Everblade Reviews

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☑ 10

Nice pixel game with looks similar to Shovel Knight but honestly the music is cringey and triggers my migraines and I wish there was a way to turn it off.

I really wanted to like this, but instead found it tedious and awkward. If this game looks cool to you play The Messenger instead.

After playing the game. It's not bad at all, The graphics are good

The game combines some of the best elements from many classic games and still makes it fresh. Great platforming and lots of puzzles. Combat is straightforward and easy to get good at but the varied enemies keep it interesting. Each boss fight is unique., unlike many other games in the genre. Pretty challenging, but not extreme.

This is a real hidden gem, I can't believe it's only got as few reviews as it has. A wonderful pixel adventure, you play as a mage on a quest for revenge. The bosses and minibosses all have interesting designs, if fairly simple patterns to remember. But this is not a game focused on challenging bosses, the focus is on the bright and wonderfully detailed environments. The levels are always bigger than you think, full of secrets and treasure ala Shovel Knight, but with a focus on shortcuts and puzzles. You'll unlock new abilities that will open the path to even more secrets and treasures. If you like exploration focused games, this is def one to check out. You start off with simple sword slashes and some magic daggers for ranged combat, but you will gradually unlock spells and new attacks to mix things up. Enemies can sometimes be challenging, but are often placed in ways to make you consider your platforming. Most enemies also don't respawn, so it's easy to backtrack if you think you've missed something. A death will restart you very close to where you died, but after you lose all lives you must restart. Shortcuts and items found remain in your possession though. There are also fun minigames to find and unlock for even more treasure. In between levels you find yourself in a hubworld which is just as full of secrets of its own. Everblade is overall a really great action adventure game, if you like metroidvania games consider giving this one a try, even if it isn't a true metroidvania. It's such a polished and fun adventure, with a unique feel of it's own that it really deserves a bigger audience. Curator page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39780758-Cool-Indies/

