This time around I saved the best for last. Okay, I don't want to say whether this is my favourite game in the jam or not (although I might have already said that about another game), but it's definitely up there. I liked this game a lot.
The art and music is absolutely top notch. The pixel art is just about flawless and both the highly detailed stills and sprite animations look fantastic. I'm not a fan of pixel art in general, but I am a fan of this. Tama's expressions on her world sprite are the absolute icing on the cake here. I'm assuming this is another FacemeltingSolos collab? The music has a very familiar feel to it.
I can see Tama and Paisley's relationship being divisive, either because they're super awkward or because it's a same-sex relationship. I'll say I liked it, I think they're a cute couple, and I'll leave it at that because that is not an anthill I want to kick over.
The level design was just okay, and the background art, well, faded into the background, but I think that's fine. I did appreciate the extra effects in the dream world.
As much as it pains me to say it, the gameplay was just okay. I found Tama to be a bit slow and clunky. She actually had the feel of a big powerful knight with a two-handed sword; slow but powerful attacks but you pretty much have to tank damage. Which is cool, albeit a bit at odds with her visual design. Unfortunately it just doesn't really mesh with the other mechanics. Dodging and blocking are at best extremely difficult to pull off, because Tama's attack is slow and you tend to end up in a solid one-two-three cadence and to react to a lot of attacks you end up needing to block mid-attack.
This was particularly evident in the first boss fight, where it was basically impossible to dodge the red 1's if you'd already committed to an attack. The second part of this boss fight was a lot easier, but confusing- I wasn't sure if I had to keep hitting the doors and it was just a long repetitive fight, or if I needed to hit the right one or hit them in the right order or something.
Difficulty and length are just about right for a jam game here. Despite getting frustrated and failing a few times I never felt the game drag and never had to repeat sections over and over to get past them. I think some will probably disagree about the difficulty. I don't think this game was screaming out for save states at its current length, but a pause button would have been nice. I also would have preferred Arrow+ZXC controls but I got used to the WASD+BNM scheme pretty quickly.
All in all a very solid jam entry and a great addition to the series that has me excited for the next installment!
EDIT: Not relevant to this game necessarily, but you've set up a lot of big myth arc plot stuff. I'm excited, but also a little nervous, because tackling some of that stuff might be a massive expansion in scope from previous games.