Seraph

Took me years to finally finish it, not because it's long or hard... it's because it's meh at best. The progression system sucks, it has rarities ranging from common to legendary, but when I finished the game I barely was able to unlock a few rares. It is meant to be grinded hard, but it's not remotely interesting to do so. Why would you ever wanna grind this is beyond me.
Ultimately is a big NO from me, I'm glad I can finally remove it from my installed games list.

Not once have I gotten it to work. It closes/crashes every time I try and play no matter what I do.

Not working on modern Nvidia card, see discussions.

Fun side-scrolling action. 👍

Unfortunately, fundamentally flawed by design of scaling difficulty. Also very narrow in content.

Not sure why I bought it back in the day, something about the visuals was compelling to me. And it was the style of it that made me play it to the end (though, I bought it about 4 years ago and played it just now).
Generally it's a fun and challenging action platformer. Dynamic difficulty really helps to always get challenging situations, increasing power level bit by bit. Combat feels fluid, like a nice and balanced dance with the great pace.

One thing I didn't really notice is the procedural generation. It felt like the locations didn't really change from one time to another.
Two lacking sides of the game: story (it's better to imagine there is no story at all, let's put it this way) and repetitiveness, the latter being the bigger one. The game with a huge emphasis on replayability gets exponentially more boring the more you play it. Every monster looks generic, every location looks the same. Challenge is keeping up with you as you get better with the game, but it feels synthetic, it's just not real. And the main playthrough lasts like 4 hours.

It's already 6 years old as I'm writing this, so it's probably not a big deal for anybody. But if you're looking for a nice game to kill a couple of hours while getting some action and challenge - this one is fine. It would work great as a portable game (on a Steam Deck, for example).
I'm not sure it's worth its price, but if you'll get it 50% cheaper, it's decent.

I bought this game, because I loved the idea of a barefoot angel-possessed woman gunning down hordes of demons. Can a game get much better than that? Well, after having played through it all, it turns out it can.

- For starters, if you die, it would be nice to start again from the level you were ACTUALLY ON, and not the previous level. Sure, you can collect a checkpoint gem that'll let you resume from that level if you die, but by the time you do so, you'll likely have already cleared most of the enemies in the level. And honestly... why have that? Why not just let the player restart from that level? The game is already challenging enough, without having that kind of punishment.

- I also don't mind only being able to carry two weapons, but the default pistols shouldn't have to be one of them. Not when there are other kinds of handguns to carry. I would've been pleased to find the revolvers, if I could switch out the default pistols for them. Why can't I? I wouldn't have even minded if ammo for them was limited, provided I could find some on every level.

- Those coins/rings/whatever that add to your defenses are nice, but why can't I keep them between levels?

- But worst of all, is what happens when you finally beat the final boss. Not only is he a HUGE pain in the rear end to beat, but when you finally do, you're given a choice of whether to destroy him or join him. And what do you see, after making that choice? Nothing! That's right. You just press a button and it immediately cuts to credits. No image, no wall of text, nothing. What the HELL, devs?! What happens?! Does Seraph leave Talia's body and ascend to Heaven? Does she go on to annihilate the demon army/the human race? Do demons take over the world? Does God try to intervene at all? Explain, damn it! EXPLAIN!

To think I actually bought THIS game, despite it being the only one on my wish list that WASN'T on sale!

The first few hours of this game are amazing. The combat is fluid and fast-paced, and the titular Seraph is incredibly mobile. Seraph auto-aims, so the focus is on using your mobility tools to dodge attacks and get close enough to finish off downed enemies. Double-jumping and blinking all over the map feels frantic and fun.

However, as the game goes on, it quickly starts to feel repetitive and grindy. There are only a few different mission types, and they're repeated over and over without any real variation. The levels are randomly generated, but they all look so similar that you feel like you've played them already. Enemies turn into bullet sponges, and the various upgrades you get as you level up are so insignificant that they feel almost pointless. (e.g. "Pistols do 1% more damage" or "You start with 5 more health.") As a result, in an inversion of typical video game progression, Seraph feels less and less powerful as you proceed through the game.

By the time you hit the first boss fight, taking a hit from any enemy will knock off at least a quarter of your HP, if not way more. In a better platformer, this would reward your skill at evading split-second attacks and being smart with your mobility. But Seraph has an annoying tendency to stick to walls and get stuck on parts of the environment that are difficult to see, so you'll often find yourself taking hits that you were sure you were going to dodge. This frustration is compounded by inconsistent hitboxes and the sheer amount of bullet spam the game starts throwing at you, along with many homing and AOE attacks that feel nigh-impossible to evade. Unfortunately, controlling Seraph just doesn't feel precise enough for the kind of game it's trying to be.

If you can get the game on sale, it's fun for the first couple hours. But after that, it really doesn't feel like it offers anything new. That said, I'm glad I gave it a try.

What is really interesting, fresh and an ultimately pleasant gaming experience in the beginning, very quickly devolves into repetitive janky nonsense.

There are a lot of very odd behaviors and dubious design decisions involving stacking enemies that regenerate/revive after a kill, which also prevent you from using the only ability that can permanently kill them (Smite). The field restricting your moveset stays after they have been downed for the "finisher" making it even more infuriating to play against.

One level towards the end locked me in at the very start in a tiny room for a minute while demons were stacking at a door and once the time was over, murdered me in one attack.

Seraph has a propensity to stick to walls like glue and bounce off them at odd angles, making controlling her acrobatics in close quarters a complete nightmare.

Generally the longer I played the less fun the game became and the less i appreciated what it was trying to do.

All the levels feel the same, there is very little variety and very little incentive to explore beyond just getting XP and materials.

Ultimately its about a 6 hour game that feels like a 30 hour game for some reason.
Shame, i did like it at the beginning when the encounters were fewer, more meaningful with less added bullshit.

