Link: The Unleashed Nexus Game Review

A Dystopian Platformer whose BGM is Anything But

Gameplay Video

Game REview

Japanese Title: リンク：ジ・アンリッシュド・ネクサス
Developer: Reminisce
Genre: 3D platformer

Full Game or Demo: Demo
Bought at: Comiket 92
Length: 15-25 minutes

Link: The Unleashed Nexus is a 3D action adventure game whose emphasis in the demo lies primarily on the adventure over action elements.
 
Its design will be familiar to players of DMC: Devil May Cry or Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 in that progression through each area requires special abilities that are gained, practiced, and (hopefully) mastered before being able to move on. This design feature has a long history, and can be seen in series such as the original Zelda, Metriod Prime, or The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver games.

Also like DMC, the game unfolds in stages rather than dumping players in a quasi-open world environment like its historical progenitors. This allows the game to rank players on their completion of each stage, although the formula is an obscure alchemical mixture of time and specfic ability use; there's no description of how rank is calculated, although it does use a letter system (which is based, I assume, on the Japanese system where "S" is the highest, followed by A, B, C, D--but I wouldn't know since my skillz consistently placed my rank at "C").
 
As a demo, there's little introduction of story. But basically the plot revolves around the main character navigating a destroyed world and regaining memories. Some of these appear to be located in out of the way places in stages (I found one in stage 3), but whether these are supposed to be in difficult to find places or not remains an open question.
 
The biggest issues I found with the game were in terms of control. Often I found it difficult to attack enemies or grab on to highlighted points (see the end of the video for epic failures in this regard), something I attribute to the lack of a "lock on" feature, rather than blaming it entirely on my poor motor skills (in typical reviewer fashion). Related to this point is that the camera distance cannot be changed. While generally not a problem, it does create some perspective issues with navigation when against floors and walls.
 
These quirks aside, it will be interesting to see where the developers take this game as they introduce more abilities, stages, and enemies.