Evil Genome 光明重影

+ pretty 2D graphics
+ fitting OST
+ hentai enemies?
+ simple storyline
+ (why are there so many achievements?)
+ pretty MC (red hair)
+ fluid combat (sometimes)

+/- game can be stressfull sometimes, because bugs and controlling schemes blocks your movement and attacks

- sometimes clunky combat
- controller support is a bit wonky (have to use my Xbox One controller)
- UI scaling doesnt add up above 1920x1080 (UI doesnt adjust above that point)
- 1920x1080 looks ***t, and 4k have **t UI
- loading times
- also weird conversations in battles, which doesnt make any sense sometimes
- some jumps doesnt reach cliffs, but the game says ok (weird)
- conversation translation are weird and full of bugs
- conversations cut off suddenly
- too many passwords for doors
- arkward conversations
- tutorial for so many things is sparse
- weird dying animations of some enemies
- sound seems outdated? (mono?)
- weird bugs (falling from cliffs, bug who makes you half size, weapons sometimes dont function, enemies still float away while stunned etc.)
- dodge is really shit (goes back and forth, when i wanna only go forth)
- nearly no QoL features (Teleporting? Naw...just walk for quests, everywhere..., reading books is a pain)
- weird difficult spikes at the end of the game
- the last Boss was...the great question mark of this Game: Why Hugo? Had like a few seconds in intro sequence only as voice...wtf?


Conclusion:
Yes pretty much the game has its good points. I wanted to find them until the end. I wanted to like the game.... It only got worse. Story is pretty much all over the place, like the bugs, translation issues, resolution scaling, audio bugs, some enemy models physiques, clunky and unprecise movement. The game had some good ideas and good models, but was more butchered by annoying riddles, weird difficult spikes for bosses (especially the last one). And I couldnt understand that some bosses are the bosses, cause they were never mentioned etc. (even in the books). Besides in 4k resolution the game looks great but scaling UI with graphic doesnt exist. You can pretty much pass up here...But its was ok. But i cant suggest playing it. The Normal diffculty (which is somehow easy difficulty)...is pretty nasty. You play against UI, bugs, faulty movement, glitches and the boss with some nasty attacks at the same time. So can be hard pass...

Score:
30

13/10 Costumes <3
13/10 Iron Egg!

I wish I could recommend this. It starts off reasonably decent. At first it feels a little like the 2013 Strider, but not as polished. Strider is obviously a major influence along with Metal Gear Rising.

The voice acting is generally bad, but usually in that slightly charming PS2 way, with a couple PS1 atrocities thrown in. The skill system has the potential to be really interesting, but then the rest of the game just falls apart.

Once you reach roughly the halfway point major flaws start making themselves known. Some skills are seemingly worthless at first, but then you find a particular bit of gear and suddenly that skill is totally OP. Another major thing is that there are several instances of the entire screen being blocked by foreground objects that have no logical reason to be there in the first place.

One oddity is that later level design seems to assume you have the double jump. However, rather then being a story progression item like it SotN, the double jump is a skill that is completely optional to take. Depending on how you've focused your character, its entirely possible that when you start encountering those jumps you both don't have it and aren't close to getting it without resetting a your skills.

There seems like there is a potentially interesting story being told, but the English translation is beyond Google Translate terrible.

On the plus side, the soundtrack is generally solid.

There is fun to be had, but I can't recommend this unless you're grabbing it on sale, where it often goes for $3.

A 2D Metroidvania with a cyberpunk desert setting, this sounded much better than it actually is. The general gameplay mechanics work. Fighing system is funtional as is the skill tree and the upgrade system. But every little problem adds up: technical issues with resolutions beyond 1080p, the horrible localization (dialogs sound weird likely due to cultural differences and after playing though this a few times I still feel confused) and the new player experience is poor (available systems are barely explained and often I didn't know where to go next).

If you can get past the atrocious English translation and voice acting, you'll find a good metroidvania.
I don't want to mock anyone, English is not my primary language and I make a lot of mistakes myself. But here the translation ranges from hilariously bad to almost game breaking unintelligible. A worst job only Google Translate can do.
Beside that there are many inconsistencies. You'll seek in vain the Discarded Diary Page because it just became Abandoned Diary Page in your inventory. And it's not a singular case.

It's... ahhhh it's pretty good, there's some weird stuff where inputs don't like to trigger in the air unless you're really quickly button mashing, like there's a very short window for inputs and combos, which feels like maybe I'm aging out of action games but then I go play more polished titles and I do just fine, so I'm pretty sure it has some strange input detection that just cuts out frequently in the air.

The writing/dialog varies wildly, from forgettably amateur to expected levels from entertaining fantasy literature to "This is so bad I'm just going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a translation issue."

