Well, went and finished the game. In-game timer says I spent just a hair over six hours on it, while Steam says I've played the game ten hours. Not sure where such a huge discrepancy comes from, but in any case, it's not a terribly long game. I didn't go for 100% item collection because it's a tad bothersome to go from end of the map to the other. Unlike in most Metroidvanias, there aren't any convenient teleports to help you traverse the map freely.
The map was kind of weird, anyway. A zone might have several exits, but there's no telling where it'll take you, you just have to remember it. Though it's usually safe to assume it takes to the neighbouring zone, but there are still several areas within zones, so it can take a while to get where you want to be. And if somebody does want to go for the 100% item collection rate, be sure to destroy the green item boxes that show up in the map - I didn't realize until very late in the game that they count towards the collection percentage, even though they contain just health and power meter fill-ups that are abundant anyway.
My biggest issue with the game might be graphic design. Every area kind of looks the same, with few expections, and they don't have much personality to them. And then there's the colors. While the characters look alright, it's much too common for the level's walls to be dull, featureless black. When I can't tell the difference between climbing a wall or a rock, something's iffy. The backgrounds tend to look nice, with some nice touches here and there, like civilians trying to take cover, but sometimes what looks to be part of the foreground is actually only in the background. I had to refer to the always on-screen minimap often to make sure I'm not about to fall. And I used it to do a lot of the navigation otherwise as well, sometimes the camera is zoomed in pretty close and you can't see where the next platform is. You can move the camera very slightly around with the right stick, but it's so little it's basically useless.
It's not all bad, though - the Balrog section was fun and visually decent, probably the highlight of the game for me.
The bossfights, of which there are many, were kind of a hit and miss. Some were fun and required a few tries to figure out the attacks, but most of the time it was enough to just slash a whole lot, jump around a bit and throw explosive kunai at the enemy. Worked fine enough for the last four or five bosses, beat them all on my first try. It's a pretty easy game overall, at least on Normal.
Other than playing the game on harder difficulties, the game attempts to provide longevity with the hidden POW icons that unlock stages for the Challenge Mode, either Beacon Runs or Survival Modes. The latter are just fights against waves of enemies, while the former are small sections of the main game where you're supposed to run along, hit checkpoints and reach the goal as quickly as possible. There's leaderboards 'n everything for those, so they could be pretty interesting, really force to you learn how to move the Strider around.
I think fans of arcade platformers and fans of Metroidvanias are both going to be slightly disappointed, but for different reasons. Neither aspect of the game isn't the best, there are better examples of both around. Volgarr from the arcade platformer camp, for example. The new Strider's not a horrible game, but I might recommend waiting for that -50% Steam sale.
I am curious to see if any speedrunners start working on the game, I think it could be pretty cool watching someone really tear through it.
_________________ No matter how good a game is, somebody will always hate it. No matter how bad a game is, somebody will always love it.
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