I always look forward to a Basin Lake (I keep trying to call it Basin Falls for some reason) magical girl game, and this one was no exception. Unfortunately, I think this is my least favourite in the series so far, maybe even including the one that gave me eyestrain.
I can point precisely to why that is: It's an incredibly frustrating experience.
It's ridiculously hard, and usually falls on the side of more frustrating than fun. The maps often feel like they're made to be as unforgiving and sometimes unfair as possible. There are plenty of jumps you can't quite hit the normal way, jumps that have to be perfectly timed, jumps that have to be perfectly aligned to reach, etc. Checkpoint placement is inconsistent, too. Sometimes they're very generous, and sometimes you have to make 5 perfectly timed jumps, dodge a turret, and slide under a spike trap to get to the next one.
Any time there are spikes is bad news, because Camilla's hitbox is absurdly large and spikes kill you from any angle. The part during the dreamscape boss fight with vertically moving spike walls deserves special mention for tedium and frustration, and it took me I think about 10 minutes to get past it, completely killing the momentum of the level in the process.
The platforming is not bad, but it's not perfect, and the flaws are just enough to take it from "this game is stupidly frustrating, but that's because I'm not very good at it and it's on me" to "this game is stupidly frustrating, because the game is cheating me." Wall jumping mostly works and is satisfying as heck when it does, but sometimes I found myself wall jumping when I didn't want to. Wall grabbing, on the other hand, I found really awkward. Worse, sometimes I'd get a long jump and sometimes I wouldn't, and I had no idea why that was. Double jumping seemed to be completely useless, except for one or two sections where it was required, where it sort of worked. The jumping platforms also only worked about half the time, and there's no indication which ones launch you high and which don't, which confused me.
I found grabbing the ziplines a bit awkward, but that's probably me, and the sense of momentum from them was great. I think if there's a standout mechanic, it's the ziplines, and it's a shame they weren't used as much as they could be.
While not technically a platforming issue, I found it really hard to get attack to actually connect, and I'd miss about ninety percent of the time. This added quite a bit to the frustration, especially during boss fights where I'd struggle to get up to where they are only to miss actually hitting them repeatedly.
In general there are just a lot of sections that require you to be both fast and precise, which is hard for anyone short of a platformer master to do to begin with, and the not-quite-right mechanics often hinder pulling off the necessary moves.
The lab level had a lot of neat stuff in it, but I was so burned out by that point I just wanted the game to be over. The dreamscape level was exhausting, and I think actually more difficult than the lab. Which is a shame, because it's an incredibly interesting level with great environment design. In general I think there was a lot of great level and environment design that I didn't notice because I was too busy trying to get through it.
Getting a bad ending after all that is a huge slap in the face. After going through all that, I'd expected to be rewarded, and I'm probably not going to try it again, and certainly not on a harder difficulty. I like the idea of having bonuses for collecting items and having an alternate ending for the higher difficulty, but requiring such things to get the good ending at all is unnecessarily cruel.
The story was okay, but by the end I wasn't paying that much close attention to it, and I was kind of confused going in. I think Camilla was introduced in the game that I had trouble playing? A bit of a synopsis of how we got here would have been nice. I did really like the dossier of magical girls in the very beginning, which I think is going to be a really interesting freeze-frame bonus.
Which segues nicely to the art. It's fantastic, with great looking environments and smooth, beautiful animations. I wouldn't expect any less from a ShibeyFaceGames product, and I do worry that you're setting yourself up for a lot of tough acts to follow here. So far, though, I don't think any of the games in this series have disappointed in the art department.
It seems to be another FacemeltingSolos collab, and the quality and selection of music is once again fantastic. I think I spotted a few reused tracks, but it doesn't take away from the game at all. I'd expect to see some repeated leitmotifs by this point in the series anyway.
The rest of the sound design is good, but not standout amazing the way the art and music are.
There's a lot of good here. The art is fantastic, and so is the music. There are a lot of mechanics, and while some work better than others, none of them are broken and all of them are interesting. The level design is interesting, and the environment design is great. Unfortunately, I found actually playing the game to be a frustrating experience rather than an enjoyable one.