izigame.me

Lysfanga is a rundimentary top down Action-Hack'Slay, with the typical what I would call "blink combat" fighting system. Your natural dodge is a short teleport, besides this, there is not that much going for it.
You unlock 3 weapons over the course of the game with basic combo potential and one secondary attack as well unique properties. The sword & shield is the only weapon that can stun enemies for a split second, the Chakrams can be thrown and do great AoE-dmg if the the normal attack is pressed right when the charkam was catched again and the trident has a storable ranged AoE attack, that need to be charged first by quick normal attacks.
Overall the weapons are well balanced and there is an justification for all of them I thought the trident you unlock last might be very strong with it's piercing attacks, but it's biggest downside is it's aim, as all attacks have auto-attraction to the closest enemy, while the spear has the lowest wide range of all weapons.
This is a solid foundation albeit still quite simplistic, but that basically suffices, there is a customizable component as well, you have one additional magic attack with an cooldown that can be swapped between battles, one ultimate attack (where you have to fill up an bar) and an passive perk, that gives you one advantage like making more damage from behind and such shenanigans.
I think the game pretty much nailed the right amount of simplicity, so it doesn't overload you cognitively if you try to accomplish the tasks which the premise of the game provides.
You have only about 20 seconds to kill all enemies on the field. Since that doesn't suffice, you're able to go back in time. Yet your past self will remain as an clone unhindered by the present, yet able to damage the enemies, your player performance was recorded and is executed again, now it's on you to kill the remaining enemies called "Raxes".
Basically this results in two interesting tasks, for one you have be wary not to distract the beaten enemies, so the past can play out unhindered and second: you have to fully utilize this abilitiy to kill the Raxes as optimized as possible, reducing the downtime to an minimum, basically at best letting all cycles end at the same time with no buffers between.
With that in mind a more complex combat system would highly detract from the more puzzle/tactical orientated approach. Enemies are simple and serve to create an interesting level layout to untangle. So if you expect an combat heavy game isometrical game you will be probably disappointed, you are so under time pressure, that you're rather relieved if you kill the enemies as fast as possibe.
Unfortunelately that also means you can never really adore your elegantly planned out route, since the game has no replay function or at least an end result where you can watch your temporal clones working together.
The first levels are quite simple and like it should be in all games, each of the 3 worlds slowly ramps up the difficulty, new enemy types will be introduced, some of them are more sturdy and dangerous (you can still die, which just ends the current cycle and starts the next one) but most of them serve an purpose that forces you to consider the order how you kill the enemies. Like there are "Twins" who need be killed relatively close within an 3 seconds timespan or Raxes with huge shields who can be only killed efficiently if they are are distracted by a past clone or if you use up an ultimate attack. This will always force the player to carefully lay out their path and incrementally new elements will be introduced even near the end of the game.
While I really like complex game mechanics it also comes with a detriment as I thought that the later levels became quite straining, there was so much to consider, that each level took me some time, it's not a game where you can just turn your brain off as well one where you most likely won't succeed the first time... well at least if you try to accomplish the "par times".
Actually the game is quite easy, almost trivial if you merely play for the storyline, since you can only truly die if all your "remnants" are used up. These are the amount of clones you can create when rewinding the time, and the numbers increases steadily at the end of the game you have 15 clones, So you have to become hit 30 times at minimum until you die and then the whole screen is already crowded with clones doing 14 times the damage. I think the par times are there to make the game more interesting with actual time requirements, otherwise you can play as sloppy as you want.
Though asides from achievements there are no further stipulations for the time requirments and most of the time they still felt rather benelovent. Just low enough to require you to fully utilize the level layout, but high enough that you didn't really have to optimize the right approach. This makes the early levels really underwhelmingly easy with par times beat about under 20 seconds and more, the later levels yet will be a bit harder, since they are just more complex and like I said complex to a straining level.
At some point there are enemies, you have to kill twice, respawning at another place, shields you have to deactivate first, switching polarities each cycle, enemies that can be only killed if you killed other enemies, enemies only vulnerable to specific weapons, closed gates, alternating gates, yada yada yada, and each of it eventually becomes topped on another, at some point there are even vertical stages where you can't see the whole layout at once. It's quite rewarding when you figure it out, but sometimes it also feels quite exhausting considering the game doesn't have much else besides it's combat.
Yes the game consists basically of almost 100 combat encounters scattered across 3 worlds, you progress linear going from one arena to another, between them there are basically just some forked paths with pretty useless collectibles strewn across (that are sometimes really hard to see depending on the color palette)
No puzzles, no plattforming, only sometimes dialouges. So it's basically just one arena combat after another, with walking sequences and some story in between. (which I won't comment on I liked it for what it was, bu the character limit of reviews is pretty dense you know?)
Considering this, winning one fight with a really complex layout will just lead you 1 minute later to another even more complex fight with even more intricate layout, as such I could only play the game in small bursts. People nowadays shit on "variety" in combat focused games like god of war and so on, but basically this game proves why it's important to keep some downtime between tense moments.
Halfway throughout the game you will unlock the "Figments of Battle" these are basically the best part of the game. Yet part of me wished I could've done them from the get go, the game has a lot of levels, yet to fully master it, you have to redo them now on more tight specifications, measuring not just your time but also the amounts of remnants you required and the effiency. It's great because each levels comes with modifiers that make these old stages quite interesting so I understand why you have to unlock this mode first.
It's only that it's just too much considering how long the base game took.
I S-Ranked 30 of them for story reasons (great idea to have one last stipulation at the end to clear them) but now I feel I really need a break, considering how much I still have before me, with almost no tangible rewards.
Reaching the end of the review character limit 2 remaining remarks:
- The bosses were awesome, I wish there were more of them, really great design!
- Some abilities still seem a little unbalanced and slightly overpowered (Goddess Blades giving you invulerability, 50% speed perk)
Overall splendid Core-Gameplay, just could need more variety. Yet I love the high skill ceiling the FoB's provide. At some point I will probably return to this.