We don't play metroidvanias for the story for the most part anyway. Or the voice acting, which uh, there's one or two choices that are kind of cringy, Eastern exit of Kaladar or whatever its name is.

The gameplay/combat loop is fun, especially if you grind or hack your way up the levels to unlock all the special abilities. What's nice is there are still surprises in store even if you hack all your skillpoints to the max, as several pieces of gear include completely unique gameplay altering effects, like adding a shadow-clone after a dash attack that attacks 3 more times, or causing your basic ranged shots to penetrate enemies and ignore some armor, there's a life leach component available early on (at least if you get access to double jump early on, I don't recall if you can reach the platform without it.)

I have not seen such a poor text translation since Final Fantasy Tactics on PSX, and the voice acting is pretty horrible. Its like watching lips in a bad dub of a 70s martial arts film. This makes the story difficult to parse, or it would if there was much depth to it. There's also graphics issues if you play it at 3840x2160 where the load screen and other overlays were clearly designed for a smaller screen. Despite all that, its fun. Its metroidvania light, which helps, but at its core, the gameplay is just fun. There are some frustrating opponents, but by and large its just good times.

I debated wheter or not I should give it a good or bad review but after much thought I cant reccomend it.
The game is very janky, the dubbing is very bad (outside from the main character), the translation is worse, the combat is half baked and doesnt offer enough audio or mechanical feedback, the metroidvania aspects are not implemented well making exploration not worth it since the upgrades are locked behind gear and a skill tree, game looks good and the music is fine.
I congratulate the developers for the work they did since theres a lot of care put into the game but the end result is a mix of ideas and mechanics that really needed to be polished further.

ok aside from a few bugs which kinda need patching, which they are mostly small from what ive seen, one of them being in the first major bossfight, this is an amazing game and the bugs ive found can be worked around and donty break the game just make things painfully hard till you find out how to work around them. the voice acting is terrable in english but its that fun terrable like in the 90's and early 00's where all the voices were over the top or phoned in and it was funny cause you codl tell no one told the VA motivation or gave anything resembling direction, so for me, growing up in the 80's and 90's it is amazing. also the translations are not great but you can nearly always figure out what is written with a little brain work, like veryu little just rearranging words or adding an adverb. so yeah i cant recomend this enough. but dont be fooled this is pretty hard

It has the seeds of a good game, but doesn't quite hit. The controls are clunky, the translation is poor (and in some places non-existent), and the voice acting is cringe worthy. Explanations are for core mechanics are poor or missing, and the story-line is contrived and hard to follow. Graphics are nice, but they don't really make up for the glaring shortcomings. I really wanted to like it, but it just doesn't feel like a good game. Perhaps if they kept working on it for another 6 months they could get it there, but it seems to have been abandoned.

it is indeed a 2.5d hack-and-slash platformer with rpg and exploration elements

it plays a lot more like mega man zero than metroidvania though

it's janky in just about every possible way
but pretty fun to play regardless

good aesthetic and soundtrack too

worth grabbing when it goes on sale

Evil Genome is game style of metroidvania, rpg and 2.5/3D side-scrolling, that look pretty cool and insteresting idea.

Pros:

Controls: is nice flow, there no problem and you connect your controller of ps4 or xbox with no problem (I did test my own)

Graphics: is great but I feel the particles and render is look weak and need better optimization for pc mid gear because sometimes my pc Nvidia GTX 750 TI is doing skip and lag, Is only lag if you play borders. The graphics is good but need better optimization.

Sound, effect, and music: Those sound look good, effect too and music is pretty solid and very good there no way I hate I think i like all

Character: they look pretty solid there some characters pretty cool like monkey boss and robot giant. etc.... Lachesis (the girl you play with her) she have lot style to do like weapon, sword, and skills you gonna learn a lot with her because is not easy to learn with her but still she look cool

Time: this game is make hour to beat this game if you are new of metroidvania or this game but don't matter if you like play game with long time then this is you because you have to do lot quests and missions.

Cons:

Story: The story is doesnt well to tell what happen, I mean have story but I feel the story will tell you like 70% because there some misse of happen and stuff. but look ok...

Bugs: There a lot of bug sometime the enimes appear and you can't hit him, the barrier you have skill is not worth because the final boss have laser is does hit you when you did use barrier early, sometime barrier protect sometimes don't, the bosses of pattern is glitch, good example the Aircraft grey rilfing of the first pattern should be rocket but he does disappear and do other patterns that looks weird, not only this boss, almost all boss does "pattern disappear " there lot of bug

Translations : there some text are not translations example Return base is not translation and show text as Chines and Dimensional Bag is showing text as chines, there some errors grammatical and phases. also achievement complete easy mode, you mean Normal mode, there lot erros translations.

