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by Drug_Solo
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by Taprus
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by Xplayerlol
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by Xplayerlol
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by Cortex
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by ElCochran90
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by Xplayerlol
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by Cortex
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by Drug_Solo
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by Drug_Solo
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by Cortex
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by Xplayerlol
77 Reviews:
Jopagu
There's little to be said about Crimson that hasn't already said, but I like the sound of my own voice so here I go.
Crimson is a game that is most certainly not for everyone, but even still I don't think it deserves the constant lambasting it gets these days. Even as an enjoyer of the game, it's far from perfect. There are a lot of annoying flying spikes, poor needle choices, and one secret that seems impossible to find without a guide (gravity castle). However, there's also a lot of fun platforming mixed in. It's not great needle by modern standards, but given the release date I was pleasantly surprised. I find myself enjoying the classic style of needle more these days, and this game executes it well enough of the time I found it on average good. The secret hunting is mostly fun if you like these types of secrets, but I know most people loathe them. Overall, the platforming is a mixed bag, with some stuff that's pretty awful, but a lot of stuff that's really enjoyable if you're the kind of person who likes old needle.
Onto the bosses. The bat boss is horrible, vile, and despicable. The final boss however is one of the best fights I've played, and the reason my rating is so high. Some notes on my playstyle: I was extremely reckless in the first half, maximizing damage and inviting some crazy dodges. I also didn't avoid hitting blue, so I would get water about halfway through. Personally, this made the fight really interesting. The water has some annoying bugs sure, but they're pretty rare, and in the end I think the water adds an extra dimension to the gameplay that is really fun to solve. The boss is a test of willpower and focus as much as anything, and I personally think the length is to its benefit. By it's nature, all the threats are really simple, but there are so many of them at once you find your attention split. It's a pleasure trying to figure out how to deal with all the attacks, and mastering all the different things you have to consider when fighting it. The boss involves a lot of strategy, and much of my progress felt like learning rather than improving execution, which is a great thing in my opinion. The fight took me about 8 hours, and yet I was having fun the whole time. It's an excellent fight that is a masterclass in using simple attacks to create a complex fight.
Ultimately, this game probably isn't for most people in the modern fangame ecosystem. However, it has its niche, and is well deserving of classic status. If you're skilled enough for it, I'd say this game might be worth playing through just for the final boss. Despite some serious lows, most of this game was a good enough experience I couldn't stay unhappy for long. I know I'm in the minority in this, but I think Crimson is a great game.
[3] Likes
Crimson is a game that is most certainly not for everyone, but even still I don't think it deserves the constant lambasting it gets these days. Even as an enjoyer of the game, it's far from perfect. There are a lot of annoying flying spikes, poor needle choices, and one secret that seems impossible to find without a guide (gravity castle). However, there's also a lot of fun platforming mixed in. It's not great needle by modern standards, but given the release date I was pleasantly surprised. I find myself enjoying the classic style of needle more these days, and this game executes it well enough of the time I found it on average good. The secret hunting is mostly fun if you like these types of secrets, but I know most people loathe them. Overall, the platforming is a mixed bag, with some stuff that's pretty awful, but a lot of stuff that's really enjoyable if you're the kind of person who likes old needle.
Onto the bosses. The bat boss is horrible, vile, and despicable. The final boss however is one of the best fights I've played, and the reason my rating is so high. Some notes on my playstyle: I was extremely reckless in the first half, maximizing damage and inviting some crazy dodges. I also didn't avoid hitting blue, so I would get water about halfway through. Personally, this made the fight really interesting. The water has some annoying bugs sure, but they're pretty rare, and in the end I think the water adds an extra dimension to the gameplay that is really fun to solve. The boss is a test of willpower and focus as much as anything, and I personally think the length is to its benefit. By it's nature, all the threats are really simple, but there are so many of them at once you find your attention split. It's a pleasure trying to figure out how to deal with all the attacks, and mastering all the different things you have to consider when fighting it. The boss involves a lot of strategy, and much of my progress felt like learning rather than improving execution, which is a great thing in my opinion. The fight took me about 8 hours, and yet I was having fun the whole time. It's an excellent fight that is a masterclass in using simple attacks to create a complex fight.
