holliburd

SUMMARY: If you're a fan of cute and sexy, anime-inspired pixel art with decent-to-good souls-esque metroidvania gameplay, you should probably just play it, because the game is at the very least an enjoyable time with lots of visual flare that'll last you about 5-7 hours depending on your playstyle. Decently fun metroidvania with a lot of charming (however, not particularly deep) characters as well as well designed, cute bosses! There're a lot of skills and upgrades to find, however, they are not particularly well balanced and some combinations are blatantly stronger than others. This leads to a pretty challenging and really fun early game, though the lategame suffers if you are a min-maxer, since you will inevitably fall into an overpowered build and steamroll the second half of the game. The game gets some flak for being oversexualized, though I never felt like this sexualization was a detriment to the personalities or designs of the female characters as their other qualities usually outshined their overtly sexual visuals. Some of the characters are parodies of pop culture tropes and cultural phenomenons and it never feels excessively derogatory or detracts from the overall vibe of the game, so you just end up having a good laugh here and there. In short, the characters are definitely sexualized and appeal to the horny weeb crowd, but it never feels silly or like it's the main focus of the game. Basically, if you'd shy away because of the sexual themes, I wouldn¨t worry about it. The game looked beautiful and you could really tell that the developer(s) put a lot of time and effort into making the game look polished. The spritework is great, the designs are fun/cute and it all flows together really well. The story was decently enjoyable. It had some fun ideas and it was pretty well executed, but it was not fleshed out nor was it deep, I have no real complaints about the story but I'm bound to forget most of it within weeks of finishing it. Basically, it was okay. Music was fine. I can't recall any of the songs as I finished the game a few weeks ago, but I never felt like it was lacking. Unremarkable, but by no means an issue. If you enjoy cute girls and are not bothered by sexual tones and some mild degeneracy, this game will definitely scratch that metroidvania itch if only for a little while.