Super Daryl Deluxe

This is the story of an underdog. Silent and unassuming, easy to miss. But in truth a super deluxe potential lies within, waiting only to be unleashed! This is the story of this game.
It took me a bit to get into the groove of the game, but once I got past the first few levels, it really clicked and things opened up. The combat was surprisingly rich with many moves to custom tailor your playstyle, I think it's the first time I played a game with a beat em up type combat and yet feels like a metroidvania (more on the vania side).
The map was really good, showing you all you need from one, and with essential locating upgrades to reduce pointless pixel hunting late game. There's a fair amount of side quests being "beat x enemies" but I think it fits for the RPG beat em up gameplay to remove any need for regular grinding. I think my main annoyance with the game is that the text speed is quite slow, and the dialogue button can't be remapped and is not the regular interact button.
I love absurdist games that take seriously an unserious world, it had many moments that had me laugh or smile. The whole vibe overall with gameplay and comedy is very feel good with some nostalgia. The art style and animations are extremely competent and contribute to the whole perfectly with how goofy they can look. The same can be said of the sounds and music, I love that most of the tracks have voices that sing Daryl's name.
The story goes places, yet can manage to take you off guard with a comedic twist but never at the detriment of the game's credibility. How the Valedictorian is incredibly useless and did less to hinder you than the weakest Honor Student. Or how you never actually manage to defeat the Science Honor Student regularly.
Despite some growing pains, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game. It was not lost through History, he answered the call.

As a metroidvania, Super Daryl Deluxe is pretty bland, but the art style, humor, and action-packed combat sold it to me.
Combat is simple but satisfying. It's basically a button-smashing beat'em up, but comboing the skills is fun. There are plenty of skills to choose from, and almost everything is viable.
You are constantly finding new skills, better gear, and unlocking areas with new enemies. Fast-travel could unlock sooner, though.

I played this a long while ago, but I never got around to reviewing it until now.
The term “No other game quite like it” is bandied around a fair bit, but this game genuinely earns that term. SDD is one of the most refreshingly weird games I have ever played, and I really wish I could re-experience it for the first time again.
Gameplay-wise, SDD is a very good RPG Metroidvania that has a fun cooldown-based combat system, which encourages you to weave together a lot of different abilities rather than just spamming one or two like in other similar games, and while the exploration can be slightly obtuse sometimes, it really rewards deductive reasoning and memorisation of the places you go.
If the gameplay was all there was to go on, it would be good already, but where it really shines is the way it’s presented. I don’t want to spoil much more than what is shown in the trailer, but the visuals of the game are absolutely fantastic – There is an ongoing surrealist comedy vibe through the backgrounds and character design, and it makes the whole thing pretty unforgettable.
The writing of the game is also very good, with a story that ended up being surprisingly gripping, especially towards the ending. There’s also a lot of comedy in the game, but this is where I need to point out a bit of a flaw: The sense of humour can be quite polarising. Depending on the sort of humour that you enjoy, the game will either be a continual riot, or the running gags will start to grate on you long before the end of the game. To specify, if you dislike the styles of humour where the vast majority of the cast are awful people towards the protagonist and they never get any comeuppance for it, a problem is caused or worsened because the protagonist is unable/unwilling to say anything, or the game forces you to do a bad thing and then repeatedly admonishes / comedy-guilt-trips you for it, the game might get on your nerves a bit. I did find these annoying, but the strength of the rest of the writing, visuals, and gameplay made up for it.
Also, there is one legitimate complaint that I have with the game. Many Metroidvania games encourage you to explore everywhere once you’re fully kitted out, and SDD is no different, but there’s a pretty notable issue: Once you reach a certain point in the story, the music in the main hub area completely vanishes, and it makes a lot of the exploration feel very sterile. What’s worse is that the game locks you into an ending sequence, but gives you an opportunity to go back to before the endgame situation occurs, but this “point of no return reversal” puts you at a point after the music goes away. This might not be a dealbreaker to most, but it did dampen the experience a bit. If you are interested in the game and feel that this music-loss would be a problem for you, I strongly suggest you make a hard-save after defeating the boss at the end of the quest ”Target: History”.
These are, however, small nitpicks in a game I absolutely adored. I played it a long while back, but after making this review, I intend on giving it another fresh playthrough. Highly recommended.

Goofy, energetic, and full of personality. The opening can feel a bit misleading, giving a false sense of progression before resetting everything, which may discourage some players early on. Once past that, the game reveals itself as a fun, humorous experience with entertaining combat and quirky charm.

A truly deep and personally crafted platform beat 'em up. This game oozes style and a truly insane story that slowly rolls out if you take time to see all it offers.

this is amazing game, I started it years ago but was struggling during the introduction, just try to get through it and then it WILL get really great

Fantastic Napoleon Dynamite-esqeue side-scroller. While the ending might put some off, it's definitely worth picking up on sale. The writing is suberb.