks that hit high or low must be avoided correctly, so avoid down for high attacks and avoid up for low attacks. There is a really stupid annoying exception, with the fat guy enemies that have a grab attack. That attack goes downward towards your legs but you have to avoid down rather than up. It just adds a weird bit of confusion, something that could have been fixed.

So these are your options in combat, in addition to grabbing items and using those (either to directly hit enemies or to throw them).  You tend to fight 2-8 enemies at a time, so the dodge roll (and holding the dodge roll button to run) does have good uses when you get too surrounded, that way you can hopefully split up enemies a bit and turn an 8v1 into something a bit more favorable.  One thing to note is that many of these options are also things enemies tend to be able to do as well (minus focus), so you have to react correctly if an enemy avoids, dodges or parries. And most of your attacks will probably get blocked anyways if you don’t find good openings to attack, so you really can’t just mash your way to victory.

That’s what makes this game great, it’s the fact that it’s very difficult and really requires you to learn how to use your defensive and offensive options, and, beyond that, actually getting good at actually doing them. As you keep playing the game, you’ll get better at dealing with all sorts of enemies, and more specifically the boss battles. There are “only” 5 levels, but I’d say the first 2 are the ones you’ll spend the most of your time in as you learn the game. There’s also a “true ending” which you can do after you beat the main game, I’ve not done this. Despite the low amount of levels, there’s a lot of game here, and, despite replaying the same levels over and over, it manages to not feel repetitive to a fault.

So one unique system here is aging. Using that talisman thingy with the coins, when you die, you come back to life right away, but you age each time you die. How this works is that, when you die, your death counter goes up by one. Then you have a chance to use EXP to buy skills (or try to permanently unlock), and when you’re done you either give up or get back up. This brings you back to exactly where you were in the battle, but ages you up by whatever the value of your death counter is at. So if you die 3 times in a row, first death ages you 1 year, second ages you 2 and third ages you 3. So 3 deaths means getting 6 years older. What age does is act like a life system (lol). If your age passes 70 years old, this means it’s your last life, and you game over. Every 10 years does have some effect on your stats, namely reducing your max health but increasing your damage output. So at 70 years, you hit hard but you die if you get shoved a little bit, pretty much. The death counter CAN go down, by killing specific strong enemies, or by using an upgrade that resets it.

Age becomes a really weird system because the age you finish a level at is the age you’ll start the next level at the age you finished the previous one (there’s a bit of jank there). So replaying an earlier level (which you WILL do your first time through the game. A lot) has a lot of advantages, namely that, if you finish the level at a lower age, you can replay the next level also starting at a lower age (and hopefully so on). I did say there was jank here, and it comes when you finish a previous level at a higher age than the last time. So let’s say your best level 1 finish is age 22, but you just beat it again at age 26, going to the second level will make you do the run at age 26 with the upgrades you chose in that first level. If you game over and retry level 2 again, you will be back to your lower age, so 22. Not too sure why it works exactly like it does. One thing that is meaningful though is that you can re-spec your character, which may explain the jank. So if you put a lot of points in the healing boost and Structure level but no longer need it because you’re good at the game now and need more Focus bars and more Focus recovery when you avoid attacks… just replay all the levels and put points in different places than before. Fun! So age is a cool indicator of how well you’re doing at the game. If your best age you beat is, like 33, clearly when you finally beat it at age 23, you’re doing so much better. It’s a great system with a bit of jank that probably shouldn’t be there.

There are 2 ways to power up other than aging. First is these statue thingies, there are a few of them in each level. Each one gives you one point to put into a specific upgrade screen. There are 3 upgrade categories. One can take points as long as you’re young enough (per skill). The other category is a cost in level score. And the last category is a cost in EXP. Each skill can take several points. These are things like more weapon durability, better healing for kills, more Structure, a half focus bar (you can put 4 points in that one for 2 extra focus bars, very useful), ways to recover focus or Structure, and 2 points can be put into resetting your death counter… and a couple more things. Since you can re-spec, it’s good to experiment with what you feel makes the most sense to you. The other way to power up can be done when you die, or when you finish a level and get back to your house. You can use EXP to unlock moves. These can be a bit passive-ish, like the ability to kick things on the floor to trip up your opponents, to being able to catch things people throw (VERY useful against boss 3), new focus attacks (strong sweep is a MUST), and new combo attacks, or attacks that you can use in specific situations (stuff like “press X while the enemy is being pushed back” follow-up attacks). How this works is that, if you unlock an attack, you get to use it… until you go back to an older level, which resets all your moves… UNLESS you permanently unlock them. Each move has 5 “permanently unlock” things you have to buy, and when you buy all 5, you permanently unlock the move, even if you restart from the first level. Those ARE permanent, so even if you don’t manage to fully unlock a move, those “permanently unlock” things you paid for are still considered bought. So this is where replaying comes in, as you’ll probably want to permanently unlock a bunch of these moves. Some of these are extremely useful and will make further attempts of, say, level 1, a bit easier (alongside the fact that you’re getting better). And one thing about moves is that there are age-based tiers, so if you get too old you can’t learn certain moves anymore, which makes grinding level 1 for EXP a valid strategy for move unlocks, since you get back to 20 years old by playing level 1 again.

Overall

This game is very fucking good. I have it already noted as a potential Game of the Year candidate, I am not fucking around with this one. There’s just something about a game with such tight, amazing gameplay design, where every element pretty much just works perfectly alongside every other element. It’s not that often that we get a game that works this well. The combat is super good and gets better and more fun as YOU get better which is fantastic. There’s a lot of incentive to not just get good but truly master levels, since a low age at the start of a level gives you more leeway as far as how much you can die in later levels. It’s such a clever system. It’s a game that’s hard as balls, but it does it in a really good way that encourages getting better.

Are there complaints? Sure I guess. The age system when going backwards through levels can be a bit janky, and sometimes the camera fucks out on you a bit, and I once got a glitch against the second boss where I got stuck in a pillar and couldn’t hit him, and the story is very minimal (if you’re weird and actually care about story in a video game)… But none of this really matters overall. What matters is that the gameplay is fun as hell.

I will say this is a weird one for me as far as how I’m playing it, because, even though I love this game, I have trouble just keeping playing it nonstop. It’s more of a “go into it, play a couple of levels” kinda game, at least for me. And I feel like I enjoy it even more each time I play it.

Easy recommendation on this one, get it! Like, right now.