Ultimately, this game probably isn't for most people in the modern fangame ecosystem. However, it has its niche, and is well deserving of classic status. If you're skilled enough for it, I'd say this game might be worth playing through just for the final boss. Despite some serious lows, most of this game was a good enough experience I couldn't stay unhappy for long. I know I'm in the minority in this, but I think Crimson is a great game.
Rating: 8.0 80
Difficulty: 75 75
Jan 23, 2023
ElCochran90
Rating includes extra. Difficulty rating also includes extra because it is the true complete game. Consider a difficulty rating of 70 without extra.
Excellent review by Kale to begin with, one of my favorites of the entire site. Even though it is written as a meme review, many things ring true to me and I gladly back them up.
Carnival is divisive by nature and it all comes down to his main components of inspiration and recurrent adventure themes, mainly:
✓Appreciation towards (and inspiration from) I Wanna Be The Guy, I Wanna Be The Love Trap and I Wanna Be The Fangame!
✖Traps (tons of them, tons and tons of them)
✓Straight platforming; almost zero use of gimmicks to create a more classic, old-school experience
✓Stories involving epic battles between angelical and diabolical forces
✖Generic visual designs
½ Good looking bosses and awful-looking bosses drawn on Microsoft Paint by the little cousin of the family and colored by the cousin's even younger sister
✓Influential concepts
This combination can work for many in different degrees. That is why this game having almost an average rating of 7.0 with ratings of all dimensions (1.9, 2.3, 3.5, 3.6, 4.0, 4.2, 5.5, 6.5, 7.0, 7.5, 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0), resulting in an absurd standard deviation, comes as no surprise. It's easy to see why one would think the game doesn't care about the platforming, the designs or the bosses, and it is also easy to see why someone would say the exact opposite. Just stating the obvious here: opinions are subjective; however, Carnival is a perfect example of this and I think the legendary Crimson embodies that notion.
One must first buy the idea that this is an adventure game, one that does have variety, variety of the old-school type, and known platforming. That's where the level design comes in: it is straightforward, challenging, with some questionable jumps here and there (let's add an upward plane in an underwater level high up enough so that that you cannot set it up from the ground), but mostly fun and even nostalgic of the three aforementioned games.
However, these games are trap-based. That's their essence, but this game abuses the player's trust in that regard. The amount of traps in the game is horribly absurd, completely criticizable and sort of pointless. There are so many traps that actually some add INTEERSTING (yes, interesting) challenge to the platforming. A seemingly harmless jump becomes an interesting one, such as a well-timed diagonal (like the big drop in the black and white segment where a spike flies up towards you in a narrow corridor); however, this comes as trial and error. Traps are a fantastic detriment to the game, so big it hurts.
Secrets are mandatory to get the full experience of this game, and 3 were great, two were ok and three were just plain bad. Particularly amusing is the Mother 2 secret where you have to go through five screens of reasonable platforming to get it, and then backtrack through all five. They are fun to play through; my issue has not been consistency in particular so it wasn't as difficult as, say, the gravity flip stage (which is my favorite secret because of the level design alone), stage which, by the way, is definitely a tribute to the Castle stage of Fangame!
Now, being released in 2011, this is one of the classics, and yes, a comment says "had its days of glory"; the game itself causes all kinds of reactions today based on the ratings I mentioned alone. What about its influence? It's gigantic. Few fangames have accomplished this: an unofficial sequel that spawned its own needle franchise (like Dawn of the Dead having an alternate Italian chain of sequels with Fulci's Zombi aka Zombie 2), a final boss that was featured/replicated in countless fangames, and the final stage, a miraculous and notorious instance of successful level design and a trademark visual design (again, endlessly replicated) which constitutes an interesting take on what hell is for The Kid: just pure crimson needle, traps, corners, planes, danger and an atmospheric, monochromatic score.
The true game shines with the extra, but it is not only because of the fantastic, ominous final stage (which I insist it looks beautiful and is scary too, sort of claustrophobic) or the final boss, which has a godawful visual design and yet a fascinating mechanic of action and reaction where your skills combined with your reactions and your PATIENCE determine the final outcome.
