Whew, just went to alt tab and closed my review tab, after writing like 6 articulate and well explained paragraphs. Sorry, but fuck it, this rounds gonna be blunt. Great game, 3 issues I draw with it, and due to my impatience, take it with a grain of salt.
1. Inconsistent hit boxes. Not colossally so, but enough to get my goat on a few occasions. Have my hat be grazed by lasers, and live. Have my face get nipped by maces, and live. But fall in ankle deep water? Dead on the spot, drowned. Hit a theoretical "box corner" on an ovular flamethrower trap? Dead. Hit the SAME theoretical corner on an electrical stationary trap? Dead. Land on the right few pixels of the SAME stationary trap? Perfectly fine, alive, and chilling inside the electric trap's sprite. This happened 3 separate times, all on accident.
2. Too many jumps requiring perfect horizontal jump position, hazards to be jumped OVER, and ceilings to be jumped UNDER. This was combined in moderation with traps based on timing or a bit of clever spacial awareness, but at some points it just happened back to back to back, making a crotch-punch fest. Even though I know it's intentional, dying because you hit your head on things, especially in high frequency, feels victimizing and like bad map design. Even rationalizing still doesn't make it feel like legitimate death.
Players love to die bounding over fireballs or dashing over pits, not getting a giant red lump on their head and sadistically ricocheting into a pit of lava or a death ray. That's just lame, for lack of a better description. That and my actual better description got nuked.
3. The hall of challenges. This is explicitly why I hate point number 2 instead of disliking it. Was neat to do the ol' ascending death pit camera and lots of crap to jump off of. It was BAD to make it super lengthy, have no concept of checkpoints, and, get this, be littered with a malicious combination of a camera that slowly ascends and needs to be kept ahead of combined with tricky, barely possible acrobatic feats that 90% of the time, waiting to see them coming means you risk being outran and killed by the camera.
You will naturally rush, and try to memorize and cut corners. I must've at least memorized half the damn thing, but it didn't matter because one tiny mistake of hitting my head on something, jumping on the wrong time, or just having my usually supreme focus challenged due to the fucking absurd amount of time required to clear it by trial and error, would get me killed. Eventually I realized there's a man behind the curtains with a spring-loaded boxing glove aimed at my groin, and that just kinda tested my patience, focus, and tolerance for the obstacles even further.
It was close to the right combination of cliche, yet lively fast paced obstacles, combined with low blows that just made the rest of it worth nearly nothing in my eyes. Lots of fun obstacles got drowned out by a select handful of points that seemed to almost intentionally exploit the weakness of the camera and the lack of foresight the player was given. I don't mind learning about a level, but having to directly memorize it really betrays my expectations for modern, quick, fun games made with all the best components of the retro spirit.
Ranting and aggravation aside: It's a great game, and a great redux/sequel combo in its own right, but truth be told it lacks the balance and consistent fun that makes me want to come back to a platformer and replay it again and again.
Nothing more to say past that.
7/10, 4/5 ~WCCC