I have 2 reviews in one, but they both amount to the same thing. My BROTHER played this game off of our family share, so that's why I'm putting two, since it won't let him place his own review.

BROTHERMAN REVIEW:
I was holding off on writing a review until I beat Enimatik but I died in the fight and ALT+F4'd.

The visuals are a stand-out and the combat has a good base, but I feel like it's at odds with it being a roguelike. The initial run feels good but it devolves a little too much into spamming in later stages and absolution levels.
Another problem I have is that I got to Absolution 7 on Martyr and still was not able to fight Enimatik because you only get progress by doing the trials and it doesn't scale up, so I was basically just spamming for several hours trying to get to fight this boss. The Absolution levels aren't for me, I'd definitely have preferred it just ending and letting me choose a different character. Also I don't like the retry tokens, it's basically there for if you misplay and then you have to play through that whole stage from the beginning, but I was on Absolution 7 and had 9 tokens and it would've gone on forever but I "got lucky" and I got to trade them for gold. I don't know if the unique items are any good but they seem pretty bad in most situations since they typically don't have stats.

Really wanted to like this but I found the gameplay loop to be pretty miserable, and when I finally got to fight Enimatik it was disappointing because I did no damage and he frequently pushes you back and if you fall off the stage you lose an equipment piece. Might be a skill issue but i'm real tired boss...

MY REVIEW:
Largely I agree with the above. I played this game a couple years after seeing some content on YT about it, completely forgetting about the whole end-goal boss section. I cruised along, feeling like I had a good build, and got ruined by Enimatik as soon as the fight started essentially. Having a strong build for the rest of the gameplay loop and essentially being giga stat-checked by a boss who is not appropriately ramped up to feels really bad, actually.

Games don't need on-ramps to make them accessible to everyone, necessarily, because sometimes certain games aren't for certain people. HOWEVER, this particular game feels really good to play! It has really fun mechanics, the weapons feel great, the movement feels pretty crisp, abilities and powerups feel pretty unique and have interesting interactions.. I can go on about the good parts, but honestly they just don't matter. These aspects are nice, but the game doesn't have anything that actually gives you the setup needed to succeed in beating the game without having either pre-existing knowledge of the end-game and possible builds, or by grinding your face into levels repeatedly until you get a build so giga-broken that you're SURE you'll beat Enimatik this time. You roll through every level one-shotting everything, you feel unkillable and unstoppable. But somehow Enimatik STILL loses no health, and you're one or two hits from death at any point.

TL;DR for both:
The game has a fun loop as its base, but fails to stick the landing on the climax of the gameplay loop in its 'final' boss. If you really enjoy grinding out dungeons over and over to get different builds that feel broken, but never actually have said builds succeed in allowing you to get through end-game, then this is the game for you. Otherwise, skip it unless something changes.

The game feels unbalanced. I can breeze through the levels with virtually no resistance from enemies and then suddenly get one-shot by an elite enemy while being at 70% health. And no, I don't ignore health/defense stats.

Also, the combo system feels unfinished and very out of place for this game. And it's honestly frustrating that different characters have different inputs for effectively the same attacks, it's just a pain in the ass to remember and doesn't make the game any more enjoyable.

And I would like the game to be more transparent about its stats and mechanics.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FIX YOUR ♥♥♥♥♥♥ JUMP MECHANICS WHEN YOU GET TELEPORTED THROUGH THE PINK TELEPORTER, THE AMMOUNT OF TIMES I HAVE DIED FROM THIS AND LOST GREAT RUNS IS JUST ♥♥♥♥♥♥.
♥♥♥♥ THIS GAME