Year: 2021
Platform: PlayStation 5
Genre: Adventure
Review Date: 2/15/26
Rating: **

A high school girl wakes up in a strange place with no memories and soon discovers that she's been summomed to free a mysterious Dark Lady from imprisonment. As you travel through dark dungeons and murky sewers, you pick up various weapons and learn magic spells to defend yourself against the monsters that want to kill you. And that's all I can say because I didn't last more than an hour.

For the most part, the 2D pixel art is attractive, but the character design is a bit lacking. It's a Korean game, and the "not quite anime" aesthetic is unsettling. The female characters have odd proportions, enormous hips, tiny little hands and feet, and their faces look a bit odd. There's a not so subtle attempt at fan service, but the characters really aren't that sexy or visually appealing, so the efforts just seem awkward.

Of course, difficulty is the major issue with the game, and the combat is punishingly hard. Even on the "accessible" setting, which constantly regenerates health and doesn't stack fire, poison, and bleeding damage, it's easy to get killed by a single slime, zombie, or fly. Inventory management isn't an issue, but you never have enough gold to buy the items that you need, and magic spells consume a huge amount of MP that's costly to replenish. Even the fastest weapons are sluggish and have a long wind-up time, and countless times my attacks would be repeatedly interrupted before I could land a single hit. And that's exactly what happened with the first boss fight, which is literally impossible. Every time you get close enough to strike, she hits you before you can hit her, and her reach is longer and deadlier. You can't dodge or jump, or she'll punch you out of the air with a fatal uppercut. Three hits and you're dead, and I never landed a single blow. I can't even imagine how you would would tackle this on normal or hard difficulty.

Regardless, I'm not going to lose any sleep over this game. The story, art, characters, and gameplay didn't win me over, so I'm not particularly interested in how it all plays out. I'm guessing this is for the hardcore, low-rent, anime-themed, Metroidvania crowd. I wanted to like it, but it went out of its way to turn me away.