Dark Devotion

You know you're in deep shit once the Gothic pipe organs start blasting during the boss fight.

Enjoyed this game, took around 9 hours to defeat all the bosses.

I liked the game back when I 1st got it. Played 14hrs and stopped after beating the game once.
Replaying the game is awesome. The combat is clunky, but fair, hitless runs are doable and RNG is very manageable.
If you liked Salt and Sanctuary, this is great.
Also this game is a chill rogue-like, because you earn checkpoints and can choose where to start your run instead of re-doing the entire map, which is pretty long. The game feels very rewarding and has interesting side-stories, although they are very small and are tied to achievements.

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.

Good stuff. That good sh*t. Like a 2d souls game, bruh.
At first you might hate it, but it's only because you aren't used to the mechanics. Once you understand the range of your weapon, the speed which it attacks and the limits of your stamina, you will be cheesing everything.
I recommend getting the succubus sword in the library, running through the dungeon and killing enemies repeatedly (they re-spawn every time you come out of a cell.
Fun game, challenging, you just have to get used to the mechanics. :D
8/10 I like it!

The game has a few unsatisfactory features and the controls may feel clunky before you get used to it, which can make the first few hours tough to get through. But once you accept its quirkiness and establish a general understanding of the various aspects of the game, the fun begins. Before long, you'll be making progress consistently and tackling the challenges of the game one by one with confidence.
Beating the game for the first time while exploring most of the areas may take around 15-20 hours. Going for all the achievements might add another 5-10. In my opinion, it's really worth it to 100% the game. Some achievements motivate you to explore the map more fully, some give you hints to unlock secret storyline of certain NPCs, some test your combat skills, which, upon finishing, truly injects a strong sense of accomplishment in you.
Highly enjoyable. Weirdly addictive. Truly a gem.

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