Super Daryl Deluxe

Genre: Action-RPG / Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Super Daryl Deluxe has been touted as an “RPGvania”, a meshing of the RPG and Metroidvania genres, but I feel that it’s more of a combination of Action-RPG and Action-Platformer, with the game’s areas too segmented to flow like a true Metroidvania. In any case, this is a game with a vibe that seems to combine high school sketchbook scribbles with Napoleon Dynamite. It’s an odd game with an odd style that’s going to appeal more to some than others.

Players take on the role of the titular Daryl, a new student at a high school and the aforementioned Napoleon Dynamite lookalike who does the silent protagonist thing and whose general look combined with the game’s wealth of fetch quests make him seem like something of a spineless people-pleaser desperate to make friends.

To be clear, when I say “spineless”, I kinda’ mean it in a literal sense as well, as Daryl moves around with limp, noodly appendages. This entire game has an art style that has characters depicted as caricatures. The game has a limited color palette, and at times the mundane reality of the school gives way to bizarre otherworldly settings and unhuman characters, almost as if to suggest that Daryl (and in turn, the player) is choosing to see reality as far more fantastical than it is. Again, this isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but it definitely sets the game apart.

As for the gameplay, this game uses an action-focused combat system that allows players to assign any number of skills to Daryl to create their own personalized loadout, which is cool. However, abilities all come with cooldown timers, which really breaks up the combat and keeps it from flowing. Also, so very much of this game’s structure is fetch quest after fetch quest. The feeling of being everyone’s errand boy is really pervasive here.

In the end, Super Daryl Deluxe is at the very least a pretty unique game, and I don’t doubt that some people will fall in love with its unique art style and customizable combat. However, I am not one of those people – I didn’t feel the combat flowed well, and the game structure was too tedious.

tl;dr – Super Daryl Deluxe is a side-scrolling Action-RPG/Platformer with a really unique style and some cool customization options for combat. Unfortunately, the combat is clunky and frustrating and the game is bogged down by fetch quests.

Grade: C+

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