Armed with Wings: Rearmed

Armed with Wings seems to be a rather old Flash game series. I have not played any of those games before and I didn't really look into it much, but this Rearmed version is apparently a sort of remake, not a sequel. It's a level-based hack-and-slash game with some platforming involved.

I didn't think much of the platforming part. Considering the game doesn't really have jumping, the platforming puzzles were somewhat limited or specific in nature. It's not too important, however, as most of the game's focus was on combat. Now, the combat looks neat, and seems to have a good amount of depth, but I have no idea how it works. The attack patterns of my character, and in which cases I manage to get a hit in, in which cases the enemy just blocks it, seem rather arbitrary. I mean, I'm sure there's a logical system in there, but it's not explained whatsoever. And, honestly, I can't play like that. The game isn't easy enough to button mash through it, which is in itself a good thing, but if I am not given the knowledge on how not button mashing is better, it's not very useful. Sure, I could figure out the system eventually, but it's rather painful until then, and considering the depth of it, would probably take a while.
More minor grievances include the combat feeling a bit stiff for a game with such a heavy focus on it, your lovely bird not having any use in combat, and that I'm just not a fan of the level-based system. Perhaps I'm spoiled on metroidvanias with a nice world to run through.

Overall, I got rather quickly frustrated at not understanding the combat and why stuff worked sometimes but failed in a seemingly identical situation some other time. I also didn't see any elements of it which particularly captivated me, so unless you think you can figure out that combat and hope to discover a better game beyond that point, I wouldn't recommend it.