Shady Knight

this game's badass...but i wish i liked it more than i did. i think it's mainly because of the scoring system.
shady knight is a stylish action game in theory, but maybe not so much in practice. to get an sss rank (the highest rank), you must meet a certain score requirement. in the early levels, there are so few enemies that reaching that requirement is sort of a puzzle; you need to kill every enemy in the map by incorporating as many different high-scoring actions as you can. as scoring isn't communicated to you super well, this kind of ends up being trial and error until you figure out the right combination of actions that gets you the sss rank. then there's a sweet spot in the second quarter of the game where you still need to keep action diversity in mind to get an sss rank, but getting a perfect run (all kills, no damage, no falls) will do most of the work. in the back half of the game, there are so many enemies in each level that a perfect run will almost certainly give you an sss rank no matter what actions you take, so instead of going for style, you go for safety, playing as conservatively as possible; there's no time requirement (which i think there should be), so you can and probably should just play evasively and opportunistically. when the style system encourages you to play cautiously and defensively rather than, you know, stylishly, something has gone very wrong!
the game is also frustratingly inconsistent, which would not be such a big deal if getting hit didn't mean resetting the level if you want an sss rank. this is partially because the game depends on physics for a lot of things, and the slightest deviation can result in very different outcomes when physics are in play. but that's the nature of the beast, and it's the least of the game's problems in terms of inconsistency. for example, using your grapple on an enemy that's standing on the edge of a platform while you are off of the platform is SUPPOSED to pull the enemy off the platform as it pulls you back on. it's extremely finnicky, though, and aside from enemies that are statically positioned on edges and waiting for you to do this to them, i found it rarely worked. knocking enemies off of ledges, in general, is a whole can of worms. in a Kick Game like this one, you'd expect kicking enemies off of ledges to be something you do frequently. the scoring system should discourage you from overly relying on this (although really that should probably be level design's job). but what ACTUALLY stops you from kicking enemies off of ledges is that a significant number of enemies, especially later in the game, will just jump or teleport back onto the ledge when kicked off. the worst are the shielded enemies. some enemies will arbitrarily have a barrier around them that allows them to ignore non-unblockable attacks (you can also use fire, which is not always available or convenient), which really limits the ways you can approach an encounter until the barriers are broken. it feels like the game is afraid of the tools that it has given you and does stuff like this to keep them in check.
the game has other issues; enemy variety is very limited. there's one environment that is used for the whole game. this doesn't completely absolve the issues, but this is a solo dev game, and sometimes concessions have to be made to keep scope in check.
but...like...this game's badass. there is so much cool ♥♥♥♥ you CAN do in this game, when the game has not discouraged you from doing it. it is so fun to improvise. it is so fun to launch an enemy, kick them further up, finish them off by throwing a sword at them, air dash into the sword and then use the height you gained to do a slam attack that launches another enemy, which you then enemy step off of to slam it into the ground and then you kick it to slam it into the ground again. the core of the game is so solid. shady knight's inspirations are clear, but i don't think there are any other stylish action games quite like it; the best game like shady knight is shady knight. i really hope lessons can be learned from it, by its developer or by someone else, so that a game like shady knight that is better than shady knight can be made, because there is SO much potential here.

forgot how good this game was after completing it, came back a long long time later and am still amazed by how incredible it feels once you get the hang of it. it's like if grimhook and titanfall had a hack and slash lovechild and it's the most incredible thing.

Me: i love this game, its like ultrakill meets nine sols
Random horse: Nuzzles me
Me: laughs Easy now.

AWESOME. Bought this game last year, still playing it. I **STRONGLY** encourage you to buy this game, even if it isn't on PC.

This game has no flaws. I really mean that. And now it has custom maps. Buy this game so the developer can make us a sequel.

Such an insanely good and underrated indie game, I have never felt so awesome pulling insane moves, not to mention that the game doesn't lock any of it's skills behind a skill tree or a leveling system, it's all pure skill and knowledge you obtain while playing it.

Yeah, this is probably the best sword game ever. It's essentially the style meter of DMC with some of the mechanics of Arkane's golden age (namely Dishonored and Dark Messiah) + parkour fun. The interesting design choice of this game is that all of the techniques aren't locked behind a skill tree, but rather are available from the first level of the game. Up until the final boss, the whole game functions as one big tutorial level, where abilities are hinted about through text boxes. One notable flaw of the game might be that it lacks ambition. Every level looks the same, and the campaign is 5 hours. That being said, I would rather have a polished, finished 5-hour campaign than a buggy 10-hour poopshow.