After 11693 deaths, I finally finished the game,- or maybe the game finished me, idk.

This is a very good game, but don't play it if you are looking for a "cyber ninja power fantasy", because you won't find it here. LOL!

This game will have you going through the five stages of grief in every level if you're like me.

• Stage 1: Denial — No, it's my keyboard! I'm not THAT bad!
  
• Stage 2: Bargaining — Ok, there has to be a way to block, right? What about better checkpoints?
  
• Stage 3: Anger — What is this $h!t game design!?
  
• Stage 4: Depression — I'm never going to beat this level.
  
• Stage 5: Acceptance — After my 46th death, I've beaten the level and am now a god.

Repeat for the next level.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3630247668

Jokes aside, the art direction and environments are fantastic. I found the location, setting, and story very compelling and intriguing, and I just wanted to uncover more about Dharma Tower and see all of it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3631292433

Some levels were very frustrating for me to beat — I think one section took me 80+ deaths before I finally got it. The game feels like roughly 40% platforming and 60% combat, but often the two overlap, forcing you to do both at the same time.

Consistent timing and high reaction speed are basically required to play this game — or at the very least, a willingness to bang your head against a section until you learn the pattern well enough to see it in your dreams (and/or get lucky).

Once you finally pull off a combat puzzle, it's extremely satisfying, but often you spend more time learning how to beat a section than actually progressing.

That’s probably my biggest call out for this game. I'm not a pro gamer by any means, but I did beat DOOM Eternal on Ultra Nightmare three times, so I'm no stranger to frustration. Ghostrunner feels like you can't play it organically — you enter a combat arena, die repeatedly, and eventually find the one perfect route and execution that works. Not to mention, some movement options felt very un-intuitive and unnecessarily annoying like the zip lines. There's no prompt, you just kinda dive toward them and hope and pray you connect, plus you need to face the right direction, and you have to be basically touching the rail to hook on. Those stupid ziplines probably killed me 50+ times just by missing them or thinking I had connected when I didn't.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3632297378

Reacting naturally in the moment almost never succeeds. Whether that's a dealbreaker or not is up to you. I personally found it frustrating at times, but also very rewarding. The story and setting kept me hooked until the end.

I think a valid design critique is the save system. If you quit the game, you have to restart the entire level over rather than resume from checkpoints. Why? This is a waste of time, I know you have the checkpoint for when I die, just let me continue from that dog, I got a life and can't be arsed to always replay the level from the start because I had to take a break.

TL;DR
A first-person platforming/combat game that is extremely unforgiving and forces you to actively use your brain — for better or worse. But at its core, it is a good and fun game with impeccable world design and a banging soundtrack..

If you like frantic first-person platforming through bizarre levels while being shot at, then this is probably a blast. It's Mirror's Edge with some goofy gritty cyberpunk sword stuff. Enjoy.

I don't like first-person platforming. The bad forced level design, even just for the initial tutorial section, was actually jarring (why are there giant slabs hanging everywhere other than because the player needs to run across them to reach inexplicable platforms and to jump onto curved billboards in an uninhabited dump/HVAC system/prison(?). I don't know why I'm being shot at, why an unknown number of shots (sometimes 1? sometimes several?) kills me, when I'm shot (other than when it kills me), why my sword's hit radius is erratic, or why the controls are so loose. I am not interested in trying to adapt to the game's bad design choices.

Could have been a fun game if it was third-person so any of the visuals could be enjoyed, so you could see when/where bullets were flying from and where your sword was swinging, and so platforming wasn't a first-person mess. Oh well.