COGEN: Sword of Rewind / COGEN: 大鳥こはくと刻の剣 Reviews

Only grabbed this game because it went on sale for 50% and because it looks and plays like an Azure Striker Gunvolt game. After finishing the game in 5 hours (definitely not worth $25 lmao, even if this game had realistic graphics and banger ost), I honestly want to say it's frustrating mid. I'm not really a fan for enemy spam, but considering this' a fast-paced game, it's super annoying to have parts where you must halt your speed and slowly kill off enemies in the most defensive positions possible since this game is practically anti-damage boosting due to its time gimmick lol. Speaking of which, I honestly do not like the gimmick itself, not because I find it bad, but it's execution feels mediocre. You get a time bar that allows you to rewind time (up to 3 seconds with 3 bars representing 1 second), and it's meant to be helpful when you die as you can "rewind your death." I personally find myself not using it unless I die since, turns out, the time bar is also your health, and every time you rewind time for any reason (fixing a mistake, using it as a level gimmick, rewinding after death), you lose a bar. Doesn't help that you don't gain much invincibility from rewinding after death, so unless you want to consume your entire bar trying to find an opening to fix your mistake, you're likely going to get hit right after rewinding. I personally wish the game reworked the gimmick to not function as your health and instead be its own mechanic. It's honestly not even right to say you have "health" in this game, and I'd rather accept a one hit ko over a horrible health bar mechanic. The level design is alright at best and straight "defensive enemy spam to the point you have to question 'what the hell do I even do that doesn't interrupt the flow of the gameplay or results in damage boosting?'" at worse. The art design's pretty similar to Gunvolt, and I don't think it's bad. The music's eh for the most part. Most songs give the vibe of what you'd hear out of a corporate mobile game. The story's... ngl, I have to play the game again to understand the story, because I felt pretty lost when trying to understand why everything's happening, connecting lore to the current plot, what happened to Kohaku's dad after beating him up in the final boss, etc. Only cool things about the game is being able to wall climb by jumping and attacking to cancel the momentum from the wall jump (which can cheese a load of sections in levels as well as an attack from the 2nd section and the 3rd boss in general), being able to skip the sections that require the time gimmick by using air dashes and up attacks to air stall, and the protagonist being named Kohaku (those who know). I'll be back on this game when the Copen DLC goes on sale, though at the same time I'm probably not gonna look forward to experiencing this game again lol... I don't regret buying this, but this was an experience lol