Working as a stand-alone offshoot of ASTLIBRA Revision, The Cave of Phantom Mist is a bit of an oddity overall, but it at least adds a bit of roguelike flair to spice things up. Since it does stand on its own, and is only tied to its brethren tangentially, it isn’t necessary for you to already be familiar with the rest. If you’re not, that will likely make what story there is here a bit harder to care about, but the good news is that there isn’t much to it, so you won’t miss anything of note. The focus is really on the action here more than anything else.

As is the case with Revision, on a general level it would be fair to call its combat and general progression grindy to say the least. In particular when you’re starting out, you’ll spend a fair amount of time just staying in the thick of things, button pressing away while trying to keep enemies at bay and knocking them out. The good news is that it doesn’t take long for there to be opportunities to add some depth to the mix in a variety of ways. Keeping in mind this is set up as a roguelike, you’ll encounter new weapons and gear in every run, but as you level up and gain experience you’ll also be able to tweak your key stats, make use of magic, and even change your character class which will modify your core strengths, leading to an opportunity to play the game a bit differently.

In the end, whether you’ll want to pick this up will depend on your familiarity with its predecessor or your love for side-scrolling combat action. There isn’t much more to the experience than that overall, but at its budget price it still may feel like enough to make it worthwhile. While perhaps it can feel like a grind after a while, a challenge most games like this run into, in general there should be just enough complexity that it will allow you enough wiggle room to roughly make it suit you on a general level.