Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition Reviews

This product is a perfect example why you always need to PLAYTEST your game. The game mechanics are not bad, the visual may be a bit underwhelming, the story a bit too cryptic, but overall it has been fun... but where it all falls apart is balance. After beating every boss in one go (before I could even learn the pattern), including the multi-stage "final" boss, here comes the real final boss. After many attempts, I had to give up because my time is more worthy than than. To my dismay, I will see the ending on YouTube instead of playing. We are talking about a 10-12 stages boss where the last stage takes literally forever. Never seen a health bar go down like that: like half a pixel every 10 minutes of waiting for the boss to become briefly vulnerable. They could have halved its resistance, halved it again, then halved it twice more, halved it one more time, and it would still have been too much. Fail, and you have to redo it all, attempts to the last stage half an hour apart (it will feel longer). It stopped being any fun real soon. Skill issue? Maybe, but the difficulty curve is not "steep": it's flat for the entire game, then a vertical unbeatable wall at the very end. Would not recommend. Play a different metroidvania, avoid this one.

I don't know exactly how to feel about this game. It's playable and some people will enjoy it more than others. As an avid mouse and keyboard gamer, this might be one of the very few games better played with controller. That being said, I still didn't use a controller :] . So the movement felt very clunky the entire playthrough, The direction you move changed incredibly fast and there was no setting to change the speed. You can, however, change to a different control scheme and there is some kind of autoaiming so you can manage. I liked the art, the music. It created a beautiful atmosphere. The combat and level design was okay. You could glide through levels by spamming the movement and enemies were fun to kill. I didn't like the storytelling and balancing felt weird, sometimes that you had to mostly damage tank to progress. Some lore interactibles described something that wasn't even there, the dialogue and characters felt very random. Overall 7/10 from me.

Dandara is one of the most original Metroidvanias I ever played. Rather than walking and jumping, like traditional platformers, you leap from one surface to the next. The uniqueness of the transversal is executed with near perfection. As is the case with any Metroidvania, you gain new abilities that will give you access to new areas. While moving from one area to the next, you will encounter boss battles that are very satisfying to battle, as they have patterns that you need to learn. As for the story, it's easily the weakest aspect of the game. Everything is symbolic and very cryptic. I simply don't care to turn myself into a Charlie Day meme to figure out what's going on. Story aside, the game is a must play for any Metroidvania fan. Dandara is regularly on sale for less than $5, and at that price, the game is a steal.