Far too repetitive and uninspired. There are some good things about the gameplay, but it was kinda boring for me, just moving through the samey corridors while holding down the trigger and trying to dodge the multitude of demons coming for you (in higher difficulties). The levels are randomly generated, and there are several "themes" or areas, but they all feel the same.

It doesn't feel like a bullet hell, because you can't really have precision with the controls offered (plus there are a lot of homing and AOE attacks), nor timing based, because if you dodge one projectile another will hit you. To win in higher difficulties you have to be more careful, kiting the enemies into already cleared locations while they soak up bullets, but that is boring.

There are upgrades, but they are of the +2% type. You can get +10% in some attributes, such as damage, but usually only if you grind a lot. There is a plot, but no ending.

Overall it's not a bad game, but I can't really recommend it.

A good concept for a twin-stick shooter marred by a few major deal-breakers. First off, it has the "Dynamic difficulty scaling" that sounds great on paper but in practice is entirely broken in its difficulty curve. Even when I'm taking it too easy it scales at a higher level way too quickly, and there's no way for the game's difficulty to curve back down which defeats the purpose of the "dynamic" part of its feature!

We also have an unnecessarily confusing and grindy upgrading system. For example, I love the idea of upgrading my max health and have better healing per orb, but before getting that why am I required to upgrade other stats with so few shards that are dropped in-game? Also, Life Seeker and Soul Stealer makes the game bearable, but that robs you from getting the needed attack upgrades to progress through the acrobatic chaos. This again defeats the purpose of getting the upgrades you seriously need, and the long-term upgrades are paltry at times! And what's the point of unlocking a spell that allows you to plunge down to where you can't see a thing when upgrading your existing spells is the better option?

Speaking of which, we go to another deal-breaker: The camera! You only have a fixed view that desperately needs to be zoomed out, as you can barely see more of what's ahead of and behind you. In a game that ramps up the difficulty level too fast, you will have enemies appear in front of you or in vertical "blind spots" from out of nowhere, where you would have much better reaction time if you were given any choice to zoom out and see ahead of you! And why can't this game allow you to see more of what's above and below you, both of which within half the distance of your horizontal view? Super Mario World can do that, yet this game doesn't have that! You can't even plan how to approach those areas unless you like winging it, which is risky.

Overall, go for a better twin-stick shooter than this unbearable ordeal. DX

There is so much good here that it really pains me to give the Thumb's Down. But because ultimately I don't recommend this game, I will largely list negatives, even though I though there were certain things the game did well.

First off, graphics. I am not the kind of player that is woo'ed by fancy graphics. What I look for are graphics that are correctly layered, aesthetically pleasing, and where graphical elements are grouped into logical and distinct color palettes (groups).

One could argue that the art style is a personal choice, but I find most of the art for the character, foes, foreground and background to be perfunctory. There is very little texture, dimension or life on anything. "Flat" would be how I describe everything in the environment.

The layering is very good for the the different sprites (foreground, player, enemies, projectiles, etc), but the graphics don't work in terms of being pleasing or logically colored. Everything kind of comes from the same dingy "grey" color scheme and it all blends together in a smear of grime.

The way things are colored don't do anything to assist the player in seeing what to attack, where to go, or what to pick up. You can't really distinguish the foreground from the background, and in combat and exploration you'll find yourself constantly bonking into doorways you didn't see, walking into walls you can't distinguish, and trying to fall through gaps in the floor that aren't actually there.

One particularly conspicuous example of bad color-choices are the XP "motes" which have been placed around by design or scatter from enemy drops... they all have the same color and have the same color palate of stationary environmental lights, so you are always visually confused what's a lightbulb and what's an XP mote. But you have to collect the motes so you end up doing a lot of needless jumping around at lightbulbs.

There is little visual fidelity in the monster graphics; They are all white/grey/beige assembly of blobs with no real texture. They all look like they're made out of inflatable grey balls glued together. There are so many needless coronas on things yet nothing has any color, vibrancy or life, so you feel like you're playing wearing sunglasses for darkness and patroleum-jelly rubbed in your eyes for blur.

All of the above graphical complaints boil down to a feeling of visual monotony, and more than that, irritation. Because the design of the graphics and the color choices work SO HARD AGAINST the player. It gets very frustrating after a very short while... even after 2 hours of playing I hadn't really seen a new graphical element or something exciting at all.

I played for about 2 hours before putting down this review, but the fundamental game didn't feel any different at any point. The procedural level generation should be a good thing, but the maps are far too expansive and boring to make it feel exciting or tight. This is often the trade-off for procedural generation: you get long games with lots of levels, but a very flat experience in the levels since there are no puzzles, monsters, secrets or special level arrangements made by hand, the way a masterpiece like SMB3 would have. There wasn't a good enough variety of enemy types to make me feel like it was worth continuing.

I liked the different rings, weapons and miracles you can use, but they don't feel particularly game-changing. A lot of time it's just better to hold the trigger on your pop-gun and not risk getting hit.

I liked the idea of being able to harvest demon parts for upgrades, but the upgrades were boring and the menus are really confusing. The special "oaths" that you can use have pitiful benefits and didn't change the play experience much.

In the first 20 minutes I thought this game was going in great places, but after that I realized it's going nowhere.

2.2 hours of playtime before this review. Anything past that is now me card idling.

This is proving to be one of those games where just having a positive / negative rating isn't enough. It's a slick side scrolling shooter, that has oomph to the action and responsive acrobatics - which put it on the positive side.

But on the other hand - it's a rather limited experience, padded out with a grindy upgrade element, and only satisfies in small doses. It's simple and frantic fun, yet that simplicity works against it because of the repetition enforced by the need to level up. It just isn't doing enough to hold my attention and make me want to play for extended periods.

