Iji (v1.7)(PC, 2017)
Graphics-6 Sound-8.5 Control-7 Challenge-7.5/8.5* Story-6
Level Design-7 Frustration-8/9* Fun-7 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-7
*When the final boss uses its harder patterns (see cons)
+
RPG elements and some Platform Adventure/MV elements (leveling (gain stat points by collecting blue nanofield items (these also recover your armor, can find "supercharge" versions which give you a stat point instantly), manual stat allocation by using the stat points at cyborg stations (see System Shock 2), 9 stats with 10 levels each: HP, attack - weapon AP+stun duration and machine gun range, assimilate - how much armor is regenerated when picking up a nanofield+ammo capacity increase, str - determines what enemies can be kicked back and how far+used to kick down shield doors, crack (hack) - determines what level of enemy nanofields/shields can be cracked+how well you can combine weapon technologies in your gun, tasen - tasen weapon skill, komato - komato weapon skill, armor - how well armor damaging attacks are absorbed, jump height (this and armor are upgraded separately via power ups found in the levels/sectors - up to 2 times each)
Some meaningful story choices (can ally with one alien char with a low enough kill count pre-sector 4, failing to save a character causes a mental breakdown for the player char, if you kill everything in sight your avatar starts reacting sadistically while in the beginning she's traumatized by the violence), the function of temporary power ups (from nano overloads/gatherings, they trigger a buff or attack periodically and automatically while active) adapt to if you play offensively (kill enemies) or defensively (pacifist) and the former playstyle makes for combat themed power ups, )
Pretty rich lore via the logbooks
Cracking (a form of hacking - done via a mini-game similar to SS2 except it's more reflex-based+under a time limit; open security doors and multi-colored security boxes (locked item containers), cracking an enemy will often disable its most powerful weapons and if you're lucky you'll heavily damage it as well, cracking enemies can't directly kill them - their malfunctioning weapons may cause them to self-destruct but this won't count as your kill, cracking an enemy will also guarantee an ammo drop upon its death)
Basic weapon crafting (combine two weapons to create a new one - you get to keep the old weapons as well)
Special traits (gained when a stat reaches level 10 (max level); Health: Suppression - Iji's personal nanofield/shield gains extreme resistance to heavy blows (if an attack does >1 HP in a single hit then the damage is lowered by 1 HP (eg an attack that deals 3 HP damage now deals 2), Attack: Improved Autoloading - lowers the reload time of all non-rapidfire weapons by 20% (rapidfire weapons are ones that fire so fast that they don't affect the blue reload/cooldown bar), Assimilate: Advanced Recovery - a red Nanofield item will recover 1 more HP and a green one (armor pickup) 1 HP instead of none, Strength: Cybernetic Endurance - Iji's invulnerability time is increased by 50% and she's no longer knocked to the ground when firing the MPFB Devastator, Crack: Electronic Mastery - no adverse effects occur when you fail to crack something (enemies don't notice you, security crates don't break/explode on higher difficulty levels, security level of doors can't increase, etc; additionally the blue nodes in the cracking mini-game no longer flicker and cracking time is extended), Tasen: Vengeance - +1 to all Tasen ammunition you pick up, Komato: Glory - +1 to all Komato ammunition you pick up)
Some cool weapons (buster gun - no cooldown=stunlock some enemies, rocket launcher w/ a spread upgrade, hyper pulse/pulse spread, plasma cannon, resonance reflector - reflect shots, trapmine - set at teleporter destinations and triggers when an enemy travels to it, banana gun - shoot into rooms below you, shock barrier (similar to Another World), Chain Fractal Injection Shell (ranged cracking), nuke/smart bomb, MPFB devastator (huge knockback), etc.; 16 weapons in total)
4 difficulty levels with various parameters changing between them that are also shown in the menu (normal-extreme and an unlockable "ultimortal" mode)
You don't pick up a consumable if your stock of it is full - it's left for later and they don't disappear
Decent cutscenes (artwork and text though the art is pretty amateurishly drawn)
Secrets (can keep kicking a dead soldier into a wall or other obstacle to juggle it and gain up to 5 more nano drops from them (pretty strict timing), breakable walls, some well hidden items and paths involving puzzles - one is found by luring an enemy from another floor towards a cracked wall and making it shoot it with a rocket and another by damage boosting in mid-air via a rocket turret (they sometimes test spatial awareness, later on you can use the MPFB to launch yourself into the air and reach certain platforms), 4 hidden skills, 1 hidden level accessed by finding a hidden poster in each level, can feign death by not getting up after being knocked down but it's only useful in one sector)
