In short, very nice mood and visuals, but gameplay is exceptionally frustrating in so many ways xD
In long:
The good:
- The art direction is very good. It has a very NES vibe to it.
- The animations and larger resolution arts are well rendered and I wish there was more interactions like the suplex ability to show things off.
- I like the horny, but I feel it's in the weird middle ground where there isn't enough of it to count as a lewd game, but there is enough of it to push off players that may not want it (that powerup gain animation, though). May need to pick the side.
- Sound effects all feel good, and the music choice as well (even if you didn't make the music yourself)
- The controls and platforming are responsive for the most part, but certain mechanics need work, as mentioned below.
The bad:
- Why is the only upgrade I get a more risky way to instakill enemies that I can already kill instantly with the blade?
- The pistol is not worth using. When it can hurt enemies, it's too weak and a sword works better, and where I wish I had it because the enemy is too dangerous to get close to, they have shields.
- The green walker thing that was mentioned by the guy below indeed led me to just baiting it out of the way and whacking the walls away. I can manage to kill it properly, but the dodge window is too tight to do reliably, and I need the health for later.
- The lightning power up usage is at the mercy of your pickups, and it would make more sense to get a bit of the gauge when killing enemies. It lasts too short anyway, and only benefits being speed (potentially also damage) and bullet immunity, it doesn't have too much of a utility with most enemies charging at you or using lasers.
- There should be more of a visual indicator that you are hurting the enemies/walls. The same type of indicator you have at the end boss with the lasers in the corners (the little poof). If I had sound off, I wouldn't know those destructible walls were destructible. At least you show when pistol is useless.
- Sometimes, controls would get stuck where I would keep moving right (mostly happened in the boss fight, and usually just after I revived) and if it happened on the wall, I couldn't jump off at all.
- Would be nice to have a pause button
- Wall jump height/speed is very small compared to the regular jump, feeling very un-intuitive.
- There should be a way to get off the wall without jumping upwards where danger may be (holding down and jumping to drop maybe).
- I didn't like the boob pushing minigame, because me and my keyboard don't like button mashing xD
(would have preferred if it was timing based) - Sometimes in stage 1-4 it is hard to tell which parts of the environment are walls and which are not. May be a tileset issue?
- Font is the only high resolution thing in the game, so it stands out. In my experience, low resolution fonts are a challenge to fit, but if you do it good, it will help the mood.
- That boss fight was very reliant on random chance due to the lack of options the player has. All I can do is hope he won't charge into me at high speed while bullets block my escape paths. I can't reflect the bullets, my hitbox is huge, my weapons do nothing, and all I can hope is he hits the lasers in the corner more often than me (I did beat him though, but I did not have fun doing it)
- Credits/extra page could really use a back button xD
All in all, there is potential here, but I wish frustrating gameplay was the least Ninja Gaiden thing about it :p
