Machina Blade Reviews

It's fine, but what was it all about? Game has no story, no lore, nothing, just gameplay, am I missing something? But hey, the gameplay is good :)

great game with fast paced action, nice replayability, and tight controls. if you enjoyed dead cells, it is likely that you will also like this game, but here you will need to master each characters' abilities in order to progress through each stage instead of having to keep swapping weapons every time you're on a new run. 👍 I really recommend this!

This is a no-BS action roguelike that both doesn't waste your time, abstains from gimmicks, rewards skill and doesn't overstay its welcome. Combat is similar to Dead Cells but with a focus on playing a character and their respective playstyle instead of a weapon. Moves are on cooldown and all have uses depending on the situation. Red, the posterboy/protagonist has a short-ranged projectile, a dash, a ground pound that serves as both a gap closer and armor breaking tool, and a super that buffs him. The moveset is smaller than I'd like, but as they're designed well, this is more of a nitpick than anything. The dash is on a really long cooldown, so you'll have to get used to jumping to avoid attacks sometimes. Both enemies and bosses are fair and don't cheat you with gimmicks or cheap hitboxes. The bosses might feel a bit basic for some, but I appreciate that they follow the same rules you do and don't have ridiculous amounts of health even without damage items. Items are done very differently here compared to other games in the genre. Your main sources of items comes from a chest that may or may not spawn, a shop you can use money to buy from a pool of four choices, boss chests and a combo counter. With the game being a short, easily digestible experience, you should expect to cap out at about 6-8 items per run. Each item will have a passive ability and a flat stat bonus, making even the most unwanted items for your character have some use. If you're tired of playing action roguelikes with a ton of trash items that only have a use if you find the others that synergize with them, you'll feel at home here. There is still decision making to be had, but you're also not waiting the entire game for a chance to get the item combo you want. Machina Blade advertises being fully skill-based, but that's only partially true. While that is true for the enemy and boss design, the combo/kill counter adds an insane amount of RNG to your runs. A kill counter of 20 will spawn an item, which in a game that has less items per run with each individual one being more impactful that usual, this is huge. The problem is the level generation adds a large layer of RNG to whether you can even get to 20 kills, regardless of your skill to actually get the counter that high. While the gameplay loop of getting to 20 kills for a huge boost in power works in concept, the timer is far too strict, and more often than not you'll lose the combo due to the level generation and enemy spawn RNG than your actual skill. What's worse is that another item spawns at 30, but the combination of the aforementioned issues and the timer going down even faster past 20 means you may never get that far. Dead Cells does this better with there being no timer for your kill streak, but here you're fighting the enemies, your own skill and, most frustratingly, level and spawn RNG. If this is fixed, the gameplay loop would feel even better, but for now it's the biggest flaw in this game's design. Persistent elements involve starting items and I believe a few more added to the pool, but this game is serious about not diluting the item pool and making each item purchase/pickup feel like it matters. It's a good design philosophy that I'd like to see more action roguelikes pick up. Overall this game is great if you want a no-BS experience and short runs, but it's definitely lacking in content. It feels complete but also feels like the original plan to launch in early access could have gone better. You will likely clear the game within the first few hours, but the gameplay is so solid that you'll keep coming back for more. The asking price is fair considering the light content, but hopefully more is added. If the aforementioned design flaws are fixed, I could see this becoming one of my favorites in the genre. For now, it's got a great foundation.