Some shortcuts (some via teleporters)
Can look around with numpad/second stick on a controller - can't see that far though meaning certain vertical segments where you drop down and that have branching paths are still a matter of trial & error
Four different endings (two were added for v1.7)
Two alien villains who fight each other in-game (plot is a bit similar to half-life but with a developed player char)
V1.7 adds passive versions of the 8 basic weapons and makes using cracking on enemies non-lethal to make a pacifist run easier and more fun
Some ridable vehicles (hover bikes - these can jump via ramps)
Good bosses (pretty varied patterns and the third and fourth ones make you use traps in the arena to kill them, fourth one makes you stun and crack it - the hints are a bit too obvious in this second phase though and as soon as you follow them there's no challenge to it, final boss is good when it doesn't use its bullshit patterns)
Some optional challenges like taking out boss 3 without the electropad traps for a supercharge reward
Pretty satisfying feedback from attacks and explosions
Later enemies can reflect and dodge shots
Some sequence breaking possible (knockback from your own shots w/ the MPFB)
Counter attack skill (retribution; works like a smart bomb, can only be used when at <5 HP and when you have 1 ammo for each of the 8 basic weapons+you learn about it in lvl 8 though it can actually be used before that if you know about it)
+/-
Partially non-linear however the game is level-based without backtracking to previous levels (some different paths through the game depending on which stats you focused on (note that strength (kick down some doors) and cracking (open doors via hacking) are used like keys though and most other gates are opened by shooting them directly or via an enemy (only movement-related ability is the upgraded jump height?)) and whether or not you solve certain puzzles, some paths are also reached via a hoverbike vehicle, sectors all have a single entry point and a single exit point, some points of no return and one-way paths within levels, ) - a build that focuses on cracking+tasen+komato is also the most efficient according to speedruns
Can save only at end of levels/sectors (if you quit without saving all progress in the current Sector is lost except for unlocked Posters and Hidden skills, 5 slots showing current sector+difficulty+time taken)
Mid-level checkpoints for most sectors (one-time use only though)
Hard stat requirements for the two weapon categories (tasen and komato stats) and for cracking/hacking
Can only level up a certain number of times per level (5 on Normal) - a bit annoying in the sense that there's no use for the blue nanos/exp once you do (you can't even pick them up except for restoring your armor) but it also keeps the difficulty more balanced
Stomp (down in mid-air) can be used to break boxes but not damage enemies
You take damage simply from touching enemies (unlike in Flashback for example which the game seems partially inspired by) - kinda sucks early on if attempting a pacifist run?
Can't shoot while jumping nor aim up/down
Can't roll or dodge in other ways - can gain a skill called teching which reduces knockback (needs to be timed right and learned about in sector (early late-game however you can perform it before learning about it; not that useful sadly since you're generally ducking or jumping to completely avoid heavy damage instead)),
Pretty short default range for guns
Automatically break ceiling lamps if you jump into them as well as computers if you walk into them (no gameplay use besides an achievement message)
Pretty limited default ammo capacity
The game keeps track of one of the unnamed Tasen soldiers in Sector 3 for story purposes (some of the logbooks you’ll find in the later sectors detail her relationship with a different soldier and they’ll change drastically depending on her being killed or surviving - interesting in that it provides some nuance to the other side but it's not like you could've known not to kill that particular soldier)
For some reason one reward for a pacifist run is a weapon called Massacre
Can't save a nano overload power up for later use and what triggers is random (they give boosts that can be quite useful in specific situations (such as saving you from death once, partial invisibility or turning enemy fire into ammo) so using them strategically would've been interesting)
Can't use dialogue to persuade regular enemies not to fight you
Zoomed out view/small sprites
Enemies can turn around immediately if you drop down behind them so there's no tactical advantage to doing it
Regular shots hit you instantly
Can't kill the fleas?
