Freedom = $1.05
Banned
I finished up Guacamelee just last week, and I'll put it out there that this might personally be my favorite Metroidvania type game. I'll break it down point by point, since I'm crappy at writing paragraphs.
Setting: Obviously a matter of personal taste here. But I have a real love for classic bright settings in video games, as well as for lesser used settings. The degree to which I would rather play the game on the top as opposed to the game on the bottom (even assuming that I enjoyed all the rest of the in equal amounts) is hard to overstate.
It's colorful, bold, and original. It's a setting that puts a smile on my face, which goes a long way for making me enjoy a little down time with a game.
Difficulty Curve: I'm not claiming that it's that challenging of a game, but I really like how the difficulty went in this game. In particular I like that combat encounters ramped up during the game, but they were still challenging at the start and end to some degree. With games like SoTN I'd often end up breaking the game by the end and becoming way too overpowered with levels and equipment or you'd get some weird difficulty spike at some point that would hold you up for way to long. Guacamelee had encounters and jumping stuff all throughout the game that were not crazy difficult, but they required you to have your head on straight with how you handled them. And the leveling opening up new moves and skills, but it never got to a point with me where my character was way OP and on cruise control.
Fighting Engine: I really liked this. Partially this is having a soft spot for grappling moves in beat-em-up games like Double Dragon II or Streets of Rage. So the wrestling finishing moves here were really fun to me. Secondly, while use move X to beat enemy of color Y is nothing new, it was really well implemented here. I really loved that past the midgame combat encounters were almost like little mini puzzle games. You'd have to check the arena, see what shielded enemies were where, which enemies were in the light and dark world, and figure out the best way to break those shields and defeat the enemies while not getting hit by any of the others. I felt like they rolled out the various concepts (colored shields, light / dark world, new enemy types, timed "bomb" enemies) at a nice rate to gradually make the combat more complex and interesting while still feeling like you were progressing. As a final note the dodge / combo engine was actually pretty dang flexible for a game of this type, lots of cool little combos that you can do with the launchers, rolls, various grapple moves, and basic attacks.
Map / Backtracking: I'm sure some other folks will disagree here. But for me, I really enjoyed that the mainline path is pretty straightforward in Guacamelee without very much backtracking. I enjoy small puzzles of both the logic and jumping types, but I don't like just being straight up lost with not knowing what I'm trying to accomplish next. Others might feel that it's too handholdy, but I really enjoyed keeping the basic path easy and allowing side exploration for bonuses.
And for a final point it has couch co-op. Which is pretty much just the bee's knees for me. Makes any game go up like a full letter grade in my eyes. So yeah, really fun game, and one of my favorites of the last couple of years.
It's a genius game just for the fact that Guacamelee's version of the morph ball is just turning yourself into a chicken.
as for the difficulty, i've read that the game got nerfed some for the turbo champ edition. there were some platforming segments near the end that were challenging in a good way, though, so i wonder if they took some of the oomph out of the game by watering it down.
so, is Guilty Gear Isuka just a GG beat 'em up? I can't tell with this series since there are about a dozen or so GG games and they never seem to stop.