Well, this is more of a Mixed type of rating, but, I've decided to give it a Yes since I still had fun with this game despite its flaws. So, shall we start the review? Alice Escaped! is a 2D Hack-n-Slash Metroidvania, based on the popular Alice in Wonderland story, but with anime girls! The game focuses a double-character system that lets you combo your attacks with a character that relies on melee weaponry, and another character that is a range specialist. Doing combos on this game is a lot of fun, and this is the part I most had fun of, the combat system. It's satisfying to see how much combo you can rack up on enemies on the map, or on the "arenas" that the game throws at you every once in a while. These arenas are part of the map, but you need to defeat all enemies before being able to proceed again with your exploration. As per Metroidvania, certain things are only unlockable once you get necessary keys, powerups, and such. This game features an Upgrade system with the crystals. Blue crystals are common, being able to be found shards throughout the map as well by doing a high amount of combos on these arenas previously mentioned. Green and red crystals are rarer, but unlock more powerful abilities. You first start levelling up things with blue ones, and the green and red are for more higher level stuff. One thing I disliked is that, the game incentivizes you to switch characters to combo, but... at the start of the game, switching characters consume your "stamina", which you use to do special moves. You can only switch again if you damage / kill enough enemies, and in certain moments, a melee-oriented attack or a ranged attack might be more suitable. Thankfully there is an early upgrade that gets rid of it, but it is a little clunky on the first few minutes of the game, regardless. Other upgrades either unlocks some special moves, increases attack power, increases your defense, as well some helpful things like where to are the crystals or HP upgrades on the map, and stuff like that. One thing that I really liked is that, some places require specific upgrade moves to unlock, and you don't necessarily need to use said move to unlock the door, you just need to unlock it from the upgrade menu. Very convenient! The artstyle is beautiful. The game features kawaii moe portraits and sprites for our heroines and NPCs. The backgrounds, platforms and enemies are also well drawn and everything fit together. I did not like some of the particle effects that are emitted with some moves. Some of them I felt they were a little "cheap" or too large. The music is also very catchy, and it can also get pretty epic. The game has several endings to get, and in one of them, you unlock the ability to rewind the time, but you still keep all your upgrades kept. I think this is a really cool idea for a Metroidvania, because you're going to have to re-visit previous areas again, instead of having to backtrack. Sadly, it's not as well conceptualized and it feels too much of a time waster. I also dislike how all the Crystals and HP upgrades are re-added to the map, despite that you keep them. I like that my upgrades are kept, but the collectibles shouldn't be on the map anymore. So, with the positives and mixed feelings out of the way, I'd like to mention a couple things I dislike about this game. First off, how cryptic this game can be, as previously mentioned, the game has several endings, but, some of them are very specific that I feel like most people will be unable to even know them unless you visit the Steam Guides section. Yes, checking the achievements mention which ending you have to unlock, but even still, it's not that obvious. There is one of the endings that you HAVE to talk to an NPC more than once, something that people might believe it's just filler text, as with any other game. Second thing I disliked it too are how stiff the controls can get. It's kinda of a weird feeling, because the game is both responsive and stiff at the same time. There is a dash move you can unlock that is very handy, both for attacking and traversing through the world. But, I honestly feel like having all your momentum lost after the dash ends to be too clunky, and I constantly spammed the button to get into places faster. You can also use this dash move in the air, and only use again once you land. However, if you jump very quickly after landing, your dash won't reset, something that happened many times during my playthrough. Being unable to dash despite that I landed and jumped again. There's also a couple other problems related to the controls. You are unable to jump if you are holding down, for some reason. Later on, you can unlock an attack that if you hold down and jump mid-air, you do a drop-down attack, but being on the ground, nothing happens. Same thing with an attack where our melee-oriented heroine starting charging her hammer and nothing happens... in which only later you get an ability where you can do a very powerful home-run move that actually requires stamina to use (meaning you can still do the weird animation that doesn't do anything and can mess up your other moves, like your standard charge attack). Ultimately, this game can be a little short, as it incentivizes you to replay the map and look for the other endings , but sadly, constantly having to re-do things to get endings, and trying to figure out yourself (or checking a guide, I won't blame you), will get tiring. I'm not even sure if I'd like to get the last endings I haven't unlocked yet. There's also the bane of achievements, the speedrun ones. I thought that since there's a time-rewind mechanic on this game it meant that as soon as it went back to the beginning with it, you could get the achievement, but no, it needs to be on a fresh save, which means you will be underpowered, at least I wasn't able to get the achievements despite me reaching the end very quickly on a fresh time-rewind, but please let me know if that's possible or not. Closing notes. A visually-charming with good music game with some questionable design decisions in regards to how it progresses, some clunkyness on the control department (despite being also fluid on how it's going with a hack-n-slash game style), and some very cryptic endings to finish it all off. Not a bad game, but not a game that many people will get all the endings or all achievements (minus the speedrun ones). 7/10
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