Conclusion

This game looks pretty cool, is very long to beat and there a lot stuff to do if you are fan-Metroidvania and long to beat the game then this is for you but carefully the story is not very well and their lot glitches and bugs and graphics need better there some people have issues lag or skip or freeze.


7/10

My english is not my main I know is bad but I hope my reviews is helpfull

Maybe it will be fixed in a later update but right now the reload time is absolutely abyssmal. I wanted this game to be great (based on the trailer) but:

1) RELOAD TIME (on a platformer?!) It's bad enough on Witcher III but in a game where you're significantly more likely to die more often it kills any desire to keep playing. Did I say reload time?
2) The English voice acting is pretty bad. I switched it to Chinese with subtitles because in English, the AI sounds like an old man and Lachesis is practically robotic (maybe she should be the AI).

Simple and fun

For a 17$ game, it lives up to it's name, it's not exactly a metroidvania, but who cares. The game is fun, animations are solid, story is not that bad and it makes you keep playing to get those sweet upgrades for your character.

Pros:

Combat is nice
Story OK
Solid animations
Graphics for a ''metroidvania'' are pretty good
Maps/level design is OK
Attetion to detail of your suroundings is really good

Cons:

Literally ''Made in China'', huge amount of grammatical errors
Voices are poorly implemented, the MC seems like an un-emotional person
Some skills are kind of OP *cough* shotgun stun *cough* *cough*

Don't know what to play? Want a cheap and fun game? Evil Genome is a solid choice.
8/10

Can honestly say as my first ever review on steam, you guys deserve to have this honor. I love the game so far as far as the gameplay and graphics go. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what other tagonists I'm gonna bump into. I wanted something new to play and I got it with this game. Keep at it guys!

Decent Metroidvania, maybe one of the best of 2.5D, although not so many of that.

Cons:
- Bad voice acting.
- Many NPCs/talking, related to the point above, with needlessly simple conversation.
- Horrible HUD and menues, all over the place, jumps up and down when scrolling through.
- Too many items, most of them useless, don't know if you can sell/get rid of them, didn't reach that point yet, also the dissassble function is confusing, it is more like downgrade and recycle used materials.
- Confusing skill tree, why not simple tables like borderlands, also semi linear, forcing you to unlock moves you don't need to access the ones you want.
- Some clunky animations
- The world looks nice, but environment collisions and some platforms could be better.
- Lost potentional for some enemies interaction (animation wise).

Pos:
- A metroidvania
- Graphics are decent, although I don't like the worn out look, no AA which looks horrible.
- The fights are satisfying, the basic attacks and dodge feels great, although tripping enemies is not, as they turn invisible while down.
- Both melee and ranged (named remote for some reason) feels useful and somewhat balanced.

aug 12, 2017
it's too crashy and unoptimized to recommend yet... otoh the dev is actively working on it at the time of this review and if improved could be a decent addition to the all too scarce metriodvanias out there.
if you have money to spare and like metoridvanias you might gamble on this and hope it keeps improving, dev seems nice and caring so I hope they will stick with it;
but if you only have a handful of games and a tight budget you'll need to go for something else that works today,

Decent platformer rpg/beatem up. It doesnt really feel like a metroidvania besides the fact it's a side scrolling platformer, not much side exploring or secrets that i've seen. The game shows it's non english roots as the dialog/voice acting is incredibly poor, I personally found it so bad that I enjoyed listening to it as it made me laugh. There is no mouse support for this game and I would not reccomend playing it without a gamepad.

While my overall experience with this game has been more positive than negative, I feel that I should list the things I liked about the game, as well as the things I despised:

Pros:
- The battle system if very well designed. I personally suck at combo attack fighting games, but I had no problems with this one. The issue that most games like this usually have is that in the heat of battle most people forget all of the fancy attacks they have access too and just start button mashing, but I did not have that problem (much) with this game. I never found myself not using an attack pattern or ability that I unlocked, as they are all very well designed to be useful for different situations.
- The character animations are well made, and the visuals are "pretty". I'm not sure why the game needed to be in 3D, but at least I never had any problems with being able to see visually what was going on (no particle spam overload or anything like that).