No, it also shines because, before that, there is a medley section. Love Trap is discussed to have the first Miku avoidance (and the avoidance aspect in general), and Kamilia 1 is credited with being the first medley. However, do the predecessors get any mention?? I can't recall a fangame creator prior to Carnival that did this, and it is so innovative. Yes, it's his own games, but why should that matter? It's a trip down memory lane, but this time buffed and with more traps! Here you're supposed to be a tougher fangamer than back when you played Heaven Trap, Nervous and Picture. Here, you're in a well-developed, though dialogue-less adventure of cleansing, a Kid's journey to find purity and freedom from his personal demons and even face his mortal version of himself face to face!
Are you in the side of old-school, straightforward, down-to-earth platforming? You will probably find the visual designs, the location of the secrets and the endless traps (tons of them at the very last spot of the save) as handicaps. That is my case. Getting beyond that, we have a valuable, unique and unforgettable crimson experience that offers one of the most rewarding feelings when beating the final boss and watching the ending. You may call yourself the Boshy now, but calling yourself the Crimson is a more brutal honor.
I dig Carnival.
The hell with that bat boss though what on Earth was he thinking.....
[3] Likes
Excellent review by Kale to begin with, one of my favorites of the entire site. Even though it is written as a meme review, many things ring true to me and I gladly back them up.
Carnival is divisive by nature and it all comes down to his main components of inspiration and recurrent adventure themes, mainly:
✓Appreciation towards (and inspiration from) I Wanna Be The Guy, I Wanna Be The Love Trap and I Wanna Be The Fangame!
✖Traps (tons of them, tons and tons of them)
✓Straight platforming; almost zero use of gimmicks to create a more classic, old-school experience
✓Stories involving epic battles between angelical and diabolical forces
✖Generic visual designs
½ Good looking bosses and awful-looking bosses drawn on Microsoft Paint by the little cousin of the family and colored by the cousin's even younger sister
✓Influential concepts
This combination can work for many in different degrees. That is why this game having almost an average rating of 7.0 with ratings of all dimensions (1.9, 2.3, 3.5, 3.6, 4.0, 4.2, 5.5, 6.5, 7.0, 7.5, 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0), resulting in an absurd standard deviation, comes as no surprise. It's easy to see why one would think the game doesn't care about the platforming, the designs or the bosses, and it is also easy to see why someone would say the exact opposite. Just stating the obvious here: opinions are subjective; however, Carnival is a perfect example of this and I think the legendary Crimson embodies that notion.
One must first buy the idea that this is an adventure game, one that does have variety, variety of the old-school type, and known platforming. That's where the level design comes in: it is straightforward, challenging, with some questionable jumps here and there (let's add an upward plane in an underwater level high up enough so that that you cannot set it up from the ground), but mostly fun and even nostalgic of the three aforementioned games.
However, these games are trap-based. That's their essence, but this game abuses the player's trust in that regard. The amount of traps in the game is horribly absurd, completely criticizable and sort of pointless. There are so many traps that actually some add INTEERSTING (yes, interesting) challenge to the platforming. A seemingly harmless jump becomes an interesting one, such as a well-timed diagonal (like the big drop in the black and white segment where a spike flies up towards you in a narrow corridor); however, this comes as trial and error. Traps are a fantastic detriment to the game, so big it hurts.
Secrets are mandatory to get the full experience of this game, and 3 were great, two were ok and three were just plain bad. Particularly amusing is the Mother 2 secret where you have to go through five screens of reasonable platforming to get it, and then backtrack through all five. They are fun to play through; my issue has not been consistency in particular so it wasn't as difficult as, say, the gravity flip stage (which is my favorite secret because of the level design alone), stage which, by the way, is definitely a tribute to the Castle stage of Fangame!
Now, being released in 2011, this is one of the classics, and yes, a comment says "had its days of glory"; the game itself causes all kinds of reactions today based on the ratings I mentioned alone. What about its influence? It's gigantic. Few fangames have accomplished this: an unofficial sequel that spawned its own needle franchise (like Dawn of the Dead having an alternate Italian chain of sequels with Fulci's Zombi aka Zombie 2), a final boss that was featured/replicated in countless fangames, and the final stage, a miraculous and notorious instance of successful level design and a trademark visual design (again, endlessly replicated) which constitutes an interesting take on what hell is for The Kid: just pure crimson needle, traps, corners, planes, danger and an atmospheric, monochromatic score.
