Occasionally, I’ll forget about games I’ve bought, because after so many years of being poor, having actual steady income has caused me to become the worst kind of impulse-buyer when it comes to Steam—seeing anything even remotely resembling a game that might intrigue me means there’s a real chance that I might pick it up, especially if it is $20 or less. Abyss Odyssey, with its $15 price point, was always going to be on my radar, especially after I’d watched the Quick Look and basically decided that yes, this was something I could get behind. I bought it, my brother and I played some co-op for maybe a half hour, and then I forgot it existed for the next like six months.

Then earlier this week I found myself in the mood for a roguelike—spurred in part by the Unfinished of Catacomb Kids, which lead me to firing up Legend of Dungeon for the first time in a while. I’ve got a lot of love for Legend of Dungeon, particularly the bit where you have no idea what the hell a potion will do at any given time (perhaps my favorite part of most roguelikes that hew closer to their progenitor than others). After spending some time enjoying myself and dying a couple times after some substantial runs (“substantial” for me means “I made it to the eighth floor once and was promptly torn apart by a necromancer,” in case you were curious), I thought I’d fire up Abyss Odyssey again and see if I couldn’t get my brother to join me for a little multiplayer.

My brother, however, has children and a wife and all the sorts of thing that make picking up and playing a game on a whim a bit more difficult, so he was busy doing something else that didn’t involve running about a nightmare abyss conjured by the troubled dreams of a warlock, which left me to my own devices. I thought I would put perhaps a half hour into the game and then do something else. It’s a common enough twist, but two hours later there I was, having unlocked the Ghost Monk and, long story short, the majority of my week was spent with this game. I’m not sure why the game failed to grab me initially, though I suspect my initial assumption that I would not need to learn the combat is the prime offender (that and if your co-op partner is the same character as you are it can get real confusing real quick).

So here are a few things that I really like about the game, and a few things that the past week has taught me in terms of a good way to approach the game:

1. The music is fucking great. No really. No really. You can even buy the soundtrack for a fiver if you want to on steam—I don’t know if it is that great to where I’d want a copy to play at all times, but it’s real good. The soundtrack also changes when particular enemies are about, which is a great way to know when to keep an eye out for the ghostly fucker in the poncho with a penchant for curses. I hate that guy, and not just because he interferes with the galloping groove the soundtrack gives you—mostly because he flies and you have to use all air attacks to get his ass to die, unless you are able to catch him as he swoops at you (Katrien is better against him than the Ghost Monk, in my experience, because she strikes a bit faster. Plus her fireball is a bit more straightforward and doesn’t require bouncing around).

2. It is vital that you get a good feel for how each character plays. I’ve not been fortunate enough to unlock the final character (getting to the gold fountain room has been…challenging the last few playthroughs I’ve done) so I’m not sure how well she plays, but Katrien and the Ghost Monk are completely different in speed and overall feel, so it can take some getting used to. I’ve gotten most comfortable with Katrien at this point—her attacks are faster and I feel like I’ve had more luck dodging with her than I have with the Ghost Monk—but her weapons tend to be weaker and she has significantly less health (my level 8 Ghost Monk is only about 100 HP from where my level 16 Katrien is, healthwise, if that helps illustrate it). I’m willing to make the tradeoff in damage for speed, although I dunno I might spend a little more time with the Ghost Monk. I like that most of his attacks do damage ahead and behind, even his basic attack, so that’s something to consider. The training mode has been super-helpful to me, especially when it comes to getting a feel for the souls you’ve captured. Which leads to…

3. Being able to change into a giant bull and fuck shit up is pretty great. That’s kind of all there is to say on the matter.

4. If the game says a floor is hard, it is not fucking around. You will get wrecked if you are not careful, and sometimes being careful will not be enough. I have gotten my ass absolutely handed to me almost every time I’ve gotten into a hard floor, but to be fair there’s a great sense of satisfaction that comes from making it out alive that can’t be described.

5. I’m a huge fan of the randomly generated levels. It makes the game different every time, and when you spend as much time dying as I do, it’s nice that you’re not running through the same shit every time. There’s also the agony of being SO CLOSE to the golden room and dying and having the new map place it right before the final boss so GOOD LUCK FUCKER, HA HA HA HA, which is… less nice? But still pretty good.

6. The art style is great—the character portraits (particularly the Ghost Monk’s portrait) are fantastic, and I for one am a huge fan of the dead guy with a guitar, even if his bits of wisdom don’t always give you that much in terms of XP. The environment design is similarly nice, with jungles and ice areas and I guess like an underground volcano thing? The enemy designs are also great—I believe I mentioned the giant bulls once already, so I don’t know that I need to really go into further detail.

It’s not super surprising that a game with such a unique style should be the product of ACE Team, because I mean come on they made the Zeno Clash games and those are depicted in the dictionary right next to the definition of unique. The use of Chilean mythology to inform the setting and storyline of the game is also really cool, as I don’t know about y’all but I know next to nothing about Chilean mythology, and the little the game’s doled out has been pretty damn interesting. I never was too hot on Zeno Clash, mostly due to being kind of terrible at its combat system, but Abyss Odyssey’s combat feels tight and lends the same kind of weight to each enemy encounter that so many other games lack. It’s never a quick fight, and it’s never something you can just blow through—there’s always a little strategizing involved, trying to figure out how to use the surroundings to your advantage, wondering if you should pop a potion or tough it out a little longer, because if you can kill these guys their health drops should get you up to a point where you’ll be okay and you’ll still have a potion… there’s enough meat to the game’s combat that it never gets old for me.