Two Bit Hero Reviews

broken controls. cant even jump properly.

This game could be an excellent, simple metroidvania, but the controls are locked and cannot be changed. For that reason alone, I am forced to give this game a negative review.

This one is one I'm on the fence with. I feel like it's not bad, but I ended up getting bored and frustrated. I would love there to be a neutral option on Steam, but 20+ years later and there's still not, so I gotta go with a no. Pros - The controls are immediately responsive. This is a big plus in my book, seeing as most games nowadays have issues (especially when scraping the bottom of the barrel). I didn't have any lag or missed inputs in game. Also, if you don't like the layout, there's so many ways to fix that. Even steam has it's own integrated button mapping system you can configure for each individual game, so I don't see why a layout that isn't perfect is an issue. - The exploration with unlocking abilities and upgrades to get to new areas started off well in this game. There's no hand holding, so just running around finding stuff was pretty fun to begin with. - The music and sounds fit the game well. Each area has it's own music, and they're all decent tracks. Cons - Either I missed it, and have been playing blindly for an hour, or there's no in game map. If I missed it, this is just as bad because there should be enough guidance in game to get you to your main point of navigation. This is a disaster when it comes to Metroidvanias, and will be the reason I quit this game (if I even pick it back up). You have two different dimensions laid out the same, plus you're backtracking after getting abilities to go to new areas. It's a lot of travel in similar areas and constantly go back and forth in the same rooms in order to progress without a map. - The bosses... They're a joke, right? They're one simple pattern each. At least they change, but they're still very bland and easy to kill/avoid. - The lack of navigation caused me to be running in circles to find the places I haven't been to, and this made the gameplay dull, tedious... boring. I'm here to enjoy playing a game, not to feel like I'm doing chores. Sweep this area, look for the new entrance, sweep the next area... get an ability. Go back to the start and start over... It's monotonous. The layout doesn't do you any favors when there's 10 ways to go, but 9 of them dead end from an ability or dimensional block multiple rooms later, and the blockades all look kinda similar to begin with so you can't even keep it in mind for later when you do get what you need. To add on top of that, the ways intersect with each other on multiple paths, so if you go one way, then go back and go the second way, you could very well end up going to the exact same dead end over and over even though you're checking different routes. - I went through at least 10 different areas (The ones that have names in symbols which reminded me of why I hated Tunic) and I fought 5 different enemy types. I get this game is meant to be a smaller format, but the lack of variety was not helping how bland it felt. I'm sure throughout the entire game, there's a few more enemy types, but there's still so few when you're going though a map this big. - Spikes (My mortal enemy) are 1 hit deaths. I was going down through fall through ledges, and there were spikes below me, but I couldn't see them, so when I went down, I went from 45 (full) health to 0. This set me back 3 areas which is where I found the last save point. It was about 10 minutes of gameplay, one boss, and 30ish rooms that I just didn't want to do again because it became so boring and repetitive already that redoing it felt like it would be miserable. All in all if you aren't bothered by repetition and feeling lost until you find the one correct path in 20+ options having to circle two different dimensions of the same map to find them, you could possibly like this game. I bought it on sale, and I'd say with an hour of enjoyment that steadily turned into torture, that it wasn't worth it for me. If a map gets implemented, I'd retry it, and it could be a major change in my opinion.

Decent metroidvania. You might get frustrated at the map design, but it is intentional and there is a thing in the game, that can make the navigation much easier. Boss battles are not great.