Third boss is kind of easy if using the traps but still a fun fight
Splintergun is situational since you get it kind of late and mostly stop facing Tasen in the late game
-
No level maps until you beat the game on Normal (default auto-map feature would've been better, also no mini-map and while the maps are pretty good they're too zoomed out)
Some control/interface issues (simply switching weapon modes or weapons resets the selected weapon's cooldown - should've kept the cooldown state from after firing instead as this lowers the pacing of combat (the resonance detonator could've also been mapped to a separate button with its own cooldown (maybe replacing the kick) so you could block rockets/stun enemies and shoot in quicker succession however the later schock barrier is more flexible to use (more like in Another World)), no message log/quest log, can't shoot and can't turn around or move while crouching, radio communications pause gameplay - skippable though, can't stop an elevator until it reaches the next floor, have to press the use key before ducking or jumping while on an elevator - some enemies near elevators, )
Some trial & error (quite a few points of no return within levels, can't ever backtrack to a previous level even though it might seem like it at first (get a message saying you need lvl 15 crack/str which doesn't seem that high when you start off but 10 is actually the max for each stat), shots from off-screen - can look around but it's not enough and rockets and other knockback inducing projectiles move really fast, the long term effect of the rankings at the end of levels isn't properly explained - only some are hinted at in Iji's reaction to killing enemies really, one important enemy's death can only be avoided in an extremely counter-intuitive way (need to max out your Tasen and Komato skills to use the aliens’ best weapons and max out your Crack skill to combine them into something that can shoot through the walls of Sector X reactor - there’s a lot of grinding required and as you’re trying to be a pacifist it means hanging around battlefields and waiting for the enemies to kill each other), some enemies attack faster than you can kick - the resonance detonator can help here, final boss)
Can't run or dash (walking speed was increased in v1.7 but it still feels a bit slow since there's some backtracking here and there within levels (increases from lvl 5 onwards)+you get lost more easily without maps leading to more of it)
Can't even pick up a weapon that you don't have the stat requirement for (means you have to learn the levels and plan ahead to make exploring certain paths worth it - in sector 3 for example you might encounter a lvl 6 tasen weapon and while progressing and leveling up your tasen stat you end up not being able to backtrack and get it due to the points of no return)
Some tedious aspects (soldiers patrol too slowly and their machine gun volleys are kind of long (makes you spend quite a bit of time crouching and waiting during combat), too many and sometimes too long message logs - breaks flow (optimally would've been voiced or at least there could've been an option to have the text play automatically as you move around, soldiers/crates/hoverbikes not respawning makes it harder to solve some puzzles involving them, sometimes the final boss's pattern is a lot harder (either when he uses the slow blue shots that explode while loading the shot you're supposed to reflect (makes it much harder to time) or when he uses the "star cluster" cannon which is hard to read)
Limited AI in some ways (enemies don't react to gunshots nearby unless you also cleared a path to them, they also take a while to actually fight back if you shoot them before they see you)
Only partial control config and no controller support (up to jump but also to browse menus upwards and to go upwards in elevators...) - can use joytokey though
Some plot oddities (odd that indirectly killing enemies with cracking doesn't count towards your kill count since it's also a karma meter (while the reflector does count!), after noticing the aliens being able to speak your language it would've made sense for Iji to warn Dan about it? - uses the base's public radio to communicate with you, the first boss's questioning of your killing his men after you beat him falls flat when they had invaded your planet and killed lots of people for no reason and they're aliens that you also don't have any prior relation to - later on when Iji find's a soldier who's diary she's been reading makes a bit more sense but you'd have to have read them and it still doesn't create much nuance since no one in the enemy armies will attempt to ally with you unless you do a pacifist run, the bad ending is bullshit and makes no sense - "not even on the brink of death can you be reasoned with!" - Tor never asks for a truce before the fight!)
