My impression of Neon Abyss isn’t very good. Decent enough to play it a few days on gaps of free time if you get it from Gamepass or a future bundle, not good enough to actually buy it.
Action: The action is bland, it’s far away from something like Dead Cells or Hades. This is perhaps one of the most important points.
Mechanical action: The previous point was more about how it feels, if it’s visceral (it doesn’t. This is more about how interesting is the combat from a mechanical standpoint. Well, it isn’t. You can’t carry several weapons, they don’t have extra modes, nor there is ammo, there are no movement abilities like dashes, you can have a single ‘active’ ability but it seems to be rare to have one and its use is very limited as it uses up a resource, for now there is only on consumable I have seen, the grenades which sucks to use as they can’t be aimed. 98% of the game is hold fire while jumping/avoiding enemy fire.
Build variety. And this is the second most important. The first issue would be somehow admissible if in exchange the game would have a super crazy build variety, with an incredible amount of variation. But it doesn’t seem to be the case, from what I played and watched on some youtube videos. Most of them don’t really affect a lot on how you play the game.
In fact some of modifiers I have seen were ‘dupes’ with another skin.
edit: example, in my current game I have:
-extra damage when you are in the air.
-extra life? I’m not sure
-extra damge and rof… when I’m wounded, I suspect
-explosion around me when I’m wounded
-extra max health + slight more damage
-extra damage in this room each time you pick up something on it
-you can use a egg instead of a key
-chance of getting a key when I melee someone
-extra rof and movement speed
-chance of firing a laser in addition your normal fire
-chance of dropping a bomb or mine when using a key
-extra rof and and damage
-gold gained when you are wounded
-extra jump height
-extra damage when you are wounded
Pets. Perhaps the most distinct gimmick of the game is how your character is followed by three, four or even more pets, that shoot at enemies for you or whatever. It’s actually kind of annoying, because at some point you can have 7 or 8 sprites moving around you and confusing the action you see on screen more. And some enemies and encounters are bulle-hell-y so it isn’t something to dismiss.
Awesome or stupid? you decide
Information obfuscation. Items or weapons don’t show descriptions until you pick them up. You may thing is an oversight, but there is passive you can get that enable it seeing them before picking them up, so yeah, bad design decision. They punish the new players, and in addition make a passive without any use for veterans. The game has some stats because sometimes you pick up passives or perks that increase slightly your damage or talk of a % of chance, but no number is seen anywhere. Some descriptions, even when you see them, are gibberish, I have no idea of what the object does.
edit: hell in the shops you can’t even see the name of what you are going to buy.
Something that also dislike is how is one of those games that close the entrances and exits and spawn the enemies when you enter. In games with a bigger combat arena (like Hades) is fine, but here it feels more constrained, and sometimes it spawns melee enemies super close to you starting position. Lovely.
As a positive, I will say the game has three difficulty modes from the start, easy / medium / hard, and easy is noticeably easier.
Enemy variety is fine, if there are new enemies in the later world I haven’t seen.