When I booted up Neon Blood I was immediately impressed. The Pixel graphics on sharp cyberpunk backgrounds, the music, the predictable but solid story promised a great adventure ahead. In the end this short adventure had some bright spots, but it’s simplicity and odd story blips resulted in an overall average eperience.

The story centers around Axel McCoin, a detective from Blind City. Axel has memory loss (of course) and when the game starts he is struggling to escape addiction from the drug Spark which has not only made him a disgrace on the police force, but also wrecked havoc with his cybernetics.

Assigned to a case looking for notorious murderer Robin Slash McCoin must look for clues, get his cybernetics working and solve the mystery of why Slash is targetting so many random people. Of course the story dips into film Noir tropes with twists and a larger plot discovered over time.

The story is, well, fine. It is incredibly predictable and while the game is billed as a Cyberpunk RPG there is very little actual choice. Nothing branches, aside from conflict quicker than later the story progresses the same despite any dialogue choices made.

I also found that there were some pretty big leaps and gaps in the story that left me scratching my head. Some plot points revealed later on counteract earlier story beats and sometimes there were almost miraculous teleports between areas to progress the story.

The presentation of the game is a mix of 2D pixel art for all the characters and stunnign 3D backgrounds for the environments. This is the part of the game that really impressed me. The backgrounds are amazing and the characters look great and detailed despite the pixel design.

I really enjoyed wandering around and interacting with all the people wandering the bleak landscapes of Blind City and beyond. Developer Chaoticbrain Studio also added a ton of cameos that fit in this Cyberpunk world. Of note was Jonny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077 and the cat from Stray.

The music is another highpoint of Neon Blood. Each area and scenario across the prologue and three acts had different music and themes. I actually really liked the music design and felt it enhanced the already great visuals and vibe of the game.

Gameplay wise the game is also, well, fine. There really is not that much depth to the gameplay. Again this is billed as an RPG but all enhancements to McCoin happen automatically and the gameplay has limited loops.

Essentially talk to people, find items or people using McCoins scanner, occasionally fight enemies in a turn based combat. The combat itself is incredibly limited and frankly WAY to easy. You choose an action, wait till it hits, choose it again.

I never had to defend, rarely had to heal and by the end I had a skill that let me win fights pretty much automatically. There are also some QTE sequences that were surprising and oddly fun.

By the end of the game I was underwhelmed, but glad I experienced Neon Blood mostly for the music, art style and vibe. The gameplay loops and stuttered story held the game back despite the impressive look and feel.

We were provided a Steam code of Neon Blood for review purposes. Neon Blood is available right now for PC via Steam, Xbox X|S, PlayStation 4|5 and Nintendo Switch.