jenvu01 Arcadeggedon Review

There is a good start to something here but it's definitely unfinished. I like the unique weapons, there are a few really fun ones for sure, and the movement system is pretty good all around aside from sliding being a little clunky. The handful of bosses in the game currently each pose their own special challenges and are actually pretty fun but there are only a few of them and so you will start repeating bosses pretty quickly. The biggest flaw here really is that there isn't much of anything to do. Gameplay is based entirely on just doing endless to-failure runs through levels populated by generic NPC enemies periodically punctuated by the boss fights. There are different environments that you go through at random but only one or two have any unique challenges to them, the majority are just cosmetic changes to the same linear gauntlet run. The only other thing to do besides run the gauntlet is to hunt for chests containing weapons and upgrades but when there is no actual end goal or progression to work toward, plus chest contents are always random no matter where or under what conditions you are finding them, combing the maps for hidden chests becomes a chore very quickly. The story progression takes place entirely outside of the gameplay purely through speaking to NPC's in the lobby and accepting mundane quests from them to perform in the gauntlet run. This is also my second big problem with the game, although this might be just personal and not shared by others; besides how disconnected the story is from the actual gameplay, the story really feels painful to read through. It's way too on the nose about being 'gamer-y', combined with less than stellar writing overall makes it feel cringeworthy just to even be playing. Arguably though there is a really good base to work from here and this could be made into something really good with some more variety thrown into the gameplay, integrating story progression more directly with the gameplay, and also hopefully getting some good writers in to overhaul the current story and make it actually tolerable to experience for anyone over the age of 10.