800x600 res support only
Some paths aren't worth taking (elite soldier path in sector 2 - just leads to some ammo which you can get elsewhere)
If you get hit by a rocket and knocked into a security box then it's destroyed and you miss out on its contents
Mostly basic visuals and there's some stylistic dissonance in that characters have a different look more like art déco/flat-shaded polys while the backgrounds don't
Some sectors in the mid-game seem designed for a more wellrounded build (tasen+komato weapons to reach some supercharge nanos, placement of komato weapons and crafting stations - could've changed dynamically depending on your build when entering a level)
Pretty repetitive backgrounds and combat can also get repetitive around the mid-game depending on your build
The large enemies (annihilators) are generally not worth killing
Level 10 cracking mini-game is still pretty easy
Sometimes there are several level 1 security doors in a row later on
Sometimes childish dialogue (last komato radio message, dialogue with the final boss)
While the world is interconnected you can't go back to a previous level even if your Crack skill is at level 15
Notes:
-Original full release is from 2008
-Can respec your build using a technique learned in sector 10/x (crouch and press C, C, C, C, Z) at the cost of most of your ammo and health. However you will also no longer regain health from upgrading your health stat for the remainder of the current sector. This technique also fully recovers your armor and makes you briefly invincible.
-Unlockables: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/604978-iji/cheats
-References and other secrets: http://www.remar.se/daniel/iji2guide_secrets.php
Comment:
A 2D indie game combining aspects of Flashback and System Shock 2 except it's level-based without backtracking, and there's more player character development including a basic karma system that affects the story outcome. Interestingly it sort of does the thing that the newer Tomb Raider did with Iji starting out traumatized but eventually enjoying battle if you focus on killing enemies, though it didn't quite become apparent to me until a few levels into it that this would be important, and the attempts at moral nuance mostly fall flat. It was updated as recently as 2017 with some rebalancing, non-lethal versions of weapons and 2 new endings.
The game is cool overall and has a great OST but I dislike the design decisions to have the player go through it several times to see a bit more of it each time (for example having to beat it just to see the maps instead of having an auto-map feature), how various puzzles for alternate paths can only be attempted once and then you have to reload, and how you're often encountering gates requiring stat upgrades but once you get them in that level, you've generally moved past a point of no return within it and can't take the path/get the weapon anymore.
Backtracking is also becoming an issue from the mid-game onwards due to a lack of running/dashing/other persistent movement ability and sometimes shortcuts (though there are some including teleporters).
While still worth checking out if anything in the first paragraph sounds interesting to you (as well as for its boss fights), I feel Iji would work better as more of a platform adventure/metroidvania game with an interconnected world, and with the addition of either a run or dash move, more shortcuts or making the jump upgrade power up also increase movement speed. Having the mid-level checkpoints be save points or not be one-use would've also been preferable even as an added Easy mode.
Level Design-7 Frustration-8/9* Fun-7 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-7
*When the final boss uses its harder patterns (see cons)
+
RPG elements and some Platform Adventure/MV elements (leveling (gain stat points by collecting blue nanofield items (these also recover your armor, can find "supercharge" versions which give you a stat point instantly), manual stat allocation by using the stat points at cyborg stations (see System Shock 2), 9 stats with 10 levels each: HP, attack - weapon AP+stun duration and machine gun range, assimilate - how much armor is regenerated when picking up a nanofield+ammo capacity increase, str - determines what enemies can be kicked back and how far+used to kick down shield doors, crack (hack) - determines what level of enemy nanofields/shields can be cracked+how well you can combine weapon technologies in your gun, tasen - tasen weapon skill, komato - komato weapon skill, armor - how well armor damaging attacks are absorbed, jump height (this and armor are upgraded separately via power ups found in the levels/sectors - up to 2 times each)
Some meaningful story choices (can ally with one alien char with a low enough kill count pre-sector 4, failing to save a character causes a mental breakdown for the player char, if you kill everything in sight your avatar starts reacting sadistically while in the beginning she's traumatized by the violence), the function of temporary power ups (from nano overloads/gatherings, they trigger a buff or attack periodically and automatically while active) adapt to if you play offensively (kill enemies) or defensively (pacifist) and the former playstyle makes for combat themed power ups, )
Pretty rich lore via the logbooks
Cracking (a form of hacking - done via a mini-game similar to SS2 except it's more reflex-based+under a time limit; open security doors and multi-colored security boxes (locked item containers), cracking an enemy will often disable its most powerful weapons and if you're lucky you'll heavily damage it as well, cracking enemies can't directly kill them - their malfunctioning weapons may cause them to self-destruct but this won't count as your kill, cracking an enemy will also guarantee an ammo drop upon its death)
