Cally’s Trials is an action platformer that is pretty rough around the edges, but winds up being a decent game.
It features a weapon upgrade system similar to the one in the Ratchet & Clank franchise. This creates a weird issue where you want to upgrade every weapon, but once you max it out and it becomes powerful, you move on to a terrible gun in order to upgrade it. It causes you to have a bunch of great weapons you don’t use and a bunch of garbage that you do use.
The game also has a problem that largely stems from its lack of difficulty. It’s an excessively long game, while also being too easy. The primary cause of death in the game is falling onto spikes or into water, because it is an instant death. Every bit of combat in the game, after your first 4-5 runs, is almost guaranteed to be extremely easy, oftentimes boring. Enemies have large amounts of health and garbage AI, resulting in you standing still and shooting someone from a ledge. This gets exacerbated by the upgrades you can buy, which result in making you far too powerful after only a few deaths.
The game also has more levels than it needs, as it takes way too long to get through a chapter, especially for a rougelike, which generally requires multiple deaths to even be beatable. Still, there is something very satisfying about this game as you progress. The enemy AI is still pretty bad for the later enemies, but they do tend to get more powerful and at times can challenge you, provided you aren’t overpowered yet.
When it comes to buying upgrades, most of them are awkwardly designed and feel thrown together. Some last only for 1 run, some just upgrade how much money you make, forcing you to prioritize them because progression is 10 times slower without them. If this game had a smoother power curve, it would be a much more fun game.
Unfortunately, Cally’s Trials has too many underwhelming moments to be considered great. It still has more positives than negatives, thanks primarily to the mid-game peak that balances pretty well between too easy and too hard. It’s worth a shot for fans of action platformers, just know that it won’t blow you away.
