izigame.me

First the positive, because this isn't a bad game at all despite my rating. The game is gorgeous, very pleasing to the eyes with a ton of excellent animation animations, the art is clearly the best thing about this game and was what I liked the most in it. It's also a solid metroidvania with a touch of beat them up for the combat, that a positive, event if the movement system is the same old we already know (double, jump, air dash and wall jump, plus a few attacks to open doors). The combat is okay, with a few great ideas (juggling with enemies is fun), a few bad ones (I will give them late) but fine overhaul.
That's mostly everything I have to say good about the game, the writing is meh, the characters are interesting, but we don't learn much about any of them apart from their role. The story and the world are confusing and not in a good way (at least to me) it's not hard to understand, but many things don't make much sense to me. The game is also very buggy, even a year after it's launch, and that's not acceptable (map not updating correctly, enemy health bar not showing up correctly and some checkpoints not respawning me at the right place were the most common for me). And the worse would be a ton of questionable design decisions that wouldn't amount to much separably but made for a frustrating experience for me. Here is a non-exhaustive list of them :
-the parry doesn't interact with the rest of the combat system, you either use it or punch the mobs, but not the two at the same time.
-the jumps are floatty and there is tight platforming sections, I didn't note coyote time either with the jumps
-to compensate for all the tool of the player, late game enemies and bosses do an absurd amount of damage (90% of your health bar at worse)
-a ton of the strong enemies have resistance or immunity to the most fun aspect of combat, stagger, and are damage sponges
-two full zones are full of spike hazards that kill you instantly, wich respawn you at checkpoints (sometime far away), not the start of the room you're in.
-the map is impossible to complete, there is collectible enemies that respawn at 2 locations because they are part of a platforming section, but are still counted toward map completion (there isn't a success for them, but still frustrating)
-The map is in general not pleasing to use for a number of reasons. no minimap, and the full one is not very detailled so it's hard to see where we are. we can't put markers manually and it's awkward to switch from one level to another to see what places are left to explore or unlock.
-there are flying enemies that can hide INTO the walls and shout you from there
-switching weapons is awkward
That's most of it I think. The reason I do not recommend is because apart from the art, this a mid game at best and from a genre saturated as metroidvania is, I would recommend to find another one if you want to play one. It's not objectively bad, I did enjoy it and completed it entirely, but this was one of the least interesting ones of the year for me.