Archvale

Archvale calls itself an RPG bullet hell. It's most certainly a bullet hell, as it has you moving around in a top-down view, dodging large quantities of bullets. You also have the ubiquitous i-frame dodge, and of course a weapon to shoot back at the enemies. I understand wanting to call it an RPG, as you can slightly increase your character power, though most of it is through 3 equipment pieces and a combination of "badges" - passive perks. But really, it's an action game, a twin-stick shooter, just not a roguelike like most are, but one that has pre-made map. You go from room to room, clearing them of enemies, collecting their materials, making new equipment with them, and then doing tougher rooms and finally a boss fight to get one of 7 arch pieces.

I started on the hard difficulty and initially had a lot of fun with the game. For the first couple of hours, I was worried the game was too easy, even on hard mode, but the levels slowly got harder and harder. More enemies, more complex bullet patterns, homing projectiles, summons, etc. And so for the next few hours, I was progressing at a steady pace. Some harder rooms had me do several tries, some had me go investigate another path first to get better gear, but I was always progressing. The game did feel a bit bland, but the action was solid, and I didn't feel like it needed any complex mechanics to be a good game overall. But a few more hours passed and I seemed to be getting stuck on all paths, having to make 10-20 tries just to progress a little. But these difficult victories didn't even get me any extra power, and so I got hopelessly more and more stuck.
"Should have just played on normal", I hear. But no, normal was much like the first hour of hard - trivial up to the very end. Archvale failed in the difficulty curve, ramping it up faster than player power. Bosses and challenge rooms were difficult but methodic - I could learn the patterns. But regular rooms just gave you a bunch of enemies, and depending on the lineup, could be nigh undodgeable, and yet hit too hard to tank.

It's a shame, losing an otherwise nice game to balance problems. There were clearly other reasons that also led to this problem. Melee was complete garbage as being close to enemies was a death sentence, and melee did barely any more damage. Weapon upgrades helped offset the difficulty by allowing you to get stronger by grinding, but they just stopped at one point. Any system that let you grind for more power would have allowed persistant players to at least eventually beat the game. But overall, the game just felt untested towards the end. Higher tier weapons just being flat out worse then lower tier ones. Some rooms being really easy, adjacent rooms being impossible. Later areas not really increasing in difficulty, just doing slightly more damage and being tankier.

Oh well. Archvale started out as one of the more enjoyable twin stick shooters I've played, but the difficulty just rushed past the power of my character. To a degree, compensating with increasing skill is understandable, but this was cleary far, far too much. Unless you were playing in normal mode, in which case you could facetank most levels. I would probably blame the lack of polish put into the second half of the game. Perhaps the developer ran out of steam. In any case, I don't think I can recommend Archvale just for a good first half. For a complete experience, it's not a good game.