Everblade is a fantastic hidden gem of a game. While it certainly has some rough spots, there is more than enough polish elsewhere to make up for its shortcomings. The main factor Everblade has going for it is variety. The game is divided between a hub area and 9 levels which generally unlock in sets of 2 or 3 (plus a final level). The level themes are diverse and range anywhere from underwater ruins to a church and graveyard crawling with undead. Beyond the aesthetics, each level has a unique feel as they all focus on different mechanics. You'll be dodging plenty of boulder and riding along on the wind in the mountains, jumping between falling tree branches and swimming around thorns and poison in the swamp, and mostly solving puzzles while trying not to drown in those underwater ruins I mentioned. Several of the levels are even broken into two distinct segments, such as the desert level which first has you platforming across the desert while periodically dipping into water to avoid heatstroke and later has you fighting your way through a trap-filled pyramid. The underwater level does go on for a bit too long, but otherwise the levels stay fresh and interesting from beginning to end. Secrets are another aspect Everblade excels at. There are a truly *ridiculous* number of breakable walls and hidden passages in this game. If a wall looks even a little bit suspicious, chances are high that you can break it or crawl through it for a prize or a challenge. While many of these secrets result in relatively minor amounts of treasure or a 1up, there are also plenty which grant more valuable prizes in the form of skill coins, max health upgrades, lore books, or minigame portals (which in turn unlock another upgrade when you find and complete all of them). The hub area itself also has plenty of hidden paths to gradually uncover as your skillset grows. If you get a sense of satisfaction every time you find something hidden in a video game, chances are you'll love Everblade. Level progression and backtracking is handled rather well here too. The path leading to the boss of each level tends to be straightforward, but finding every permanent upgrade hidden throughout a level is rarely going to happen on your first run through it. In fact, it's outright impossible to do so in a single run for all except the final few levels as many of them have paths you can only reach with upgrades found elsewhere. Thankfully, Everblade does several things to make backtracking fun instead of tedious. Each level entrance has a marker to let you know if you've found every important item inside it. Doors and other shortcuts remain permanently open across visits, with a path leading to the later areas of a level almost inevitably right near the start. Lastly, you can leave a completed level at any time with the only penalty being the loss of half the treasure you obtained on that run, which is likely to be next to nothing if you're focused on seeking out missed upgrades. What this all means is levels are long enough to feel like satisfying challenges on an initial clear while having enough permanent shortcuts open up along the way that you rarely need more than a minute or two to reach any part you want to investigate while backtracking. The combat system itself is decent. You have a standard slashing sword combo alongside a set of 3 weaker, regenerating throwing daggers for ranged attacks. I found myself relying on the daggers most of the time as most enemy types can take quite a few hits and often deal plenty of close-range damage. This does mean combat can feel tedious early on if you like to play it safe, but it picks up in the back half once you get more utility between decreased cooldown on dagger regeneration and elemental daggers which let you freeze most enemy types or leave behind fiery damage areas. Enemy placement is also handled well, with enemies often positioned in locations where they can make effective use of their attack patterns rather than being haphazardly tossed around. While combat in Everblade generally falls under "decent if unremarkable", the boss fights are more noteworthy. To begin with, every single boss and miniboss has its own combat theme. Many bosses are immune to dagger attacks, so learning how to dodge their attacks and when it's safe to get close enough for a few quick sword slashes is vital. This isn't to say that daggers are completely useless for these fights though, as many bosses summon in weaker enemies (which can drop valuable health) or shoot destructible projectiles and daggers *definitely* come in handy against the bosses who don't have immunity. Bosses also have enough health to put up a good fight without having so much that the fight drags on. Furthermore, most bosses either have a fixed pattern they change up in some way around the halfway point or pull from a large enough pool of potential attacks to ensure the fights feel satisfying and tense from start to finish. The only boss I didn't like was the one in the mountain level, which was a neat concept for a sort of 'summoner' fight, but the execution was a bit tedious. With all that said, it's time to get around to discussing some of those rough spots I mentioned. To begin with, the visual language of Everblade has some issues. For example, the castle level has plenty of thin, grey, rectangular platforms whcih look like they should crumble beneath you and, while they do disappear upon contact, it turns out they're bounce pads. You can jump up most walls, but the walls you can't jump on have a thin line of green moss which blends in so well with the environment that it took me a moment to understand why I couldn't jump on some walls. These visual issues are rarely a problem other than the first time you encounter something, but they do mean otherwise simple mechanics can sometimes feel oddly confusing to understand. Treasure and 1ups don't feel valuable for most of the game. The inclusion of a lives system in the first place is a strange decision, but it's made especially pointless when there's a hidden 1up you can farm in the castle (one of the earliest levels) within 30 seconds of the entrance once you open a shortcut; I spent a good chunk of the back half of the game hovering at or around the maximum of 9 lives thanks to how easy this and other 1ups were to obtain. As for treasure, it's virtually everywhere and finding hidden treasure can in and of itself be fun, but the only things you can use it for are a skill reset token, a single max health upgrade, dirt cheap consumables (you can only have 3 copies of a single type at a time), and passive items which all either go away upon death or do something upon death (you can also only have 1 passive item at a time and they are all so expensive that it makes more sense to simply save for consumables). Lastly, Everblade does have something of a U-shaped difficulty curve. The reason for this is nearly all of the skills related to exploration are found in the first 3 levels in the back half of the game. The result is you spend the first few levels getting a tiny handful of skill coins for permanent passives and a few max health upgrades and then the number of health and skill upgrades you can find skyrockets once you get these new skills, making damage largely trivial until near the end where the game starts becoming balanced around the assumption that the player has found most of the health upgrades. It would have made sense to distribute these upgrades more evenly across the game. When all is said and done, none of Everblade's issues are particularly severe. Ultimately, Everblade is a wonderful game full of plenty to like from start to finish and I'd say it's easily worth the asking price. And if you're still on the fence, I strongly recommend checking out the demo as it lets you play through the entirety of one of the early levels (it certainly did a good job of convincing me to take a chance on this game at least).

So far so good! It's quite challenging but even on hard mode the first boss can definitely be beat without taking damage. It seems to reward skill and practice. I'll come back and update my review after more hours. As for the price, I think it's fair. There are endless hours put into making a game like this.

