Immortal Planet

Another one of the oldest games I still have on my list. Added back in 2017, it's Immortal Planet.
I'm surprised by its relatively positive reception, because I couldn't stick with it for long.

Immortal Planet advertises itself as a Souls-like, and I can believe that. You run, you dash (dodge roll), attack, block (or parry), and a lot of focus in combat is on stamina, which every action takes. I don't think this combat style is bad or overdone, but Immortal Planet just implements it really badly. Perhaps part of it is that it suggests I play with a gamepad, which I didn't, but some basic movement is just plain out broken, like dash following your cursor unless you're sprinting without changing direction? It's a very core part of the game, so it being broken might just be a case of a low quality standard. Another example of this is that despite it being an action game with tight dodging and blocking mechanics, the animations just... don't exist. Enemy goes from "standby" frame to "readied attack" frame, to "you're already hit" frame. It's not possible to dodge or block by reaction, not because the attacks are too fast, but because there's no indication when they're coming. (The "readied attack" frame is too long to go off of that alone.) Not only does this make the gameplay unnecessarily difficult, but it also looks really bad. On that note, it also sounds bad, mostly in terms of the music.

A short review for a game I only played for a short while, but I hope you can understand why. Right from the beginning of the game, I found bugs relating to the core combat, which, even if it was functioning properly, felt really bad. I just found no joy in playing, and there's plenty of Souls-like games out there, so I didn't feel like sticking around to give it a longer chance, and I couldn't recommend it to you either.