Basic weapon crafting (combine two weapons to create a new one - you get to keep the old weapons as well)
Special traits (gained when a stat reaches level 10 (max level); Health: Suppression - Iji's personal nanofield/shield gains extreme resistance to heavy blows (if an attack does >1 HP in a single hit then the damage is lowered by 1 HP (eg an attack that deals 3 HP damage now deals 2), Attack: Improved Autoloading - lowers the reload time of all non-rapidfire weapons by 20% (rapidfire weapons are ones that fire so fast that they don't affect the blue reload/cooldown bar), Assimilate: Advanced Recovery - a red Nanofield item will recover 1 more HP and a green one (armor pickup) 1 HP instead of none, Strength: Cybernetic Endurance - Iji's invulnerability time is increased by 50% and she's no longer knocked to the ground when firing the MPFB Devastator, Crack: Electronic Mastery - no adverse effects occur when you fail to crack something (enemies don't notice you, security crates don't break/explode on higher difficulty levels, security level of doors can't increase, etc; additionally the blue nodes in the cracking mini-game no longer flicker and cracking time is extended), Tasen: Vengeance - +1 to all Tasen ammunition you pick up, Komato: Glory - +1 to all Komato ammunition you pick up)
Some cool weapons (buster gun - no cooldown=stunlock some enemies, rocket launcher w/ a spread upgrade, hyper pulse/pulse spread, plasma cannon, resonance reflector - reflect shots, trapmine - set at teleporter destinations and triggers when an enemy travels to it, banana gun - shoot into rooms below you, shock barrier (similar to Another World), Chain Fractal Injection Shell (ranged cracking), nuke/smart bomb, MPFB devastator (huge knockback), etc.; 16 weapons in total)
4 difficulty levels with various parameters changing between them that are also shown in the menu (normal-extreme and an unlockable "ultimortal" mode)
You don't pick up a consumable if your stock of it is full - it's left for later and they don't disappear
Decent cutscenes (artwork and text though the art is pretty amateurishly drawn)
Secrets (can keep kicking a dead soldier into a wall or other obstacle to juggle it and gain up to 5 more nano drops from them (pretty strict timing), breakable walls, some well hidden items and paths involving puzzles - one is found by luring an enemy from another floor towards a cracked wall and making it shoot it with a rocket and another by damage boosting in mid-air via a rocket turret (they sometimes test spatial awareness, later on you can use the MPFB to launch yourself into the air and reach certain platforms), 4 hidden skills, 1 hidden level accessed by finding a hidden poster in each level, can feign death by not getting up after being knocked down but it's only useful in one sector)
Some shortcuts (some via teleporters)
Can look around with numpad/second stick on a controller - can't see that far though meaning certain vertical segments where you drop down and that have branching paths are still a matter of trial & error
Four different endings (two were added for v1.7)
Two alien villains who fight each other in-game (plot is a bit similar to half-life but with a developed player char)
V1.7 adds passive versions of the 8 basic weapons and makes using cracking on enemies non-lethal to make a pacifist run easier and more fun
Some ridable vehicles (hover bikes - these can jump via ramps)
Good bosses (pretty varied patterns and the third and fourth ones make you use traps in the arena to kill them, fourth one makes you stun and crack it - the hints are a bit too obvious in this second phase though and as soon as you follow them there's no challenge to it, final boss is good when it doesn't use its bullshit patterns)
Some optional challenges like taking out boss 3 without the electropad traps for a supercharge reward
Pretty satisfying feedback from attacks and explosions
Later enemies can reflect and dodge shots
Some sequence breaking possible (knockback from your own shots w/ the MPFB)
Counter attack skill (retribution; works like a smart bomb, can only be used when at <5 HP and when you have 1 ammo for each of the 8 basic weapons+you learn about it in lvl 8 though it can actually be used before that if you know about it)
+/-
Partially non-linear however the game is level-based without backtracking to previous levels (some different paths through the game depending on which stats you focused on (note that strength (kick down some doors) and cracking (open doors via hacking) are used like keys though and most other gates are opened by shooting them directly or via an enemy (only movement-related ability is the upgraded jump height?)) and whether or not you solve certain puzzles, some paths are also reached via a hoverbike vehicle, sectors all have a single entry point and a single exit point, some points of no return and one-way paths within levels, ) - a build that focuses on cracking+tasen+komato is also the most efficient according to speedruns
Can save only at end of levels/sectors (if you quit without saving all progress in the current Sector is lost except for unlocked Posters and Hidden skills, 5 slots showing current sector+difficulty+time taken)
Mid-level checkpoints for most sectors (one-time use only though)
Hard stat requirements for the two weapon categories (tasen and komato stats) and for cracking/hacking
Can only level up a certain number of times per level (5 on Normal) - a bit annoying in the sense that there's no use for the blue nanos/exp once you do (you can't even pick them up except for restoring your armor) but it also keeps the difficulty more balanced
Stomp (down in mid-air) can be used to break boxes but not damage enemies
You take damage simply from touching enemies (unlike in Flashback for example which the game seems partially inspired by) - kinda sucks early on if attempting a pacifist run?
