ReSetna

Minds trapped in circuits, and in jank

ReSetna sends you into a post-apocalyptic sci-fi world as the titular robotic warrior, hunting through seven hostile zones and boss encounters to rescue the last remnants of human consciousness. Visually, it's a genuine achievement — reviewers on both sides of the overall verdict consistently praise the protagonist and world design, with one detailed critical review opening by calling it "visually stunning" and "meticulously crafted" before getting into everything that goes wrong mechanically. That split — visual admiration paired with mechanical frustration — defines almost the entire negative review sample.

The combat and progression systems earn real, independent praise as well. Three distinct weapons keep encounters varied, and a Tetris-style chip system replacing conventional levelling is specifically cited by multiple reviewers as a satisfying alternative once they got used to not simply gaining raw stats over time. Boss fights, in particular, draw consistent approval — reviewers who otherwise struggle with the game's movement still frequently say the bosses themselves are well-designed, challenging in a way that feels earned rather than arbitrary.

The worst movement some reviewers have felt in years

The single dominant complaint across the negative review sample concerns basic movement feel, and the language reviewers use is unusually forceful for what genre veterans generally treat as a solved problem. "ReSetna has the worst movement of any metroidvania I can recall playing in the past five years. Maybe even the worst movement in a video game," one detailed review states, describing animations that "jerk you into position," unresponsive button inputs, and excessive stagger locking the player out of control after being hit or after certain animations. A separate reviewer independently arrives at a similar diagnosis: "The movement is fluid but the combat is clunky," specifically calling out the weapon-throw aiming system as "by far the worst designed thing" because it shares an input with basic movement, making precise aiming and repositioning fight each other constantly.

This is a genre where movement feel is usually the load-bearing pillar everything else depends on, and when multiple independent reviewers converge on describing it as actively broken rather than merely unpolished, it's worth treating as the game's central, structural problem rather than a subjective nitpick.

A number that backs up a specific, damning claim

One review makes an unusually precise, checkable assertion: "Less than 35% of players have beaten the first boss. That's enough of a summary for why I wouldn't recommend anyone buy this game." Checking this against Steam's own achievement data confirms it almost exactly — the achievement for defeating the game's first named boss sits at 34.2% of the entire playerbase. That's a remarkable rate of early dropout for a game's very first major encounter, and it corroborates the movement and control complaints far more concretely than qualitative reviewer impressions alone could: whatever is happening in ReSetna's early hours, it's costing the developer roughly two-thirds of its buyers before they clear the first real test the game presents.

A related, more specific traversal complaint concerns a warp or teleport ability introduced partway through the game — multiple reviewers describe it as one of the jankiest, least reliable powerups they've encountered in the genre, a serious problem in a metroidvania where new movement abilities are supposed to open up prior areas rather than introduce new frustration. One reviewer who otherwise enjoyed the opening hours specifically identifies this power-up's introduction as the moment "it all falls apart."

Rough edges that suggest an unfinished polish pass

Beyond movement and the specific warp bug, several reviewers report smaller but telling signs of incomplete development. One reviewer describes discovering a literal placeholder codex entry for the very first basic enemy encountered in the game — unfinished text left in the shipped product rather than a bug in the traditional sense, but a concrete, checkable example of content that never received a final pass. Others report recurring general bugs persisting even after multiple post-launch patches, alongside pacing that several reviewers describe as uneven once the story's mid-game "chase scene" sequence begins, shifting from a fair difficulty curve into what one reviewer calls "trial and error platforming."

To the developer's credit, at least one reviewer reports a direct, responsive support experience — a reported issue fixed within days, including troubleshooting help offered over a weekend — suggesting a small team that is actively trying to address problems as they're found, even if the pace of fixes hasn't yet caught up with the scale of what reviewers are reporting.

Two very different first impressions of the same game

It's worth noting how sharply the "first hour" experience seems to diverge between players, based on the review sample. Several positive reviews describe the opening stretch as immediately compelling — intuitive controls, tense and rewarding combat, a world worth exploring — while several of the most detailed negative reviews describe struggling with basic movement and aiming from the very first encounters. That's a wider spread than most games show, and it suggests the movement and control issues, whatever their root cause, don't affect every player equally; input method, prior genre experience, and simple luck in which enemies or rooms a given player encounters early likely all play a role. For a prospective buyer, that means the wide review score isn't simply "some people are picky" — a genuinely different subset of players are having a substantially rougher technical experience than others with the same build of the same game.

Where this leaves it

ReSetna has real strengths — striking art direction, varied combat, and boss encounters reviewers genuinely enjoy — sitting on top of movement and control problems severe enough that a third of its own playerbase apparently can't get past the first boss. The achievement data turns what could read as reviewer exaggeration into a documented, specific fact about the game's current state. Worth watching for future patches given a responsive developer, but not recommended at full price today for anyone who isn't specifically prepared to fight through unusually rough movement to reach the parts of the game reviewers actually praise.