izigame.me

TL;DR:
I would like to preface all of this by saying, this game is not for everyone. BUT if it's for you, it's damn good. The movement feels great, the weapons and upgrades make a significant impact in combat, and the levels are a solid mix of demanding and fun.
Pros:
+ Art Style:
Not sure what you call it, but the art style of the game is nice. It's crisp, clean, stylized, pixelated, etc etc. There's a hell of a lot going on at one time, but I never had an issue understanding where my character was or what was happening.
+ Gameplay:
The game truly shines with it's gameplay. It has more mechanics than you can shake a stick at. Fire your primary, active reload your primary for stronger shots, fire your heavy, melee to regain ammo for your heavy, active reload your melee for a big attack, absorb crystals, active reload the absorb for a better absorb, with enough crystals fire a massive heavy burst, parry, hold parry into a time slow, etc etc. There's so much going on it really can brain break you if you get out of a flow state, but man it all works so well together. When you get going it feels amazing.
+ Equipment:
Your primary is typically dual weapons of some sort, your heavy is a larger weapon with limited ammo you have to refill, melee is a different type of sword, armor gives you different bonuses like dashes/protection, and then the last slot is some sort of item that boosts passive effects (more healing, farther absorb range, dash cooldown, etc.). So far the alternate unlocks have made a very noticeable difference. Choosing between a shotgun and assault rifle for your heavy weapon might not seem that different, but the enhanced fire can really change the game. A massive energy ball vs homing shots vs mortar fire really changes how you engage swarms of enemies. More healing from crystals can help you eke out a win on an 8 minute level with tons of stage hazards. Things like that. Customizing your equipment and seeing what fits your playstyle and what you encounter in the level has been really fun and good for replayability.
+ Equipment Unlocks:
So, in order to unlock equipment the game gives you a challenge to complete. The challenges are either universal challenges that can be completed on any level, specific challenges for a certain level, or specific to a certain weapon. These challenges can range from pretty simple, to pretty damn hard. I would recommend doing them on the lower difficulties because adding another layer to the brain stack can lead to worse performance (at least in my case). HOWEVER, it took me until unlocking every single weapon (but not the trinket style items), before I realized you can just buy the equipment with tokens. If the challenge is too difficult, you can just spend in-game tokens you get from doing runs. Which is a WILD QoL feature for a game that's generally pretty difficult. The ability to just buy the next item and not be locked out because of the challenge. Amazing.
+ Difficulty:
The missions (at least on standard Acolyte difficulty) feel fair. Getting to the end of a level feels challenging until you learn the nonsense it's about to throw at you. I've beaten the first 3 levels multiple times and each stage lasts between 6-8 minutes. So you're locked in, but not for long enough to get overly stressful.
+ Enemy Variety:
Most of the enemies you will fight are your standard jobbers who exist just to swarm you and provide targets for getting more ammo and crystals. But the game will eventually start throwing a bunch of new enemy types at you. Some jump at you and need to be parried, some have a carapace that can be detonated for big damage, some have lasers (or even 3), some will rush you or do a stomp attack, others will buff every other damn enemy on screen. There are more types that I don't even know what they do because I just see them and go "Nope you need to die right now!!" and unload on them. Definitely never a dull moment in combat.
+ Challenges:
There are various challenges for levels and equipment. Some examples: beat the level without losing a kill power level, kill X amount of enemies with stage hazards, nullify X amount of projectiles while your kill stream is over 100. Stuff like that. These can get pretty challenging, but add replay value to the levels. The more challenging ones require full attention so you'll probably have to replay the level while focusing on one challenge at a time, rather than trying to knock them all out at once.
Cons:
- Tempo/Speed/Screen Pollution:
While this is not the case for me in particular, I can see people easily bouncing off of this game because of the overall tempo. There are tons of enemies and tons of controls and mechanics for a twin stick shooter. This could be easily overwhelming for someone not used to needing to consider 3 types of active reload, plus ammo, plus parrying, plus stage hazards, plus swarms of enemies of various types. While I personally like it, it's basically a character action game in terms of balancing combat options and meters.
- Evolving Stages:
During the course of a level the stage will change. Pieces will come up and the area will get bigger, pieces will fall away and make it smaller. It will just generally change shape/layout in some way or form. While this is not necessarily an issue, if you are standing on or dashing around one of these changing areas, you can just get locked in place. You'll still be able to move or shoot, but no movement will work. This doesn't happen often, but when it does it kills a run outright and that feels real bad.

Other Thoughts:
I didn't expect to like this game as much as I do. I typically don't like bullet hell games, but I do love character action games. The character action aspects outshine the bullet hell to me. The dodge is fantastic and it feels amazing to just flow through obstacles to keep on killing enemies. The melee felt lackluster at first, but then the second sword you unlock is capable of a spin attack and a 3 hit combo. This plus the ability to parry enemies is where I truly started loving what I was doing. The fast paced decision making feels overwhelming, until it just clicks and you pull off stuff like an active reload absorb to get full heavy burst, parrying an enemy into time slow, into the heavy weapon burst and just completely clearing the screen. Managing to balance all these cool combat options and make them feel as good as they do is seriously impressive. And for $15 it feels like a steal. Definitely has me looking forward to future stuff from this team!