Can't shoot while jumping nor aim up/down
Can't roll or dodge in other ways - can gain a skill called teching which reduces knockback (needs to be timed right and learned about in sector (early late-game however you can perform it before learning about it; not that useful sadly since you're generally ducking or jumping to completely avoid heavy damage instead)),
Pretty short default range for guns
Automatically break ceiling lamps if you jump into them as well as computers if you walk into them (no gameplay use besides an achievement message)
Pretty limited default ammo capacity
The game keeps track of one of the unnamed Tasen soldiers in Sector 3 for story purposes (some of the logbooks you’ll find in the later sectors detail her relationship with a different soldier and they’ll change drastically depending on her being killed or surviving - interesting in that it provides some nuance to the other side but it's not like you could've known not to kill that particular soldier)
For some reason one reward for a pacifist run is a weapon called Massacre
Can't save a nano overload power up for later use and what triggers is random (they give boosts that can be quite useful in specific situations (such as saving you from death once, partial invisibility or turning enemy fire into ammo) so using them strategically would've been interesting)
Can't use dialogue to persuade regular enemies not to fight you
Zoomed out view/small sprites
Enemies can turn around immediately if you drop down behind them so there's no tactical advantage to doing it
Regular shots hit you instantly
Can't kill the fleas?
Third boss is kind of easy if using the traps but still a fun fight
Splintergun is situational since you get it kind of late and mostly stop facing Tasen in the late game
-
No level maps until you beat the game on Normal (default auto-map feature would've been better, also no mini-map and while the maps are pretty good they're too zoomed out)
Some control/interface issues (simply switching weapon modes or weapons resets the selected weapon's cooldown - should've kept the cooldown state from after firing instead as this lowers the pacing of combat (the resonance detonator could've also been mapped to a separate button with its own cooldown (maybe replacing the kick) so you could block rockets/stun enemies and shoot in quicker succession however the later schock barrier is more flexible to use (more like in Another World)), no message log/quest log, can't shoot and can't turn around or move while crouching, radio communications pause gameplay - skippable though, can't stop an elevator until it reaches the next floor, have to press the use key before ducking or jumping while on an elevator - some enemies near elevators, )
Some trial & error (quite a few points of no return within levels, can't ever backtrack to a previous level even though it might seem like it at first (get a message saying you need lvl 15 crack/str which doesn't seem that high when you start off but 10 is actually the max for each stat), shots from off-screen - can look around but it's not enough and rockets and other knockback inducing projectiles move really fast, the long term effect of the rankings at the end of levels isn't properly explained - only some are hinted at in Iji's reaction to killing enemies really, one important enemy's death can only be avoided in an extremely counter-intuitive way (need to max out your Tasen and Komato skills to use the aliens’ best weapons and max out your Crack skill to combine them into something that can shoot through the walls of Sector X reactor - there’s a lot of grinding required and as you’re trying to be a pacifist it means hanging around battlefields and waiting for the enemies to kill each other), some enemies attack faster than you can kick - the resonance detonator can help here, final boss)
Can't run or dash (walking speed was increased in v1.7 but it still feels a bit slow since there's some backtracking here and there within levels (increases from lvl 5 onwards)+you get lost more easily without maps leading to more of it)
Can't even pick up a weapon that you don't have the stat requirement for (means you have to learn the levels and plan ahead to make exploring certain paths worth it - in sector 3 for example you might encounter a lvl 6 tasen weapon and while progressing and leveling up your tasen stat you end up not being able to backtrack and get it due to the points of no return)
Some tedious aspects (soldiers patrol too slowly and their machine gun volleys are kind of long (makes you spend quite a bit of time crouching and waiting during combat), too many and sometimes too long message logs - breaks flow (optimally would've been voiced or at least there could've been an option to have the text play automatically as you move around, soldiers/crates/hoverbikes not respawning makes it harder to solve some puzzles involving them, sometimes the final boss's pattern is a lot harder (either when he uses the slow blue shots that explode while loading the shot you're supposed to reflect (makes it much harder to time) or when he uses the "star cluster" cannon which is hard to read)