Shooting is done through autoaim, so the skill in the game comes from cartwheeling / jumping / air dashing / wall jumping to avoid enemies and projectiles. You can only carry two different weapons at once, and have three special abilities. Then there's passive upgrades, improved weapons, and levelling up yourself.

None of which really add any variety to the standard gameplay - they just mean you won't get your gluteus maximus handed to you on a plate quite so quickly once you've levelled up. However...levelling up takes replaying through levels over, and over, and....ooooverrrrrrrrr, and this really exposes it's limitations. What starts off as exciting quickly becomes monotonous.

So much effort for so little difference, and it's not an avoidable grind as this is pretty tough even on the easiest difficulty. For some people adding a tiny amount of extra damage etc might constitute progression, but for me personally I like to feel like I'm constantly moving forward - and for a game to do that the levels have to change, enemy types have to change, fresh setpieces come around, and have boss battles with varied tactics.

The game does not do any of those things, and to me it's design is the path of least effort whilst trying to appear to be deeper than it actually is. It says it isn't a roguelike, but has random levels, a tedious grind for barely discernable "differences", makes you go back several stages when you die, and eventually gets all the joy sucked out of it - which are all things I attribute to roguelike games. One for the masochists, or gamers with OCD, otherwise it gets boring.

Sure - there's a story to hold all of it together and provide some impetus, but seeing as how you have to often repeat stages upon dying you'll be regularly skipping the same old chat. It's good that the developers allow you to skip it, and bad that they designed it to be so repetitive in the first place. It's a brief bit of fun, that's than artificially stuffed with insignificant padding that passes for "depth" and all the tedium that comes with it.

I don't want to give this a positive review, but it's not bad either - it's just an acquired taste that doesn't appeal to me, and it's daft that Steam is so inflexible as to not be able to say "this is a bit meh! and you should know what you're getting into"

You are weak as your sarcophagus opens. As you slide to the floor you realise that you had been imprisoned for over three decades. All of your guards are dead and the ship that serves as your prison is infested with hordes of daemons.

You are a seraph, an angel, inhabiting the body of a human. Her name is Talia and she once agreed to let you control her. But the years have made Talia bitter. You need to restore your health and fight the daemons to free both Talia and yourself.

Seraph is a platform shooter that concentrates on acrobatic skills. Aiming isn't necessary, which means you can jump, double-jump, wall-jump and otherwise focus on your movement while pressing the shoot button and automatically hit your enemies.

Seraph is simply everything I love about 2D games. If you plan to play a 2D shooter this year, go for Seraph. It's great!

Pros:
- it's a blast
- highly addictive
- nice graphics
- challenging but never frustrating
- dynamic difficulty (difficulty rises gradually based on your skill)
- tons of upgrades
- different weapons
- wonders
- the longer you play the better the game gets
- daily challenge that earn you upgrade items
- weekly challenge that also earn you upgrade items
- selection of upgrades influences your level of success
- improved loot on higher difficulty
- very good controller support

Neutral:
- I didn't like the music at the beginning but got used to it later. Some players love the music.

Cons:
- daily challenge left me with a blisters on my trigger finger
- some weapons don't fire automatically. For pistols and machine guns you simple keep the button pressed. For shot-guns and rail-guns you have to keep pressing the button again and again.

This game, while fun for a little while quickly begins showing massive design problems that ultimateley make you want to stop playing and never pick it up again. although it is a nice game to pick up during the sale, play until you get sick of it and then slowly stop caring about it. Worth 3€ in a sale for a bit of light entertainment

The main Problems of the game include:

Sticky Movement: while the movement works rather well for Combat in open areas, it can be very sticky for Platforming and actually traversing the levels, blinking at an angle on certain walls or edges gives you a massive boost in momentum for some reason, but you get stopped dead in your tracks if you touch a vertical wall. so far glitched through a wall once and had to reset the level.

Bad visual Design: The game looks good, it looks nice. A bit too nice. Too cluttered. The screenshots and video on the storepage show a beautiful artstyle, but unfortunately it is very cluttered. During my first 3 hours of gameplay i would repeatedly run into walls and platforms, which appeared as part of the background, while not finding ways because i assumed they were walls. Often during i fight i would get "stuck" on the wallclimbing of a wall i didnt realize was there and eating a few free hits for it

Bad level design: The combat, the meat of the game is a lot of fun, but unfortunately the levels are littered with copious amounts of backtracking. Often you find yourself in the flow of exciting combat only to spend the next minuted backtracking to the exit, alternative paths, dead ends and collectibles. Nothing kills the pace like looking for the next fight and only stumbling about in the samey confusing level layouts resulting in a lot of downtime between fun parts

The Grind: Upgrading your character carries over into different playthroughs and the challenges. The amount of Shards, Motes (whatever those are) and crafting materials quickly becomes horrendously high in exchange for relatively minor boosts like a +4% dmage to the pistol class (an Mk3 pistol costs 1500 of these blue things, and one level rewards you depending on how thorough you are with about 50) . Furthermore the upgrade system tends to screw you over and punish experimenting with different weapons. I prefered the Assault rifle during the first few hours of gameplay and proceeded to upgrade it. although shortly before i grinded enough materials for the upgrade i ran out of ammo and changed for a different weapon. in 4 hours of playtime since i upgraded the assault rifle, i was not able to find a new one (maybe they dont get dropped if the other weapons are still mk1) even after restarting the game to replay the levels where i previously found it. To make the grind a bit easier the Devs put in Daily and Weekly challenges, which at the surface look like a great opportunity to quickly gain a lot of crafting materials based on which percentage of the highscore list you get into. The problem about this is that the Upgrades carry over into challenge mode, so competeing with other players who are ahead of you in the upgrade curve make it hard for low equipped players to reach high scores for those sweet upgrades.


