Dark Devotion

I usually don't bother explaining a game too much when I write reviews. However, Dark Devotion sits in a peculiar spot between metroidvanias and rogue-likes, and is also one of those games that like to leave you in the dark about as much as possible. So, since I was really confused as to what exactly I was playing during the first few hours, I'm going to elaborate a little on that.
In this game, maps aren't randomized, and there's also a lot of fixed drops from structures in specific rooms. The only thing that is randomized is the item drops from enemies (and blessings from altars, but let's not go into that. The important thing is that not much is left to chance).
Additionally, you get to unlock new equipment that you can pack with you at the start of the run, and you have to choose a few of the perks you've unlocked as well, as opposed to having everything be active every run. So, by choosing a specific kind of weapon and some perks, you can somewhat push your build towards a certain direction. But that's all.
In that sense, Dark Devotion is barely even a rogue-like to me. I would rather call it a short, very dense 2D souls-like, that you have to play multiple times to discover every path, encounter every boss, and unlock every perk. Completing the map and learning where the cool stuff is hidden is a big part of this game.
With that out of the way, I have mostly good feelings about it. The artistic direction is stunning, and delightfully gloomy in all areas. There's also a lot of unsettling pieces of lore to find here and there, that participate in that experience. And combat-wise, while I didn't find the same kind of mechanical genius as there is Salt & Sanctuary or Blasphemous, enemy design is definitely good enough to avoid the classic QTE-like "attack, dodge, repeat" pattern that often makes every fight boring in games like this. The game rewards careful planning, observation and perseverance, as it should.
I don't have many complaints about the game. From time to time, I got a little upset by the blessings and curses system. Basically, they're passive boosts and hinderances that will happen to you upon meeting certain conditions. And while the conditions will always be the same, they're not always obvious, which given the severity of some curses, can be irritating. In the big picture, that's a very small issue, but when it first happens, it feels terrible not to even know what you're getting punished for.
Also, Dark Devotion is probably a bit lacking in the diversity of builds you can go for. It does give you a lot of options, but they mostly don't change the way you're going to approach fights. On top of that, using heavy weapons - understandably - makes your life harder, but also isn't much more rewarding than 1-handed weapons in the damage department. Ultimately, a lot of options feel more like self-imposed challenges than actual gameplay variations.
It is still a very good game. It may feel brutal and uninformative in the beginning - which it is -, but it gets a lot more fun when you start to really understand how it works.

Everyone keeps saying "souls-like" about every game that's dark and difficult--including for this game, which I don't think is fair to Blasphemous. This is a Blasphemous-like. It's not like Dark Souls (apart from Andre the blacksmith and the Fire Keeper in Firelink Shrine where you go when you die). And sort of rogue-like, since you start all over again when you die.
Ok, now that that semantic nuisance is out of the way--
Dark Devotion is not bad, but there are a few near misses that would make it excellent if they could be sorted out somehow. To say they're "inspired" by some other titles is being generous, but it does feel like its own game, in the end of ends, not like a "dollar store Blasphemous," as I heard one person describe it. That's not fair to the devs. They did a pretty good job.
The game has introduced this one-way travel gimmick which is clever--it makes you commit to the direction you're going. But in actual gameplay, this can be rather tedious and annoying. The map makes it difficult to tell which door in the room you're in goes to which room, so sometimes you'll pick the wrong one, and you're stuck on that path. It's not a bad idea--I feel it needs a little something to make it more fun. I can't say what that is. They're on to something, though. Some kind of highlight on the map when you're standing by a door, to confirm the path you're about to take, would mollify some frustration.
The blessing/disease mechanic is kind of fun. You basically try to keep gathering buffs as you progress and try to keep your debuffs down. It's almost a leveling mechanic, and it gives some texture to grinding your way through, and the seeming randomness of the buffs keeps it fresh.
BUT--
And this is a pretty big "but." The blessing system incentivizes you to get a bit of a running start to clear the next part of the map/beat the next boss (since they strip you down to your base level every time you die). This is really quite tedious, causing you to have to go through the same rooms over and over again in the same order that you've already cleared, unless you want to try to take on the next boss without, or with minimal, buffs. O, and you can still lose it to a BS instant death trap on the way, making you have to do it all over again. That's some controller-throwing stuff, right there. It's not fun.
This kind of plays out like when you forget to save a game that doesn't have an auto-save feature, and you have to go way back and re-do a bunch of quests. That's what this game constantly feels like. I think I'm close to the end, but constantly restarting might be too tedious for me to want to persist (and I'm not skilled enough to skip straight to the last place I played without buffing up and picking up some of my preferred weapons first).
Even Dark Souls--the maddeningly difficult game that this is erroneously compared to--only sent you back to the last campfire, with all your gear intact.
An option to teleport to any activated teleport station, or some procedurally generated/randomized maps (is this possible?) might make this less monotonous.
Player character weapons are too slow. I know Souls tried to make it "more realistic" with fatigue and committed attacks and that raised the risk and made fighting more exciting--but 1) actually swinging real weapons is much faster than this in real life and 2) these weapons are so slow that only the very fastest ones are even at all viable, and still not even then sometimes. I've been stun locked by those little fast green dudes more times that I can count. Pretty stupid that you're armed and can't extend your weapon out in front of you without getting beaten to the hit all the time. And it also means that there are all those weapons in the game that would be fun to play with, if you weren't insane to try, since they take an entire second delay before they fire off. You finally beat the crow lady, or her assassins, only to get a weapon that you spend an eternity to swing and will definitely get hit first (no hyper-armor for this game, folks). Rebalance weapons, please.
Definitely worth a play. The graphics are a little rough compared to some other comparable titles, but it doesn't interfere with the gameplay. For a pixel game, it can get your heart rate up. I applaud the devs for coming up with a new spin to the metroidvania genre (the one-way travel mechanic). It's very close to being a very enjoyable game, and I'll jump on future titles from them, or a 2.0 of this game.