The true game shines with the extra, but it is not only because of the fantastic, ominous final stage (which I insist it looks beautiful and is scary too, sort of claustrophobic) or the final boss, which has a godawful visual design and yet a fascinating mechanic of action and reaction where your skills combined with your reactions and your PATIENCE determine the final outcome.
No, it also shines because, before that, there is a medley section. Love Trap is discussed to have the first Miku avoidance (and the avoidance aspect in general), and Kamilia 1 is credited with being the first medley. However, do the predecessors get any mention?? I can't recall a fangame creator prior to Carnival that did this, and it is so innovative. Yes, it's his own games, but why should that matter? It's a trip down memory lane, but this time buffed and with more traps! Here you're supposed to be a tougher fangamer than back when you played Heaven Trap, Nervous and Picture. Here, you're in a well-developed, though dialogue-less adventure of cleansing, a Kid's journey to find purity and freedom from his personal demons and even face his mortal version of himself face to face!
Are you in the side of old-school, straightforward, down-to-earth platforming? You will probably find the visual designs, the location of the secrets and the endless traps (tons of them at the very last spot of the save) as handicaps. That is my case. Getting beyond that, we have a valuable, unique and unforgettable crimson experience that offers one of the most rewarding feelings when beating the final boss and watching the ending. You may call yourself the Boshy now, but calling yourself the Crimson is a more brutal honor.
I dig Carnival.
The hell with that bat boss though what on Earth was he thinking.....
Rating: 6.5 65
Difficulty: 80 80
Aug 8, 2020
Nearigami
Much has been said about Crimson and its maker, Carnival. People talk about how Carnival was only 12 years old when he made this game, or how Kale's review of Crimson was at one point the most liked review on Delfruit (I believe it's now 4th after Raimon and Stonk's K3 review, and Zorgo's weird K3+ moral grandstanding, but I digress.) It's also gone on to be arguably one of the most influential fangames ever made. I personally would go as far as to put it up there with the likes of Lovetrap, GB, Black, Kamilia 2 and 3, and Crimson Needle 1 and 3, though I'm not married to that opinion.
Crimson is a game where you either get it or you don't. I can completely understand why one may not enjoy this game. It's design is somewhat archaic by today's standards. There are a lot of traps that don't really serve a purpose other than to frustrate the player in uninteresting ways. There's restarting music and almost exclusively generic guy visuals. There's even required secrets, some of which don't have any obvious tells as to their location. Hell, I would go as far as to say the bat boss is legitimately terrible with nothing really redeeming about it. For me though, it just clicks.
While I am adamant about a fair amount of traps not adding to the experience, some legitimately change how you tackle the platforming in interesting ways, forcing you to move in ways you still don't see often enough in trigger needle. The use of moving objects is a really well exectued form of cycle needle and importantly changes how you approach jumps without necessarily making them more difficult to figure out, which to me is a balance rarely struck with cycles. I also believe this game makes a good case study for why named/generic jumps aren't an inherently bad thing. Sure, we can look at a save and figure out pretty quickly how to do them, but they help facilitate a certain flow. Crimson manages to do a lot with only the basics.
Do I think this flow is 100% intentional? Absolutely not. I think Carnival only sometimes knew what he was doing. It feels like when you play a Carnival game he rolls the dice, and if it's below a certain threshold he fails a design check and the save/boss sucks. Carnival very much feels like a maker that operates off of pure instinct when designing, and whatever he thinks is fun to make at the moment gets left in, regardless of quality. It means his works have an identity to them. Whether the save is good or bad, it is always Carnival, and to me it makes the game more interesting. Even if I run into something that mildly annoys me, it feels like I get to look into the mind of this guy, and I can't be too mad about it.
cLOUDDEAD's review of Crimson talks about how cohesive the game feels, and I'm inclined to agree. There is a lot of variety in this game, but because of Carnival's instinctual design sense, it all feels unified. Despite every stage doing a lot of different things, they all still belong as a part of the same experience. Carnival is able to twist and contort his design process just enough to fit the vibe he wants for the stage. There's also a fair amount of discrepancy between save difficulties. Notably, the secrets are almost always a good 5-10 difficulty higher than the standard stages. Some may call this unbalanced, but I view it as a choice to accentuate certain parts of the stage platforming. Carnival wants to make sure you give as much attention to this bit of level design as he wants you to.