The game has a load of flaws which ultimateley spoil the whole experience, although it has a good core gameplay which makes you say "just one more level" over and over again until you ultimately get so tired of it that you have no motivation to revisit it.
Not a bad game for 3€ and a bit of fun, but i would have regrettet the 13€ price tag.

This game has fluid mechanics and the movement feels fantastic. There is auto aim for the shooting so the game is more about evasion and dodges but it feels fantastic to play. I think if you had to worry about aiming it would interrupt the pacing of the game and slow it down considerably. The game is satisfying to play because you're really trying to manage satisfying momentum. If I had to describe it would be like crossing the Matrix with bullfighting. This game flew under the radar for me when it came out but I'm very glad I was able to find it. It's well worth the asking price.

Seraph is a rather fun platform shooter with a heavy focus on mobility and acrobatics. The game itself is simple enough: Explore each level and either kill a boss or destroy a few demon portals, at which point the exit unlocks, rinse and repeat.

Between all that is the combat. The shooting is all down to autoaim leaving the player to focus on avoiding enemies and their projectiles by using the Seraph's acrobatic manoeuvres which allow her to double-jump, cling to/bounce off walls and even teleport short distances. It's easy to learn but difficult to master (if you'll excuse the cliché) and with some practice you can be backflipping and cartwheeling between enemies, blasting away without taking a scratch. It's simple yet effective and highly satisfying. Firepower is provided by the default dual pistols which have unlimited ammo, but you can also carry a second more powerful weapon with limited ammo which can be replenished from ammo chests scattered around the levels or swapped out if you find a different one in a weapon locker.

Added to that you can gather experience to level up, increasing your hit points and learning passive skills. You can also gather crafting materials to unlock and improve weapons, protective charms and Miracles, which are active skills that can deal huge damage above and beyond you weapons but are limited by cooldown timers. Finally there's crystal shards that you can gather which can be used to buff further passive skills such as bonus firearm damage, reduced incoming damage or Miracle buffs to name a few.

Aside from a Story mode to finish, there's also daily and weekly challenges which reward the highest scores with bonus crystal shards and crafting materials, so there's plenty to do.

My only complaints are relatively minor niggles. There's no automap which isn't a big hassle as the levels aren't that large, but it would be a handy feature. There's no way to tell what secondry weapon you're carrying or how much ammo you have for it without switching to it, which can be a costly error if you're in the middle of a big firefight and it turns out your SMG is empty. There's very little variety in the levels, aside from a texture change every 4-5 levels. For the most part you'll just be hunting down the boss or the demon portals, then moving onto the next, and you'll be doing this over and over. Finally the story, such that there is, is delivered though short text-based conversations at the beginning and end of each level. While the writing is good, it does break the flow of the game, grinding the action to an awkward halt while the Seraph chats with various NPCs via a radio or telepathically. I can't help but think it would have been better as a voice over, that way players could carry on blasting and backflipping. These sections can be skipped (along with the voice logs that can be located on each level) but it feels like a missed opportunity.

Overall a rather addictive little platformer with engaging mechanics. Well worth a pop at £9.99 (or your region's equivalent) though the DLC seems a little pricey. £1.99 for an alternate costume for the Seraph is a little too much like Horse Armour to me, but it's purely asthetic and you don't have to buy it if you don't want to.

Seraph is hard to class. The game has traits similar to shooter games, action RPGs, platformers, and roguelikes. But it isn’t any of those. At its core, the prime mechanic is the “progressive account” mechanic (my new term). What I mean by this is you play through the game, kill stuff, collect stuff, and improve stuff. Eventually, you beat the final boss or hit a wall, and you can’t continue. So, what is next? You start over. However, all the improvements remain on your account. Once you collect a set number of superior shards, you have the choice to be reborn. This rebirth will erase the progress on your account but bestows a permanent bonus. In Seraph, you can do this a maximum of five times.

The game you play, outside this larger metagame, is more of an action RPG than a shooter. The setting is a prison where the Seraph was held as a prisoner. She is let free, but in the process of coming to earth, a gate to hell was also opened dragging hellspawn into the mortal realm. (Sidenote: Technically the Seraph is genderless. However, I will refer to the Seraph as “her” since on the mortal plane it has inhabited a female human named Talia. Just as I call my Amazon Echo she, it feels more natural to refer to the Seraph as female.) The Seraph’s weapon of choice: firearms. You can pick up a myriad of different types of firearms from pistols and revolvers (which she will dual wield) to assault rifles or a railgun. In addition to your original pistols, which have unlimited ammo, you can carry one other weapon that will have limited ammo.

Since you are an angelic entity, you also have blessings at your disposal. You start the game with two: 1) Repel, which as the name suggests pushes back enemies who are near to you and 2) Orb, which is a boomerang type projectile that does damage as it goes out and double damage on the way back. These two miracles can be improved, new miracles discovered and swapped to create a build suited to your playstyle. You also have access to another miracle, Smite, which cannot be upgraded or changed. This miracle is essential in destroying elite demons as well as the mini-bosses. Finally, as you increase in level, you are granted a blessing. You get to select from a random set of blessings and can either pick a new one or upgrade one you already have. Choose wisely, as you can only be granted four unique blessings. You cannot respec these; however, when you start a new game you choose new blessings - these do not carry over when you start over.

As mentioned, the game plays more like an action RPG. While your primary weapon is a firearm of some sort, you don’t have to aim. Just press the fire button. You will auto-aim at the nearest demon, or split your fire if two are coming from opposite directions. When you kill a demon, sparkly motes will float in the air where the vanquished demon was previously wreaking havoc. Get in there fast, because initially, they are greater motes worth three times more experience points. They quickly degrade creating an interesting dichotomy. Since you are using a ranged weapon, the game rewards you for getting in close.