Leaving a review cause it's deserted in here—game is VERY good, it knows what it's doing and has a KILLER soundtrack. The world is very unique, it's like a metroivania without a map but it's not confusing for that matter. You have an intuitive melee attack as well as 3 magical swords rotating around you that you can throw and constantly replenish. Great game with a great concept pick it up

In a world full of Metroidvania-ish platformers, there's no reason to play one with so many self inflicted wounds. It's possible that the game gets better at some point, but it's hard to imagine. I've played for a little more than an hour but feel like I've accomplished almost nothing. It's a terrible first impression. The game doesn't teach you any important controls or interactions with the environment. You're going to learn everything by trial and error, but failing often won't give you a hint of what to do. What's the item you just picked up? Who knows!? Want to find power-ups? Attack every wall! The game punishes you for basic interactions. Exploding red blocks or skulls that come to life do little other than force you to perform basic travel through block walls more slowly. The red blocks in particular a terrible fun stopper. Their existence is counter-intuitive in a game that practically demands you try to destroy every wall. The red blocks explode and damage you very easily. To get around some of them without damage you have to attack them at a range in a way that feels a bit like kiting. The game's jumping isn't great. There are some minor mechanical issues. There are a number of "headbanger" leaps where you need to jump short to avoid hitting your head. The reaction from these 'headbangers" is not player friendly. Jumping and hanging wall can be difficult if there's a ceiling because you'll bounce way down if you tap it. The bigger problem is the jumping philosophy. Jumping in a game can be used as a challenge where it matters if you fail. But sometimes it's just a way to get from place to place and it shouldn't be difficult. Unfortunately, some games feel the need to make nearly every section with any jumping a challenge even if you have to travel the area multiple times, and these sections will have close to one right path which requires correct jumps from each platform. These jump combos aren't terrible the first time, but when the game does the same thing over again or forces you to run the same precise room to explore, it's a drag. The developer has spent extra work making routine sections of the game less fun. The first point where I'm wasting too much time is a large room you have to cross back and forth over several times to reach the top. If you miss a jump, there's a good chance you'll end up back at the bottom. You probably won't take damage (or much damage) so the penalty is time. If you try to explore the room, there's a good chance you'll have to end up back at the bottom of the room wasting more time. If you decide to go back and explore a previous room, you'll waste more time crossing it. these rooms with mostly one correct path and easy to miss jumps do little but suck time. I've seen games do jumping worse, but when I'm backtracking because I can't figure out how to tackle the first boss the bad travel jumping issues are magnified. And the first boss was the last straw. The game gives you little hints on how to damage the boss. Other enemies could be damaged the same with close range and long range weapons. The boss only works with close range. There's no indication of where the spot to hit is until you hit it, it doesn't have any color changes and it's the same kind of bone as the rest of the boss. It takes a lot of work to get to the point you can hit this spot, but since the long range weapon makes you think it's not a hitbox for anything there's plenty of reason not to try. The only reason I tried is because I had fought the boss for several lives and not done a point of damage, and then ran back across the map looking to see if I missed power-up, and then came back, and wasted more lives stabbing and shooting everything in the room from until something finally ticked. I quit when the boss then came up with a new move that made the already slow task less fun without a desire to spend more time on it. I'm honestly puzzled by the number of games like this that make the first boss difficult. You want the player to feel a sense of accomplishment. This game doesn't do that. As a bonus, the game won't dump your gold count for a level when you have to "continue', but it will if you quit the game because it's so hard to correctly store a number. The game is practically encouraging you to give up before your'e invested. I also ran into serious performance issues on a machine that runs modern 3D games fine in 1080. I've run Cyberpunk in 1080 on it without issue. It should be able to deal with a primitive pixel platformer. Jumping in many cases would slow down the game during a longer jump. Because this would usually happen without enemies on screen, I wasn't until I tried the game on another system that I was certain this wasn't just bad jump physics. There's enough skill shown in the parts of the game that work to be good, but the developer has shown little need (via the game play) to help the player understand the game, or recognition of elements that conflict with core game play. It's like playing an old 1980's NES game where all the important details are in the manual but you don't have the manual. And also like a bad 1980's NES game that punishes you because it can with arbitrary dangers and routine path jumps that are difficult. At the moment, it's hard to recommend this game at any price but especially $15. I'm not sure it's beyond fixing if the developer is willing to significantly reconsider the new player experience and make the game more intuitive. It would require believing that there's a problem and being willing to make serious changes to the presentation.