Iconoclasts

First things first, this game is NOT a Metroidvania and shouldn't be judged like one. Iconoclasts is a story driven action/platform game. There's some exploration, but not as much as in a typical Metroidvania, it's not the focus here. Iconoclasts is more about exploring characters than exploring an environment.

PROS:

- Robin, the main character, has an adorable design. I love her.
- Amazing boss fights. Challenging and with a lot of variety. There's a lot of them and I liked them all.
- Difficulty. You can change it every time you load a saved game. If you want to relax while enjoying a story you can do it. If you want a challenge that can drive you mad with frustration you can also have it.
- Great gameplay, great puzzles. The combat mechanics are ok for what the game is going for. The controls are good too.
- Memorable characters. There's a lot of love and passion behind them.
- One dude made this game, one dude. The final product is impressive all things considered.
- BEAUTIFUL art. The pixel art is GORGEOUS!!
- Great music! There are many memorable tracks!

CONS:

- Robin has a great design, but I didn't like her as a character, she is most of the time a silent protagonist. Because of this, most conversations that involve her feel weird, other characters needing to fall into long monologues to feel the void. Silent protagonists are supposed to work as avatars for the player, but this doesn't make sense when the main character has already a fixed personality, background, name, gender, etc.

- Some parts of the story feel rushed.

- The storytelling could have been clearer, but this is more subjective. Most people would need a second playthrough to really understand what's going on. Whether this is good or bad depends on how interested the player is in revisiting the game.

Großartiges Spiel und meiner Ansicht nach ein unterbewertetes Juwel.
Gameplay und Kampf funktionieren flüssig und machen Spaß. Die Bosskämpfe sind herausfordernd aber nicht zu schwer.
Die Story ist ganz gut.
Der Pixellook ist hübsch, die Animationen schön, der Soundtrack herausragend gut.
Man sollte sich nur bewusst sein, dass es kein wirkliches Metroidvania ist, sondern eher linear.

An absolute refresher for me playing metroidvanias
I like the grafics, the music has some memorable themes.
I absolutly love that you don´t just get a double jump and dash and thats your base game, instead the game has a bunch of different abilities with creative ways to use them in puzzles and combat, all fun to use with also nice controls.
There was no lag during my first playthrough,I think the game should run fine. During my second one midway through my game sadly started lagging a bit and my screen was glitchy, not sure if it came from the game tho.
Enemys are mostly ok. Some endgame ones aren´t too nice in the "how do I kill it" way. It can be hard to figure out by just testing whatever you got.
The bosses are just solid, nothing highly complicated and still most of them are quite fun. That said I had a bad time with some in the onehit challenge run and even the first time I didn´t think all of them were that great for newcomers.
The game has some great comedy moments and some interesting caracters. Also the story was great, funnily enought I would say it goes quite somewhere and is easily understandable... until the end where the final boss seemed kinda random and unexplained.
Map is not too massive, has fast travels and many checkpoints.
Some endgame secrets like secret bosses we´re kinda eh to find, they felt a bit like that Dark Souls quest desing: You don´t know what to do? Perfect, go look it up. Even some endgame quests for the final items.

Really recommended if you want a fun game

Sweet story and funny action!