Since the game auto-aims for you, specifically aiming at monsters isn’t the primary objective. This game is a parkour game where you must move to stay alive. You can hang on ledges, double jump, climb walls. All of these skills are necessary to evade the onslaught of demons. The critical move in your arsenal is called a “blink.” With this maneuver, you can move a short distance in any direction you chose. While moving via blink, you are invulnerable. Thus, you can evade demons or their projectiles. (It also comes in handy navigating the levels.) You have two blink usages that are on a short cooldown negating the ability to spam them constantly. The other interesting thing about Seraph is the game dynamically changes difficulty with your skill. The faster you gain experience the higher the difficulty. Die in a level, and the difficulty will be adjusted down. However, the higher the difficulty, the greater the rewards.

Levels are procedurally created. There are two main types of missions in each level: 1) destroy the mini-boss of the level designated as a Lieutenant or 2) destroy the fountains which are the gates from where the demons are spawning. The mini-bosses have a three stage life meter and must have their health knocked down and execute a smite on them three times before they die. The fountains must be destroyed; however, when you start attacking them they send out a distress signal and new demons spawn in the vicinity.

Some levels may have a high-security door blocking your way. Find control pad that will open the door to find a plethora of chests and lockers, a power-up (increased armor, increased damage, increased experience) that is active for a short period and a checkpoint which will allow you to continue if you die. If you die in a level, you will be resurrected at the start of the level docked a significant portion of your maximum health. If you die again, you will be docked another significant portion of your maximum health. If you die a third time, it is game over. You can continue the game in the level where the last checkpoint was or start a new game. The HUD will show you how many times you have been resurrected in the level in the upper right. If you complete the level, you get a clean slate.

Occasionally, there will be an area that goes on lockdown. If this happens, the area you are in will be sealed off for one minute. Demons will continually spawn for that time. If you die, the lockdown will end, and you can travel through the area without an issue. If you survive, the last demon in the area is guaranteed to drop a shard.

Shards are the ultimate prize in Seraph. Monsters will occasionally drop them, and when they do they are to be coveted. Shards can be invested in the skill tree to improve Seraph’s skills either offensive, defensive, or holy attributes. By investing shards into the various branches, you can open up higher level skills. Shards can also be improved. Three shards of one level can be combined to create one shard of the next highest level. Since you can only invest one shard in a skill, you will need to improve their quality to get higher level bonuses and unlock higher tiered skills. Don’t worry; shards can be removed and upgraded at any time. So, once you get them - use them.

While I have been enjoying my time with the game, it isn’t perfect. First of all, the environs all look the same. You are in this part of the prison or that part of the prison. While every five levels or so, the colors change, it is still monotonous. Second, it can be difficult to tell where walls and solid floors are located. Sometimes it looks like you can’t pass through a “wall” only to find out it is an overlay decorative element. Floors are worse. Getting blasted from underneath when you think you are standing on an impervious floor is a low blow. The best way to think about it is any "thin bridge" connecting "land masses" is likely to be porous. Third, in some of the color schemes detecting the chests and then determining if you have already opened them can be difficult. Finally, there aren’t very many different monster types and their color palette blends into the rest of the game.

In my mind, none of these issues are a deal breaker. The game contains much content and replayability. The controls are spot on. An opening screen shows a picture of a controller and states “Controller Recommended.” I can’t imagine playing this without one. The action is an intense blend of parkour, dodging, and shooting. Evade and move are important tactics in staying alive. The game isn't for everyone, but if you are into these types of games does have quick and addictive gameplay.

Erueka! I've struck a goldmine.

Man, oh man, this game is my love at first sight. Long hours were invested to look for that one perfect game on the last sales night and boy was it worth it or what when I came across this gem.


This gem right here is a sidescrolling 2D acrobatic shooter aided by dynamic and fluid controls. There is no aim so all you do is press a button [RT on the Xbox One Controller] and the character will start shooting the enemies surrounding within her radius as you evade your enemies assault in a stylish fast paced manner and inflict damage.

The game is one of its kind, where you play as an angel female protagonist fighting off demons, however this isn't like one of those cliche games where you'd expect to slash your way through with a sword but rather instead, she is eqipped with guns to execute her foes that manifiests her mastery in the art of 'Gun Fu'.

With that said the game offers an interesting story plot, enjoyable gameplay mechanism with an exceptional level design and a fine soundtrack in the background to set the perfect atmosphere making it an overall enjoyable experience that would keep you hooked onto it.

Final comments...

Would definitely recommend it to anyone especially to those drawn towards fast paced side scrollers or twin stick shooters.

~ Kudos to the developers for the flawless execution of the game coupled by superb innovation that is worthy of my gratitude.


p.s The game is best played with a controller, however it is playable on the keyboard just fine.

I've written this review a few times, and I've found this game kind of hard to describe... but it’s been like two months since it came out, so I'll try one more time: This game is what would happen if you threw the Bible and DVDS of the Matrix into a blender, boiled the resulting slurry into a concentrate, then tricked John Woo into drinking the whole thing while dancing at a rave.

An action packed, exciting platformer, Seraph delivers on its promise of fast paced shooting, potentially devastating powers, and most importantly - no aiming required. Your job is not to point the gun. Your job is to keep Seraph safe while SHE points the gun. Overall, Dreadbit keeps the pressure on while maintaining a great difficulty curve, which in a game like this is key to a good time.

While you are jumping around, shooting demons with guns ranging from the classic dual pistols to futuristic rail guns, the difficulty of the game goes up and down depending on how well you are doing in the moment. If you are getting smashed, the enemies ease up on you. If you are slaughtering everything, leaving a bloody path in your wake, the game ups the ante. It’s a system that, upon reflection, I realized was there.

