Slave Zero X Review (Steam)

Slave Zero X is a game that beautifully captures the essence of 90s-era Dreamcast-inspired graphics. The game, which is a 5.73GB download, offers Steam achievements and full controller support. It also provides a wide range of graphics settings including resolution scale, display mode, v-sync, max frame rate, geometry details, and light quality.

The gameplay settings are customizable, allowing players to toggle flashing effects, violence, and screenshakes. The UI settings are equally flexible, offering options for subtitles, showing the speaker, drawing the HUD, moving the HUD around, and adjusting subtitle sliders. The menu color scheme is fully customizable with sliders.

The game features run-and-slash gameplay with tutorial pop-ups as you play. It stands out for its unique 2D sprites on a roasting animated 2D backdrop, coupled with the lighting. There’s a huge focus on combos, attacking, and dashing out of the way, with a combo counter to keep track of your progress. The game also features big boss encounters, in-game cutscenes, and character interactions.

Controller settings allow you to remap controls and set which button icons to use (Xbox/Nintendo/PlayStation). There’s also keyboard support with remapping options. You can unlock and equip different palettes and shades, and earn coins from playing to buy upgrades and unlocks in the shop. The shop can appear on a level, at the end of a stage, and on the main menu.

The game offers a chapter select feature and provides a breakdown and rank after each stage and wave-based encounter, with your best rank shown on the chapter selection. There’s a full stats screen and online leaderboards with filters, a training mode, and an awesome soundtrack featuring drum and bass, techno, and other loud genres.

The combat has a Devil May Cry feel to it, boasting a wide array of attacks and combos including EX moves that can happen once you have charged up the EX bar. The game looks and plays well, with fast loading times and a lot of replay value, including a new roguelike mode that unlocks after finishing the game.

However, the game does have some issues. It can stop unexpectedly without any indicators or controls working, and it’s never clear when the checkpoint/respawn point has been triggered. The game can be a bit grindy for unlocks and involves a lot of button mashing. The combat can get tedious as there are no good ground attacks on downed enemies and you can’t break out of grabs or recover quickly from throws. Boss fights are huge difficulty jumps, and the mouse cursor keeps appearing when using a controller.

Bosses have no health bars, they are cheap and chuck in extra people to just add more difficulty. The story is broken up a lot and can trigger conversations when you are fighting, which you have no chance of hearing. The combat, as cool as it can get, can become very repetitive, especially when you just juggle the enemy on the screen edge. The combo counter ends quickly, and the style of the camera can go against the game as it’s hard to judge platforms and it can be hard to see enemies and if you can hit them. Despite these issues, Slave Zero X remains a unique and engaging gaming experience that absolutely shreds and I just kept coming back for more, granted that more was me getting beaten but still I loved every minute.