Cons (Combat):
- The game is very unfair. Not challenging: unfair. It seems to just expect you to chug health potions, since there is no way to avoid most attacks (not completely), especially in multi-attacker encounters. Quite a few enemies use hitscan guns that cannot be dodges except by the roll mechanic (which has a limited number of uses in a row).
- Enemies attack in impossible to predict patterns. All enemies from bosses to the smallest bugs have many different attack patterns, and while this means that their AI is generally good and challenging, too many of their attacks are impossible to predict the first time you see them. This seems to be the kind of game were "skill" needs to be built: you are going to get hit by enemy attacks that you have never seen before.
- Knockdowns. There is almost no "temparary invulnerability" after being struck, and you can find youself in situations a lot where you've been stunned or knocked to the ground and are forced to just sit there and wait while all of the enemies score free hits on you.
- Encounters. Occationally (and usually without warning) the game will lock you into an unescapable encounter, 2D-fighter style. Your only option here is to beat all of the enemies. While this would normally work "fine", the encounter zones are all very broken, and enemies often go "off screen" where you cannot see or hit them and continue to attack you.
- Dodging is the main mechanic of this game's combat, and it is at times a bit... broken. The time window to dodge an attack is so small that you sometimes would need to have started to dodge before the attack was even initialized. Some bosses also seem to ignore your dodge and hit you anyways.
- Bosses. All bosses work in the 2D-fighter style of locking you into a single-screen that cannot scroll, but most of them are just prolonged invulnerability sequences with TINY windows of time where you can actually damage them. In most cases, bosses move to the "background" when they cannot be hurt, but as this is a 3D game, it's very hard to tell when they are "out of bounds", or can be attacked.

Cons (General):
- Despite the claims of being a "Metroidvainia" style game, the game itself is quite linear, and has a nastly habit of locking you out of maps during arbitraty points in the story it doesn't give any indication of, causing many of the side quests to be impossible to finish.
- Exploration is limited; you won't find much if you do choose to explore, only chests with some RNG spawned random loot that is usually of not use.
- The writing. I know this is a Chinese-Translated game, but even accounting for the laughably terrible translation (I swear they must have just machine translated this game), I cannot see how the writing could be anything but abismal even before it was translated. It feels like everyone has the IQ of a dented shovel with a smiley face drawn on it, and have no concept of what is the bleedingly obvious. The dialog feels mechanical and stiff; the kind of thing that would never take place IRL.
- This is one of the worst translated games I've ever seen. Like nearly on "All your base are belong to us!" levels of terrible. I could generally guess at what they ment to say/mean, but not always, and they often use an incorrect, but very similarly spelled word in places, making sentances incomprehensible unless you guess what word them meant to use. And to make matters worse, some quests are in the style of "riddles", which are VERY VERY hard to figure out if the descriptions are unclear.
- The voice acting. MY GOD it's bad. It also baffles me as to why the developers would pay for English voice actors if they weren't going to get an ACTUAL translator...
- As a "2.5D" game, the environments are obviously all in 3D, but the movement path is static 2D. Too often I found myself trying to jump onto/fell off of a ledge that was supposed to be "background", and was very visually hard to differentiate.
- The equipmmet system was not well designed. I think I was 20+ hours into the game before I found an armor piece that was better than my starting gear, and enemies continue to do more damage as you get further along.

It looks a lot like DMC + Metroid. The reality is that the controls are way too klunky to be compare to DMC. The progression is completely linear, so it can't compare to Metroid. Also the story doesn't make any sense because the translation is terrible. And the voice acting is about as bottom of the barrel as it gets. After a shopkeep that sounded like Yoda tried to sell me a book that didn't make any sense, I realized my laughter at the ridiculousness of the situation was the first true joy I had gotten from the game since I sat down, and applied for a refund.

Well... The game is on sale, the day after release... Should mean lots of people pick it up. Problem is, Hellblade also launched today...

Well... I am a huge fan of this Genre... being "metroid-vania" if that's how they are classifying this.

I don't feel like it is much of a Metroidvania game. Aside from your starting area having a ship crashed into the ground, and being a chick in a suit, I don't feel the Metroid influence. I don't really see the Castlevania influence much either. Combined, they both offer something truly amazing... this game misses both the mark on the gunplay, and the swordplay.

Graphically, it looks pretty dang great. But the optimization is horrible. This game should be running 1080p 60fps on most systems. On my system, similar games like Strider, and Shadow Complex, run silky smooth... This game is hitting 25 fps at Lower resolution, and the more I play the game, the worse it seems to run.

At its core, the game could be fun, if it stopped holding your hand so much, and the enemies had some sort of reasonable health. Instead you spend 30 seconds killing a small mob that eats almost all your health.

Dodging, does not work well. Insta-death during exploration is common. Skill tree expansion is not great. Voice acting seems to be done by the same person for all characters, by someone with a cleft palette and a cracked front tooth.

I can understand that this is an indie budget game, and that there had to be some point where the game actually released. My opinion, is that there should have been someone from outside the group, that had an unbiased opinion about how polished the game is.

As of now, I still recommend the game, because it is certainly decent, but if they do not decide to clean it up, I would recommend playing something else...