Limited AI in some ways (enemies don't react to gunshots nearby unless you also cleared a path to them, they also take a while to actually fight back if you shoot them before they see you)
Only partial control config and no controller support (up to jump but also to browse menus upwards and to go upwards in elevators...) - can use joytokey though
Some plot oddities (odd that indirectly killing enemies with cracking doesn't count towards your kill count since it's also a karma meter (while the reflector does count!), after noticing the aliens being able to speak your language it would've made sense for Iji to warn Dan about it? - uses the base's public radio to communicate with you, the first boss's questioning of your killing his men after you beat him falls flat when they had invaded your planet and killed lots of people for no reason and they're aliens that you also don't have any prior relation to - later on when Iji find's a soldier who's diary she's been reading makes a bit more sense but you'd have to have read them and it still doesn't create much nuance since no one in the enemy armies will attempt to ally with you unless you do a pacifist run, the bad ending is bullshit and makes no sense - "not even on the brink of death can you be reasoned with!" - Tor never asks for a truce before the fight!)
800x600 res support only
Some paths aren't worth taking (elite soldier path in sector 2 - just leads to some ammo which you can get elsewhere)
If you get hit by a rocket and knocked into a security box then it's destroyed and you miss out on its contents
Mostly basic visuals and there's some stylistic dissonance in that characters have a different look more like art déco/flat-shaded polys while the backgrounds don't
Some sectors in the mid-game seem designed for a more wellrounded build (tasen+komato weapons to reach some supercharge nanos, placement of komato weapons and crafting stations - could've changed dynamically depending on your build when entering a level)
Pretty repetitive backgrounds and combat can also get repetitive around the mid-game depending on your build
The large enemies (annihilators) are generally not worth killing
Level 10 cracking mini-game is still pretty easy
Sometimes there are several level 1 security doors in a row later on
Sometimes childish dialogue (last komato radio message, dialogue with the final boss)
While the world is interconnected you can't go back to a previous level even if your Crack skill is at level 15
Notes:
-Original full release is from 2008
-Can respec your build using a technique learned in sector 10/x (crouch and press C, C, C, C, Z) at the cost of most of your ammo and health. However you will also no longer regain health from upgrading your health stat for the remainder of the current sector. This technique also fully recovers your armor and makes you briefly invincible.
-Unlockables: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/604978-iji/cheats
-References and other secrets: http://www.remar.se/daniel/iji2guide_secrets.php
Comment:
A 2D indie game combining aspects of Flashback and System Shock 2 except it's level-based without backtracking, and there's more player character development including a basic karma system that affects the story outcome. Interestingly it sort of does the thing that the newer Tomb Raider did with Iji starting out traumatized but eventually enjoying battle if you focus on killing enemies, though it didn't quite become apparent to me until a few levels into it that this would be important, and the attempts at moral nuance mostly fall flat. It was updated as recently as 2017 with some rebalancing, non-lethal versions of weapons and 2 new endings.
The game is cool overall and has a great OST but I dislike the design decisions to have the player go through it several times to see a bit more of it each time (for example having to beat it just to see the maps instead of having an auto-map feature), how various puzzles for alternate paths can only be attempted once and then you have to reload, and how you're often encountering gates requiring stat upgrades but once you get them in that level, you've generally moved past a point of no return within it and can't take the path/get the weapon anymore.
Backtracking is also becoming an issue from the mid-game onwards due to a lack of running/dashing/other persistent movement ability and sometimes shortcuts (though there are some including teleporters).
While still worth checking out if anything in the first paragraph sounds interesting to you (as well as for its boss fights), I feel Iji would work better as more of a platform adventure/metroidvania game with an interconnected world, and with the addition of either a run or dash move, more shortcuts or making the jump upgrade power up also increase movement speed. Having the mid-level checkpoints be save points or not be one-use would've also been preferable even as an added Easy mode.