The Vagrant

Do you like Vanillaware games? Don't think, BUY -- especially on sale. I feel like I stole something getting this game for $0.79.
The Vagrant is clearly inspired by Vanillaware's beatemups, Odin Sphere and Muramasa in particular with a little Dragon's Crown thrown in for good measure. It's a fantastic little game with great art, solid music, and very satisfying gameplay. If there's something negative to say about it, it would probably be that it's a little on the easy side and the camera is a bit more zoomed in than is entirely comfortable. Fortunately, higher difficulties alleviate the first issue, so...
I'll update this review when I finish the game, but so far it's been an absolute joy.

Nice Hack & Slash, remember me a lot of Maple Story somehow, but also gave me a story that I'll like to continue in the future. Mechanics are okay, however, it could have more combos. Music is good, and the game is short for me. Rate 8/10 (★★★★☆)

one of the best relaxing 2d adventure games I've played.

The Vagrant is a Hack&Slash game with boobs. Got to the end in 7.8 hours using a game controller. The difficulty varies on what option you choose, but look at it like 'Normal' being easy and adjust from there.
Graphics - Hand-painted, it says. The vibe of the game reminds me of Vanillaware (OdinSphere, Muramasa: Demon Blade, etc), as well as Blasphemous. The characters were a little blurred and the entire game was pretty dark in terms of brightness.
Controls - Janky but workable. Hitting enemies feels fine, and movement is ok. Special moves do their special move thing. Jumping felt off to me. Her walking speeds are 'trudge' and 'doubletap'. I used the D pad more then the joystick because it made doubletrapping easier to make her hurry up.
Story - There's a story. It's there. It's got art and cutscenes. I had a hard time connecting with any character outside of Vivian, and the other two major characters present are only there to make her story better. The game introduces other characters about as fast as it takes them out of the story again so you have no time to enjoy them and they don't add much to the plot. But Vivian's plot is alright.
Menu and Shopping - You shop for weapons, recipes, and food. This part feels unfinished. It was way easier to just kill enemies until a weapon landed on the ground than raising money to get it. I couldn't make a connection between recipes and food because food was pretty plentiful everywhere, and the recipes were just available when I went to a campfire. Recipes helped in battle, and there were items (copper, iron, etc) to beef up/make weapons but I never felt any need to use them and they felt pointless in my inventory.
There were two big issues I encountered with this system: 1. The shops don't tell you how many of an item you already have in your inventory (That I could find), and 2. Antidotes were not alongside potions or at the top of the items. You had to manually go to the menu and scroll down the consumable food items to get it. This made dealing with being on fire, or poisoned, or frozen/slowed a chore.
Notes - There is a notes section to tell you what happened so far so you don't get too lost.
Map - There is a map. I had no trouble using it outside of not knowing exactly where teleport areas went. It was pretty useful to help me find areas I hadn't been before.
Abilities - There is a tier tree to unlock buffs with 'mana' you accumulate over time by fighting baddies. This is the basic stuff like defense, attack, etc. There are also buffs to special moves and elemental buffs as well. However there are some important moves in this tree that frankly don't belong there and should just be readily available from the getgo. Doublejump is an example. Being able to dodge while in the air is another.
Wall - There is a weird mental-wall that stops a lot of players from progressing early on. It's roughly 30 minutes in and after you fight the boss with a billion zombies (I believe it's the first boss). You will go from 'I'm going to try this out' to 'I am going to take a break' and then you never turn the game back on. This happened to me, two friends, and quite a few people that reviewed the game. I don't know if it's because there's no drive there, the novelty of Vivian wears off, or the battle itself drains your will to continue, but it's such a weird snag. If you play knowing this hole of apathy is roughly 30 minutes in, and that the game does get better in both controls and story after, it's easier to keep going.
Last Boss - I couldn't beat her. She's both unnecessarily too hard compared to the rest of the game, and you have to fight all three of her forms back-to-back ad nauseum with each form taking out a chunk of patience and time to deal with. Looked up strategies on the hub and lots of people are having an issue with her.
To sum it up, The Vagrant is a generic, cheap hack&slash game that feels lackluster and rough about the edges. It starts out dull and takes time to get use to the controls. Then it gets better, enough to want to keep going and see how things end up. There's just enough there to drive a fan base for some players and the art carries the story pretty well. Once you get into the flow of things, the battles and bosses can be fun. But there are also many, many glaring flaws that could be fixed or improved upon. I picked this game up a second time to give it a chance, gave it that chance, and by the Xth time I fought the last boss and lost I had run out of damns to give and gave up. Looked up solutions and the solution is to do all the extraneous optional stuff (the Void) to get the items needed and to get them you need to find keys to.... Yeah, those damns are gone. Giving it a thumbs up because there's a game there and I enjoyed most of it. But it's a very solid thumb sideways. Go play Blasphemous, or Dust: an Elysian Tail, or even Salt&Sanctuary.

I get so engrossed in the game sometimes I forget to notice the great jiggle physics.

Great low budget game; Simple plataformer with easy to learn controls, skills and combos; Bought it for extremely cheap and worth the investment. Reminds me of vanillaware games, thats why i bought it. Great Bosses with different attack mechanics; fluid combat. A hidden Gem.

Very addictive and fun game. Well made and works great on the Deck.