Recent reviews by Arvallen

Panzer Paladin caught my eye immediately and I bought it in a flash because I enjoy 8-bit platformers like Castlevania and Blaster Master, but I feel like I should have stayed my hand.

Before I get into the negative aspects of this game that make me regret my purchase, I'll speak on what I do like. I should also preface that this is not necessarily a terrible game, but it has too many flaws to be worth the cost and your time.

• The pixel art is wonderful (for the most part, but I'll get back to that), especially on the bosses.
  
• Mega Man style level select is a nice break from the mostly linear retro platformers that have been releasing recently.
  
• Music is catchy and memorable, especially the opening/trailer theme.
  
• Sound design is very good and reminds me of all of the best parts of old NES/SNES games.

Aaaand that's it for what I find enjoyable. Onto the negatives.

• The NES hard difficulty, which in itself is not a bad thing, is done poorly. There are many parts of the game that are straight up unfair (example, many bottomless pits with shooter enemies on the other side, and if you get hit midair in this game, you lose all momentum and fall straight down.) Compare this to the original Castlevania, that has bottomless pits that you can get knocked into often, yet the knockback animation for getting hit allows for some recovery if hit when over a pit.
  
  
• Poor colour choices on foreground and background objects, making it difficult to distinguish terrain from walls.
  
  
• Hitboxes on the enemies and mecha are confusing and jank, and that combined with clunky jump speed and height, leads to a lot of way too difficult jumps and damage that doesn’t feel like it should have happened.
  
  
• Out of mecha sections feel tacked on and forced. The android girl is also not very fun to play as, with a lack of an upwards strike and unforgiving, grapple based platforming.
  
  
• Many spike pits are covered partially by donut block style platforms that can't be jumped through from below, making even a slight mistake in these areas lead to death or major loss of health.
  
  
• The lives system is an archaic feature that honestly doesn't belong in any modern game, retro styled or not, but it's something I can deal with if the ability to gain lives is implemented properly (Hint, it's not in this game. 1ups are incredibly rare and hard to find). Checkpoints are also few and far between depending on the level and require that you leave a weapon in them in order to use them.
  
  
• The weapon system is incredibly simple and poorly implemented. Weapons all swing the same no matter the type they are, with their only variance being their break spell (ranging from damage boosts to instant heals) and their length. Longer weapons are always better, and the game incentivises you to break them often, leaving you with very little weapons for both checkpoints and the end boss.
  
  
• The level design is boring and bland, and the enemies in said levels are re-used and re-skinned constantly, with each level only adding 3 unique enemies at most.
  
  
• If you stockpile too many weapons, a mid level boss comes to fight you, which further incentivises carrying small numbers of weapons.
  
  
• The themes of each location are done in a distasteful and stereotypical way that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The Japanese level's enemies and locale, and Russia's locale in particular irk me.

That's all I can think of for now, besides one very important thing that I will talk of in detail now.

If you know anything of Aboriginal cultures, you may have heard of a certain spirit that you are not supposed to name, lest you curse yourself and others around you. That spirit is the one that is hyped up to be the boss of the first level, but is killed off before the fight by the actual boss. I'm not one to be spiritualistic, but it's pretty disrespectful to a culture to not only name & depict a spirit they don't want you to name, but to kill it off so you can fight a pretty unicorn instead to make it look like a joke.

In conclusion, this game fails to be engaging and leaves me feeling distasteful. It feels incomplete and as if the developers wanted to copy all of their favourite NES games but decided to also exaggerate their flaws. I’d much rather play the new blaster master games or even go back to play the original Mega Man than this.

Either get this game on sale or go buy Blaster Master Zero 2 instead.