So this is an important point - the game says that it has a variable difficulty system. It’s right on the steam page.... and I didn't really think about that until I started writing this review. All I knew was I didn't get bored. I have been playing this game for 27 hours now, and it still feels as fresh as it did when I had just been playing for 6 hours. This is pretty weird, and frankly I don't know what kind of dark arts they are casting at the Dredbit offices.

There are multiple weapons, powers, and charms to season the game to taste, but the most important thing you'll think about is your Oaths... enhancements to your core abilities and stats. A role playing element is tucked away here, and trying to figure out where to put what bonuses scratches that strategic itch I might be getting.

Of course nothing but heaven is perfect, so there are a few issues I found; one of which is the story... it is presented through short conversations at the beginning and end of each level and it really suffers from that. I felt like I was coming into the middle of a book... everyone referring to people, places, and concepts that I either missed or just weren't introduced in a way that I could absorb. The game levels are all procedurally generated, so there isn't really anything substantive connecting the environment to the storyline... which is you are an angel riding in a woman's body, and you are trapped in a prison with a bunch of demons that you have to shoot in the face. That’s really all I got out of it... which is too bad because there is a lot of information there. It seems to suffer from "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" Syndrome.

There are daily and weekly challenges, which also keep the game fresh hours after you get to the final boss, but in some ways those just highlight that same issue - the storyline doesn't actually need to be there for the game to be as fun as it is. It’s almost a distraction... an unwanted break in the flow of the action.

The reason I'm harping on that so much is because other than that, the game is fun as all hell, so the flaw really shows, which is unfortunate.

That said, seriously, if you want to shoot a bunch of demons and use awesome powers, if you like beautifully created games, if you like techno music... go get this game.

Rating: Stayed up 1 out 5 hours past bed time.

By and large one of the best running Unity action games I've played. Unfortunately a lack of interesting content and procedural variety, coupled with an MMO level of nearly imperceptible progression tied to a per centage chance enemy drop farming mechanic ultimately make the game a chore instead of an adrenalin rush. The painfully slow progression could've been overlooked entirely if the game were truly completely player skill based, but perplexingly Dreadbit chose to artificially limit the player's freedom to dodge with a two charge meter that has a cooldown period. The end result of this, in union with the built-in dynamic difficulty, is that when playing well you'll inevitably get to a point on the difficulty scale that you'll be getting hit with swarms of enemies that are simply impossible to avoid taking damage from with two dodges. This then enforces the grind, to survive *some* hits from 7.00+ difficulty enemies and to have enough DPS to avoid drawn out encounters, instead of making it a natural reward loop.

After bringing this up on the forum, Dreadbit did respond to me (I will say, always, kudos to developers taking part in their distribution communities), and the game apparently did at one point give the player complete freedom of movement; the restriction on it was actually an addition! The sentiment was that you could essentially fly with unlimited dodges, which is both an empowering (read: fun) mechanical concept and fitting for an angel. Dark Souls, and the stamina meter therein, was used as a point of reference for the logic behind the dodge cooldown. The problem with that notion is From meticulously hand crafts games tailored to a steady and deliberate pace, each encounter is give and take. Seraph on the other hand is essentially a hot procedural mess once you hit that 7.00 and up difficulty mark, vomiting out rainbow colored packs of "elites" at you indefinitely, the majority of which just spam whatever special powers they spawned with. Ultimately, I simply can't abide by the decision to intentionally make a game less fun in the pursuit of emulating somebody else's mechanics, but I can't fault Dreadbit if that's the feel they're going for.

As it is at the time of this review, what you see in the trailer is basically all you get. There's a couple different environment backgrounds, two objective types to clear each floor, a handful of enemies and enemy ability modifiers, a handful of consumable ammo gun types, a handful of cooldown-based powers, and a core dodging mechanic designed to shackle the player instead of free them; which is actually fitting for the plot. With all this in mind, if you really like the trailer then go for it; its far from the worst way you could spend $12.99.

Seraph is a well-done and very challenging platforming shooter that kind of makes me think of a mix of Bayonetta and an old Xbox game called Gunvalkyrie, but as a side-scroller. You also have an upgrade system like that of an action-RPG, where enemies drop resources that can be used to improve your weapons, spells ("Miracles"), and special limited-durability items that are the closest thing you get to armor. In addition, your character gains passive buffs, either from gathering the game's equivalent of experience points or from using special items called Shards, which interact with Seraph's three skill trees--Munitions, Defensive (which I recommend focusing on first, because your very limited health needs all the increases it can get) and Holy, which is a mix of offensive and defensive bonuses. Shards work similarly to combining metal in Team Fortress 2: three of Shard A makes Shard B, which is stronger; three of Shard B makes Shard C and so on, and Shard strengths and rarities are represented through colors, similarly to a loot system.

The game doesn't really "have" a loot system per se, as other than finding resources and Shards that enemy Daemons drop, you are responsible for what you want to earn and upgrade. You can't make crafting decisions while you're in the middle of playing a section, but you can do so in between levels, as well as (smartly) from the main menu, which comes in handy if you know you're facing one big enemy instead of many little ones. However, you also don't have true weapon loadouts: other than your dual auto-pistols, which are always with you and are your only infinite-ammo weapon, you can carry a second weapon by gathering one from numerous lockers spread throughout the game. Which weapon you get--shotgun, assault rifle, submachine gun, railgun--is randomly generated, though some lockers might instead just offer extra ammo for the one you already have. Weapons don't have randomly generated prefixes or suffixes that determine their capabilities, so their power generally depends on your investments into upgrading their stats. Don't neglect your pistols, as they're invaluable when your stronger weapons run out of ammo.