After the 8 stages, you face a bat boss. It's terrible! It's legitimately a really bad boss. I don't have anything nice to say about it other than somehow I still enjoy it. It occupies a similar space in my mind as the GR final boss, where I know that I should find it terrible, but I can't help but find it engrossing. If you collected all the secrets, after beating the bat, you go on to tackle a medley stage of past Carnival games that is undeniably the worst stretch of the game. The picture screen in particular was probably the worst bit of platforming in the game. After that you get an iconic crimson block stage that's pretty much just hard needle with an ambient track overlaying it. I like this stage more than most people do. It still keeps that flow that Carnival has estbalished throughout the game, and it feels equally as interesting as the game preceeding it.
The final boss is a work of accidental genius. It feels like when Carnival was rolling his design dice, he got a 20. Everything in this fight seems to snap into place and creates a boss that feels far more involved than the vast majority of fangame bosses, in a special way. There is a constant push and pull to it, and the tradeoffs for damage routing leave it incredibly open ended in a totally fair way (except for the fact that you always have to kill green last because what the fuck?) I ended my journey with this game was a far deeper appreciation of Carnival, enough to retroactively make me enjoy his other works more. I legitimately believe that Crimson is a mandatory experience if you intend on staying in fangames for an extended period of time, regardless of whether you love or hate it.
Now that the review itself is over, I want to talk about Kale and his thoughts on the game. Kale's review of Crimson tows the line between a real and joke review for me. Where his sincere appreciation for the game ends and his hyperbolic assertions about it begin, I can't say. Personally, I like to imagine that Kale started off talking about how much he enjoyed Crimson back in the day as a bit of a joke, but that joke morphed into a genuine love of it and its design sense, and he just kept the bit up because Kale is a silly individual. His review is ultimately an exaggerated version of his sincere beliefs, and I kind of really love his unabashed love of it. It's the kind of enjoyment I wish I could bring into everything, but I do not yet have the capacity to feel that way. I don't really care how much of it is a meme, because that's how I want to feel about fangames. They're strange and kind of badly designed by traditional standards, but there's a serendipity to them that I will always appreciate. Crimson is an excellent distillation of that for me. I never knew these games would become so valuable to me, yet here they are. I wouldn't be who I am today without them, and this strange game designed by a literal 12 year old has had a not insigificant impact on me as a result of its influence. I love that. God I love fangames.
[2] Likes
Crimson is a game where you either get it or you don't. I can completely understand why one may not enjoy this game. It's design is somewhat archaic by today's standards. There are a lot of traps that don't really serve a purpose other than to frustrate the player in uninteresting ways. There's restarting music and almost exclusively generic guy visuals. There's even required secrets, some of which don't have any obvious tells as to their location. Hell, I would go as far as to say the bat boss is legitimately terrible with nothing really redeeming about it. For me though, it just clicks.
While I am adamant about a fair amount of traps not adding to the experience, some legitimately change how you tackle the platforming in interesting ways, forcing you to move in ways you still don't see often enough in trigger needle. The use of moving objects is a really well exectued form of cycle needle and importantly changes how you approach jumps without necessarily making them more difficult to figure out, which to me is a balance rarely struck with cycles. I also believe this game makes a good case study for why named/generic jumps aren't an inherently bad thing. Sure, we can look at a save and figure out pretty quickly how to do them, but they help facilitate a certain flow. Crimson manages to do a lot with only the basics.
