Homura Hime, developed by Taiwanese developer, Crimson Dusk and published by PLAYISM, is an upcoming hack n slash that rivals the difficulty of ahem souls-like. Maybe.

I was quite blown away by the stylized visual presentation that the game has. It feels very polished and totally will age like fine wine (all hail cel-shaded anime style!). Like I always do, I got persuaded by the visuals alone to try the demo and that was an instant wishlist and Day-1 purchase later.

Much Nyooom

Aside from the obvious full-polished graphics, I find the combat in this game very intriguing. It has that basic hack n slash button layout where you have Light and Heavy attacks that you can chain quite mindlessly. But! Certain combinations of the strings can make our character, Homura perform different kind of attack. For example, doing Light, Heavy, Heavy will make her launch a very fast slashing barrage. Or if you press Light, Heavy, Light, Light, it will create a fireball at the end of the string.

String of Combos!

The different kind of attacks also has different uses that you can use accordingly depending on the situation of the fight. There's also parry and dodge mechanics as an option for defense. Almost every attacks can be parried, but some enemy attacks can only be dodged. What's interesting, every attacks are cancelable into parry, dodge, or jump, making it very responsive and fluid for player to control the flow as Homura.

Crazy Big Bullets!

While those mechanics I stated might be a bread and butter for a good hack n slash, It has more depth and charm by injecting a bullet hell environment for player to interact with. Might be too much but the control is very-very-VERY responsive making the usually 2D challenge becomes a fair 3D game challenge here. The enemy designs are also varied in the demo I played, some has unblockable, some unparriable, AOE attacks, etc. What's more surprising, the Demo's Boss has a Command Grab that tracks your movement!

What about the story? This kind of anime aesthetics usually has some story in it right? Well yes. But the demo as of now really succeeded on making the player crave more for the game using its combat. But, by no means the story is bad, it's there. It's the typical, "too much is always bad" troupe because apparently demons in this world manifest from people's strong and uncontrollable desire. It is quite symbolic, that our protagonist has quite a bland personality, probably representing the lack of desire she has that's useful to fight these demons. Accompanied by a flying head mascot, Ann, Homura set forth on a journey to eradicate the demon kind.

Not an emergency food!

I thoroughly enjoyed Homura Hime. While some platforming part of it could be better, the combat, visuals, and character succeeded to make me crave for more. Don't forget to check their Steam page and wishlist it here!

You can also watch my Demo Let's play here: