Having played two side-scrolling variations on action-oriented titles by this studio in the form of HunterX and its follow-up, it was cool to see them tackle working from a top-down perspective this time around. Once again, this studio has put together a package that generally looks great, sounds good, and plays well, but when it comes to the finer details and keeping everything exciting it can be a bit uneven, for sure.

Taking on the role of a warrior from what appears to simply be a society of various types of buxom maids, you’ll be working through this Metroidvania-esque adventure working with a combination of bladed weapons, guns, and a varied arsenal of special attacks. There’s no doubt that the combat, and your growing number of options for how you play it out are one of the game’s greatest strengths. If you’re a stick and move kind of player, preferring to dodge instead of parry, that will work out just fine. If you feel like you’ve got the timing on lock you can obviously get right into the thick of things and tackle combat that way as well. Your ability to soften enemies up from a distance with some bullets, or knock them around with one of your special attacks is also nice, and those are particularly crucial in what sometimes can be tricky boss fights.

I think the game’s main problem isn’t an unusual one for Metroidvanias in general, though in this case it feels a little more painful, and that’s the fact that there’s a fair amount of downtime as you run around exploring and backtracking. It doesn’t help that some of your barriers to progression simply don’t make it clear what you’ll need to get past them, so time can be wasted seeing if some new ability will make the cut, then running back again if it doesn’t pan out. I’d also consider the general story to be a bit odd, and not terribly satisfying, putting most of the game’s eggs into the combat basket, and I’m not sure that’s enough to guarantee satisfaction for everyone. If this sounds like your kind of jam, it may be a good time, but honestly with a lot of great options out there this feels a bit understated at the end of the day.