Do I think this flow is 100% intentional? Absolutely not. I think Carnival only sometimes knew what he was doing. It feels like when you play a Carnival game he rolls the dice, and if it's below a certain threshold he fails a design check and the save/boss sucks. Carnival very much feels like a maker that operates off of pure instinct when designing, and whatever he thinks is fun to make at the moment gets left in, regardless of quality. It means his works have an identity to them. Whether the save is good or bad, it is always Carnival, and to me it makes the game more interesting. Even if I run into something that mildly annoys me, it feels like I get to look into the mind of this guy, and I can't be too mad about it.
cLOUDDEAD's review of Crimson talks about how cohesive the game feels, and I'm inclined to agree. There is a lot of variety in this game, but because of Carnival's instinctual design sense, it all feels unified. Despite every stage doing a lot of different things, they all still belong as a part of the same experience. Carnival is able to twist and contort his design process just enough to fit the vibe he wants for the stage. There's also a fair amount of discrepancy between save difficulties. Notably, the secrets are almost always a good 5-10 difficulty higher than the standard stages. Some may call this unbalanced, but I view it as a choice to accentuate certain parts of the stage platforming. Carnival wants to make sure you give as much attention to this bit of level design as he wants you to.
After the 8 stages, you face a bat boss. It's terrible! It's legitimately a really bad boss. I don't have anything nice to say about it other than somehow I still enjoy it. It occupies a similar space in my mind as the GR final boss, where I know that I should find it terrible, but I can't help but find it engrossing. If you collected all the secrets, after beating the bat, you go on to tackle a medley stage of past Carnival games that is undeniably the worst stretch of the game. The picture screen in particular was probably the worst bit of platforming in the game. After that you get an iconic crimson block stage that's pretty much just hard needle with an ambient track overlaying it. I like this stage more than most people do. It still keeps that flow that Carnival has estbalished throughout the game, and it feels equally as interesting as the game preceeding it.
The final boss is a work of accidental genius. It feels like when Carnival was rolling his design dice, he got a 20. Everything in this fight seems to snap into place and creates a boss that feels far more involved than the vast majority of fangame bosses, in a special way. There is a constant push and pull to it, and the tradeoffs for damage routing leave it incredibly open ended in a totally fair way (except for the fact that you always have to kill green last because what the fuck?) I ended my journey with this game was a far deeper appreciation of Carnival, enough to retroactively make me enjoy his other works more. I legitimately believe that Crimson is a mandatory experience if you intend on staying in fangames for an extended period of time, regardless of whether you love or hate it.
Now that the review itself is over, I want to talk about Kale and his thoughts on the game. Kale's review of Crimson tows the line between a real and joke review for me. Where his sincere appreciation for the game ends and his hyperbolic assertions about it begin, I can't say. Personally, I like to imagine that Kale started off talking about how much he enjoyed Crimson back in the day as a bit of a joke, but that joke morphed into a genuine love of it and its design sense, and he just kept the bit up because Kale is a silly individual. His review is ultimately an exaggerated version of his sincere beliefs, and I kind of really love his unabashed love of it. It's the kind of enjoyment I wish I could bring into everything, but I do not yet have the capacity to feel that way. I don't really care how much of it is a meme, because that's how I want to feel about fangames. They're strange and kind of badly designed by traditional standards, but there's a serendipity to them that I will always appreciate. Crimson is an excellent distillation of that for me. I never knew these games would become so valuable to me, yet here they are. I wouldn't be who I am today without them, and this strange game designed by a literal 12 year old has had a not insigificant impact on me as a result of its influence. I love that. God I love fangames.
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 70 70
Dec 30, 2023
PlutoTheThing
Very old and classic adventure game I think is a bit underappreciated especially by newer players. The game has a decent amount of interesting ideas and concepts which are unique especially for the time it came out, and to this day hold up. The main complaints about this game I have are some saves have a few too many traps, and of course the vampire bat boss is pretty terrible. It's one of the few instances where I think the idea for the boss is just bad, and as such it's simply not fun to play. But that's just one part of the game, there's so much else worth playing in my opinion that I can't mind it too much. The final stage is very fun and of course the final boss is totally iconic at this point, and for good reason, it's a great idea for a fight which is fun to play. Overall, would recommend this one!
[2] Likes
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 66 66
Feb 2, 2023