Even basic enemies can severely damage Seraph, and health pick-ups are very rare and rather meager when they do appear; in some cases these will barely replenish the equivalent of taking one hit. The game's central mechanic is its 360º evade system, whose two quickly recharging uses also function as a quadruple jump. You're meant to rely on the invincibility frames this gives you. Seraph targets enemies automatically and is generally smart enough to prioritize the close ones, though you can also lock onto them if you want the camera to focus on enemies instead of you. At times I'd like to zoom the camera out before blindly jumping into an area I can't really "scout out" beforehand. Along with replenished health, you get three lives per level, each of which having a significantly smaller maximum health than the one before it, so you effectively have 200% health spread over three lives. Lose all of those, and--this was forewarned but may turn a lot of customers away--you resurrect at the last checkpoint you activated, even if it was in a previous level. Many levels, which individually are small despite their nonlinear design, have secret areas that have these checkpoints and health/gun/ammo refills, so after you complete an area, you might not want to make a beeline for the exit without also looking for a secret checkpoint, unless you're already about to die. The game's few major boss fights thankfully auto-save at their beginnings.

You can also find text logs, and for its genre the game actually bothers to tell a decent story; its writing style is flowery yet sometimes vague, but the story tries to be more complex than just a straight good-versus-evil tale despite its techno-religious motif. It's even a bit touching when it's not being cynical. These logs, which can be read during gameplay or accessed from the main menu, do a good job of setting up the complex relationships of the game's small cast, especially between Seraph and "its/their" vessel--intriguingly, but never ham-handedly, a Middle Eastern woman, whose interesting backstory brings up a lot of ethical questions. Character dialogue can be skipped but is worth reading. Even the weapons, the various Daemons, and the resources they drop have their own little bits of lore, which is a really nice effort despite the weapon designs lacking creativity. All these bits of story do a good job of explaining concepts other genre entries might take for granted: why are there Daemons, and why do you in particular want to fight them? How does gameplay death work if you're an angel? How do experience points work? Some of the Daemons, however, look like they came out of Dead Space and were then run through a grayscale filter--some more color and design variety would have been nice. The ending gives you two choices but doesn't really explain much afterward, even if I still had fun overall.

Many enemies also have icons over their heads representing their abilities, but the game doesn't extensively explain those unless you look them up in the main-menu manual; the ones that really matter, however, will probably become obvious during gameplay. The procedurally generated level designs function well (except for the one time a mandatory enemy spawned inside of a wall, forcing me to exit my Survival run) but don't always have a lot of 'art' to them. Graphically there's not as much style as something like Transistor or Mark of the Ninja, but the setting concept is thoughtful and interesting. The soundtrack, which reminds me of a mix of Frozen Synapse and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, is a lot better. On smaller notes, some of the platform supports can be jumped through while others cannot (not sure why), and the "Motes" you gather sometimes look a bit too similar to the light fixtures.

The single biggest reason to play the game, besides its defense mechanism, is its difficulty, numerically represented in a corner of your screen. This adapts to your playing skill and singlehandedly keeps the game fun: the early levels might seem too easy while the game calibrates, but that won't last. You can also choose starting difficulty from a few options. The main story may only take about four hours, but the last boss fight was INSANE even compared to the rest of the game (14 Nov EDIT: This difficulty got nerfed shortly after the game's launch but is still formidable) and took me yet another four hours' worth of attempts, with the difficulty never decreasing all the while. I'm not complaining--it was amusing and even somewhat welcome to see a game so utterly unapologetic about its challenge, and I most certainly never got bored. However, (this will hopefully be fixed) that last fight could use better optimization, since the bullet spam repeatedly slowed down my framerate--devastating in a high-speed game like this--and caused one of my two crashes. There's also a funny but minor glitch where Seraph's graphic got stuck in a prone position but otherwise played fine. A controller is highly recommended, as the keyboard technically works but makes directional evades a bit of a pain. Most actions can be rebound, except for pausing and (on a controller) movement and enemy focusing, though the left and right stick functions can be swapped.

You also have daily and survival challenges you can do, complete with leaderboards, and some select rewards from these challenges carry over to the main game. If you perform well (e.g., top 75%/50%/etc. of players), you can get extra items.

Other than some issues with the art and the game's stability, I've been very happy with this little game that takes a simple concept and keeps it exciting. Time to start New Game Plus! (Update: I don't even know how many playthroughs I've done now.)

This is a bit lengthy so I'll put my conclusion in first.

In Conclusion
This game is just frustrating to play and it wasn't until I tried writing this review that I realised just how much is wrong with it. It's the procedural generation that fails this game the most, I could probably overlook every other flaw I listed if the devs just took the time to craft a compelling set of levels to play.

13 Things I Don't Like About This Game
All the levels are procedurally generated, often badly. By this I mean more often than not the game will place a variety of enemies in an awkward space that makes it very difficult or impossible to evade their attacks. At the beginning of the game this isn't a problem because you can kill everything quick enough before things get awkward. The game doesn't really give you enough tools to help you avoid damage, just a dash with invincibility frames.

Levels with large vertical sections you have to drop down. You take a leap of faith there aren't a bunch of enemies waiting for you when you land, there's no feature to see what's down there. Just another problem with procedural generation.

Odd procedural generation that will place a background under/over a platform and make it look like a wall you can jump off.

With the exception of the last 3 levels in the main game, the other 22 all look very much the same with the same greyish blue color pallette. The last 3 levels has a red color scheme. The screenshots on Steam are a good indicator of all the variety you'll ever see.

Some platforms you can shoot through, some you can't. All platforms you can't jump/fall through. If you can shoot through it then surely you should be able to traverse through it? A confusing design choice.

You stick to walls. The game has a wall jumping mechanic and when you hit a wall you'll briefly stick to it before very slowly sliding down. The problem? a badly generated level means you'll encounter enemies in spaces that are awkward to fight in, so you'll find yourself jumping to evade an attack but then stick to a wall and get hit.