Found this game randomly browsing steam yesterday, got pretty excited due to it looking similar to Risk of Rain(the first one), but visually better. Indeed, it plays and feels a bit like Risk of Rain but if you juiced it up with Dead Cells "combo" system to get faster clears/some sort of buffs. I'm brazilian and this game seems to be brazilian-devolped due to the fact that the creators are named Alysson da Paz and Giovanni Sales, which made me even more excited to test it out when I first loaded, since I know how passionate BRs can be about stuff we put our hands into(such as Dandy Ace, a great game which obviously, probably has more budget, so I'm not trying to compare these two) Right off the bat, I could see there is no access to the settings from the main menu and the controller binds didn't work even though I was using one. Alright, those were minor issues despite being lame The game also does not have the option to be played in the creators native language which is kind of a shame but also not a big issue, even though I don't understand how this happens; The OST is dope, the scenarios feel a bit empty when you're running around from a "clear" to another and you do not have the speed buff, which is lame. All characters are pretty different, and there's this "archetype" thing such as the shield man being a "5/5" in defense, the gun gal "5/5" in attack and prince of persia being a "5/5" in speed, but it all goes down to Red being the character the game is meant to be played with, since apart from some sort of sustainability, he is just way stronger than the other two, and also the easiest of the three to do the "clear, rush, clear" kind of gameplay that's expected. The items let me down a bit because it feels unoriginal that 70% of the items I saw were just references to other games or these games' items(such as league of legends, halo, jet set radio, etc...) which just makes the game look like it doesn't have an identity of it's own. The balancing of these items' status are also sloppy since the way Crit works vs other damage enhancers is just absurd, I didn't record or screenshot or anything, but I've seen a 1314 damage with Red's Ult just because I crit a mob that was preparing his attack. lol. Monster's AI looks weird, sometimes they literally just ignore me standing besides them and sometimes they're already attacking me before I even come up to them, and the first two bosses can get a bit spammy which is weird as well. Playing as Red I had a taste of how the game is "supposed to be played" and BOY, what fun runs I had, I didn't get to beat the game and was a bit hardstuck on the second boss because this is a kind of fight that's just impossible if you're not dealing enough damage, and it's really hard to deal damage when the mob's just jumping left and right through the room. Anyway, that's probably a skill issue which I won't have the patience to come around I know I said a lot of bad stuff, but I kind of liked the game. I just don't feel like having it right now and maybe will get it again in the future. I hope my thoughts are somewhat useful to the programming, and I make myself available to contact if it ever interests you guys, devs, because I have no idea of what's being planned for the game or how big of a developer you are, so I really don't want to be unfair. The game looks and plays VERY cool. It's just a lot of details added up to making me unhappy, but it's a cool game if that's something TLDR; + OST's groovy as fuck + Gameplay is clean and fast if you're good enough - Red's way stronger than other playable characters atm - Itemwise the game does not have an identity of itself - Damage increases are weird and potentially gamebreaking - Scenarios can look and feel VERY empty once in a while if you're not fast enough - Monster's AI is very weird and even rebel if I'd say so

Have been following the development of this game on Twitter since the beginning. Gameplay loop feels pretty good! A few things I have issues with, such as the UI not showing button binds for gamepad, and navigating the settings menu bugged out while also using gamepad, but otherwise everything seems pretty solid. Really excited to see the future of this game. Overall, the game feels a little lackluster or empty at the moment, but super excited to see future development.

I completed this with a friend in just 1.8 hours. I guess it was reasonably fun with good controls and an at least somewhat interesting combo system. However: In my opinion it was just way too short. Also the ending was very abrupt without even a "Congrats!" — it just returned to menu like on the failed runs.

Pros: Game is incredibly well made and polished. Cons: No content, exceedingly easy, i've already reached the end game with my current playtime. I'd say don't buy unless it starts to get updates. More biomes/bosses/basic enemies. It should be a free tech demo, or like 3-5 bucks. But any price put on it should be taken as purely for it's polish not substance.

This game is fun, and the characters and skills are interesting. It has a lot of potential. However... This game is extremely short. I actually thought the final boss was the first big boss. Also, you get a sort of experience when you die or beat the game, but it looks like there is actually only one unlock (when you unlock again, you seem to "unlock" the exact same things as the first unlock?). Overall the game is fun, but it just seems like this is an unfinished, early access release. It's like we haven't gotten all the bosses yet. Playing 84 minutes and feeling like you've done everything isn't exactly a great feeling for a game like this.

Combat is very fluid and addicting. Only 3 biomes despite there being 4 bosses. After you beat the third boss you go directly to fight the fourth one which is kinda lazy but w/e. The game consists of going to the end of each biome so you can defeat the boss. In each biome there is 1 shop and/or 1 chest. The only other way to get items in this game is to get a killstreak going. A killstreak is started by killing 3 enemies (it will give you a killstreak of 3). You need a killstreak of 20 to drop a chest (which contains a permanent item for that run) and then 30 to drop another one and so on. The killstreak timer gets shorter and shorter the longer the streak goes so its in your benefit to just skip picking up the items and go straight to the mobs to keep the combo going. Bosses are a bit too easy in my opinion (very telegraphed attacks). 0 Story btw absolutely nothing. Beat the game in a hour of trying. still gonna stick around for the addicting combat. Theres 3 characters in total which all have very different playstyles so that also adds a bit of replayability. No other difficulty aside from the base difficulty from what I have seen.

This game needs way more content than it already has. Maybe a difficulty increase and more biomes. The boss fights are easier than expected. If this game took inspiration from Dead Cells, it should probably imitate the fact that Dead Cells has more than 4 biomes. This game has potential but there's just not enough to warrant a price higher than the current discounted price. Certified Womp Womp game