Cyber Shadow

Gets to the point where it's more frustrating than fun. My hand is still in recovery mode after playing this shit. Fans of NES-style action-platformers will maybe enjoy it if they skip the dialogue/story which is bad and nonsense. (to be fair I quit the game about halfway in)

Otherwise great game, BUT

The decision to make it so the fun abilities are rolled out painfully slow is a bad decision

Making it required for 100% that you go back and revisit linear levels with abilities you didn't have the first time through just so you can get what is most likely identical health/energy upgrade items for every secret is a bad decision

Guys, this is a linear game, you're not making a metroidvania here, either make a metroidvania or don't make your players tediously retread old ground for secrets they can see but can't access
Because it works in the metroidvania format when you could potentially find whole new areas and/or unique and useful items but it doesn't work here, it's just making the player go through levels several times for 100% because reasons
It pains me because the only reason this game should be making people feel grumpy is out of difficulty, not out of some kind of obvious design misstep
I guess I just hate to see bad design decisions that feel so extremely avoidable, it probably needed playtesting for this and subsequent adjustments
This game and The Messenger (the latter to a greater extent) both suffer a problem of letting their flirtation with metroidvania influences derail their ultimate objective of fun, tightly-designed linear ninja action
Not every game needs exploration and backtracking, dudes

Missing legs on the Xbox cover lol

This game HATES you

This game LOVES you

This is two games once you memorize the level layouts and dash slash/lightning strike everything. The levels can still be taken slow without dashing everywhere. It only lasts 1/3rd of the game, would have been great if it had altered stages with this moveset in mind for hardmode/newgame+.