Offscreen attacks. Firstly all enemies will announce what attack they are going to use by showing you an icon relating to that attack somewhere around their body. Of course you can't see this if the enemy has made the attack offscreen. There is one particular enemy who can summon a pillar of flame under your feet, by the time you notice it's already too late. This could have been remedied with better sound design whereby enemies can make a particular noise before they attack or just not make any attacks offscreen.

In total there are 7 enemies. They all look very similar to each other. Look at the screenshots, faceless, naked, pale grey pinkish skin. They all look like that, that is as interesting as the enemy design gets. There are elite enemies like in Diablo where there are modifiers that give them an extra attack and considerably more HP to give a little more variety.

The game makes itself more difficult by increasing enemy HP, attack frequency and maybe decrease the warning time before an attack. Enemies don't get smarter, they just get more spongy. This is especially bad when you encounter an elite (lieutenant) enemy that can spawn in more enemies.

This game increases the difficulty by measuring how many enemies you kill without getting hit*. Why is this a problem? Well you can breeze through a section of the game because the procedurally generated levels were in your favour, then when you get a more awkwardly generated level you'll to have a much harder time.

*it's actually the amount of xp dropped from enemies that you collect without getting hit.

When you die you don't go back to the start of the level you failed at. You are taken back to where you last collected the glowing green checkpoint item. Though not every level has a checkpoint item (procedural generation) so you may be sent back a few levels.

Bad enemy AI. The Serf demon, at certain positions doesn't know how to traverse from a higher platform to a lower platform to attack you, it will just walk back and forth on the edge of the platform until you lead it off. Other flying type enemies sometimes get stuck on wall sections not knowing they need to fly down to get through a doorway. This is just bad AI and I am very surprised it wasn't picked up in testing because these things don't happen rarely.

There's too much for your eyes to keep track of in combat, this isn't a problem until the higher difficulties when enemies become bullet sponges. The game relies too heavily on visual cues to tell you danger is coming. Example, you need to watch your character center screen to see if there are magic attacks that spawn in at your location (flame pillar, damaging teleport) you need to watch all around your character for enemies and keep a sharp eye out for the attack indicator (at higher difficulties this disappears very quickly). If you're using the alternate weapon you need to keep an on the bottom-right for ammo count. If you've used your magic then you need to check cetner-bottom for your cooldowns.

TLDR: Buy it.

I had no idea this game existed until I saw it released from early access today, and picked it up on a whim and have been very pleasantly surprised. It's a very slick action oriented platformer that's a ton of fun to play. If you have any interest in difficult platformers, pick this up, it's an absolute steal.

Positives:
Adaptive difficulty - I *love* this feature, if I'm playing well I get better rewards and things ramp up.
Refined movement - Double jump and and a dash with invicibility frames really lets you flit around and dodge like a madman, when you're in the zone it's a ton of fun.
No aiming - As weird as it sounds, I actually like the fact you don't have to aim, it makes concentrating 100% on movement possible.
Daily/Weekly challenges - There are challenges which reward high level upgrade items in game if you do well in the rankings, which keeps things interesting and provides incentives to keep improving.
Enemy/Item compendium - The pics/info on the enemies is really cool and helps provide some background to the story.

Negatives:
Backgrounds can be tough to differentiate - At times it's hard to tell if something is the ceiling or an opening you can jump through.
Unexplained mechanics - A lot of the mechanics in the game are left up to you to figure out, the loading tips are useful but there's no manual or any detailed explanations for what everything in the game does.

Summary:
I love platformers and buy a ton of them, this is one of the best I've played in a long time. Highly recommended.

Shockingly fun, frantic, deep, and suprisingly tactical little scrolling shoooter. When you're on the prowl for those "diamond in the rough" indie games THIS right here is exactly what you're looking for. Really a ton of fun and incredibly high quality and high value.

Only buy if you arent aming at playing it on a high difficulty. I.E you arent good at 2d platformers.
This game has so much going for it. Great movement, great combat, great progression, great music, great art. However i cannot give it a recommend.
This is due to how many times the mechanics and design abandon everything that makes this game feel great.
This is a game about skill. With the amount of dodgeable attacks from every monster in the game, there is little you cannot outplay. However as i climbed higher up the scaleable difficulty this all started to chenge. Less and less did i find that hard battles was lost due to a bad choise in movement. But simply things that are out of your control. For starters, every time you get near a wall your character sticks to it, Completely changing how the character moves, and destroying any flow you might have had. Meaning you are bound to get hit by any number of attacks from the enemy, and completely messing up the fight going forward.
Attacks that are larger than they are shown. A lot of times ive been hit by attacks that i couldent see hit me.
Enemies uses attacks while off screen. Since the view is very limited, you can often get hit by enemies that you cant see, and since enemies spawn in at certain points of the game, you might jump somewhere that should be safe only to land in 5 monsters already releasing attacks before you can se them.
Confusing enemy abilites. Like in Diablo there are elite monsters with random abilities only shown as icons above their health. That are almost impossible to figure out while fighting the emeies. This pissed me off mostly because one of these skills reflect your bulltes. So i just started taking random damage from the enemy and couldent for the life of my figure it out. Only once the enemy was off screen and i took dmg from nothing did i think i could be the one damaging myself. This was after 5 encounters with said ability. Even after figuring out the symbol for the skill dosent help too much, since its really small and most skills have the exact same colour making it almost impossible to play around.

Now in most games these flaws wouldent bother me as much as here, however since this game keeps making enemies harder and harder to kill. These flaws are amplified and more or less always present in every fight, that isent just a 1 on 1. This makes the game worse and worse the higher you get in difficulty, completely ruining it.