I genuinely want to like Dandara: trials of fear edition, a lovely looking game, with the art feeling mildly inspired by Celeste (one of my absolute favourite things ever), but with a lot of originality, it is its own thing, undeniably. The pixel art is impressive, colourful and detailed, it really is (and i played some truly bad looking games so trust me), and it makes me to see more the game.

Speaking of the bosses, they look increddible - lovecraftian, beautiful in a disturbing way (augustus is just a purple floating head but he still pulls that look fine) - and they feel weirdly alive. The music is on the same level as the presentation of the game, which is to say, really good.

But damn is it hard. After the second boss (Belia, the living heart) this thing goes from being difficult to whatever the citadel of reason is (and the other sub-layer of the map) is. The bosses themselves are big bullet sponges, and the main attack has no improvement whatsoever, what you start the game with is what you end up with, an attack with a range just about enough to hit things, but not most of them. Special attacks are long range and powerful, but they take energy, and it will eventually be refillable by few charges (that you find in chests), but still not enough to be perpetually usable.

The map is a maze, of size and scopes that can be unusual for a game of this size. And the game uses a souls-like system. You need to get back to your death to retrieve the currency (salt, the same thing that apparently powers the creation of the world). This is almost fine in the beginning, but with so few bonfires and so many rooms, it's bound to be annoying. Not to mention, sometimes the old soul of dandara (the main character, inspired by a real life figure) gets stuck in unrecoverable position, you can say goodbye to your salt.

And, the amount of backtracking will only grow...

As for the difficulty, the difficulty becomes progressively higher(and ridicoulusly so) by the end. The movement of the character is really odd, only jumping from a salt platform to another, despite the fast movement the attack takes about 2 seconds to charge, really slow and penalising. Trying over and over again is only as fun as it gets.

Not to mention, the DLC introduces new special (and extra hard) areas, that are accessible with portals that are not marked as such. While exploring, i got stuck in one of these (clock tower) because, after so much wondering, i thought it would be a way to the next room. Well, it wasn't. Apparently the DLC areas are prisons that are not escapable, in fact getting stuck in one of these is practically game over. If only somebody marked that portal... The portal was the end of my run. I have only so much time to play games. The story itself is very vague, most characters talking by riddles, and the general theme (freedom from authoritarian powers) gets lost in the vague atmosphere of the game.

I'd still say that it's an interesting game, but damn you don't have to make it hyper-challenging.

The cheat mode has few accessibility options and cheats, these help but in the end the circular maze-like design of the game still overstays its welcome. But you should try it yourself to have any idea...