I wish there were more games like this one, exploring a roguelike dungeon that is not procedural is great, learning the layout, discovering its secrets learning how to defeat its enemies, planing the best route to the boss taking in mind the number of enemies, drops and hidden weapons you can find along the way to bring into the fight, getting familiar with the traps designing and changing your strategy each run while unlocking base weapons and upgrades at the base to be more prepared for each run.
I love the aesthetics of the game the oppressive atmosphere and the sense of danger of the dungeon and the calm and sense of company of the safeheavens.
There is a great variety of weapons each with is own move set, I discovered my favourite 3/4 into the game. The bosses most of them fall on the easy side if you got enough prep but it feels accelerating to beat a boss when you get in with low resources and at an inch of your life
my only complaint is the final boss, due to rng sometimes it feels like "its my turn yet" kind of situation it has a 3 combo attack that depending on your luck it can do up to six time in a row so 18 attacks in a row and the stamina bar at max only helped me to dodge up to the 10th attack, so yeah I did not survive that.
10/10 would die again

I really loved this game. Its a great 2D souls-like, not that difficult to master, lots of things to experiment on and rewards your good memory and exploration.
Each run gets easier as you find more startup gear, runes and blessings to start your next run.
The bosses are all nicely designed and diverse, enemy variety is great and I specially liked the level design and secret finding logic (really well done, fair secret areas and runes that make you stronger and reward your good memory and attention).
My favorite of its type so far, its surprising all the content it packs and does not take too long to fully enjoy the experience.

Yes, it's missing some basic quality of life options. But the game is great beyond that. It might take a few tries before understanding how the gameplay works and how the game wants you to play, but once done, it's a fun ride. There are many secrets to seek, so if you like exploring and finding everything, you will spend many hours in the depths of Dark Devotion.

Is this the best souls-lite? No. Does it control amazingly well? No. Are the pixel graphics amazing? No.
But this is,a s far as I can tell, the debut game of a small studio and for that it *delivers*. The graphics range from decent to great,, the sound and music do the trick, it controls ok and the world building is genuinely interesting. I can't help but feel attached to our brave templar, going face to face with all the horrors be they her own church or the monsters in the temple.
What the game lacks is QoL stuff: rebindable controls, better sound sliders, a better map, that kind of thing. It makes it unnecessarily hard sometimes. Again, probably because it's their first work and *maybe* because of limits in the Fusion engine?
An interesting design choice is that you can't jump, only roll, which is sometimes neat and sometimes utterly infuriating. My guess is that they tried to implement a jumping system but couldn't for engine or programming reasons and thus just cut it instead of having it be bad. May be wrong there.
What does this boil down to? A pretty hard, unpolished game that YOU might dislike (and that's fair) but that gave me a good time. I hope the people behind it still work in games and eventually do something that builds on their experience of making this.
I really like the templar. xD

Awesome game! I like everything about it: atmosphere, difficulty, music, visuals, style. It took me around ~20 hours to complete the story and ~10 more to get all the achievements. 100% recommend!