This game gave me flashbacks to Afterlife Gladiator. I hope there will be a caring, healer waifu later on too.
Anyhow, here are my observations:
Controls are a bit hard to get used to. The music was pretty loud at the start so i tried to get to the settings, which didn't work. At first i thought i was hitting the wrong buttons, but at some point i realized the settings must simply be missing.
The visuals and audio is great as always. Love the 2d art as well as the retro looking 3d. Combat music is a banger too, just like in AG. However, the combat music didn't stop when i died and the game put me back in the main menu. Starting a game again fixed it however (i guess there's only two triggers to change tracks, the menu not being one of them).
After finding the stick i went to equip it, which worked fine. Checking out the rest of the screen lead to a crash though: I accidentally unequipped the helmet and tried to go to the chest slot. At that point the crash happened.
Later i will try to beat those (well designed) monsters and see what happens afterwards. For a first look this is promising and carries over all the good Afterlife Gladiator DNA. Maybe the walking animation of Alexander is a bit dorky, but thats okay.