Gameplay? Awesome. It's a bit on the easy side, but traversal and combat are pretty fun. The visuals looked nice too, but I do think they were a bit all over the place (different characters looked like they came from different games).

I do have a number of gripes, though. The story is just too out there for me to enjoy. The game just dumps you in the middle of this fantasy world that has way too many different pieces of jargon for me to fully understand what was going on. The game also isn't too clear on where some vital items are for continuing the story. You just have to explore. Which is usually fine. But this game doesn't have the best indicators on where things are. Also, I do wish there was an option to toggle on a minimap, that option was missing here.

Overall, I still had a lot of fun due to the actual gameplay. But the experience surrounding it? It could have been better.

TL;DR a Metroidvania for only the most dedicated, but casual fans will probably want to stay away.

Afterimage is really an interesting game. I didn't hate it, in fact the combat was really great and I was pleased with the weapon combinations and abilities, but the rest of the game is just so hostile that by the end I just really didn't want to play any more.

Let's start with the good. The combat is fantastic, you immediately get a choice of four pretty standard weapons: the standard sword, the faster dual blades, the long range whip, and the slow but strong greatsword. Each has their place and those with a preferred build will fit right in, though what is interesting is that you can equip another to the secondary attack and use both at once. I stuck with the sword and greatsword and didn't change at all.

I also think the length in general is pretty good. It took me about 20 hours to get some of the endings, but tuned out after that for reasons I'll list below, I just wish it was a little more engaging.

The art and music are really good. Beautifully drawn detail-rich environments await, with the standard biomes that you would expect (town, sky, lava, ice, etc.) with matching music that never got annoying or wore their welcome.

Ok, that said the navigation and story are a complete mess. First, the map is WAY too big. I love a metroidvania with a large map but this is the limit, for sure. To add, there's a quest log, but there are no map or quest markers to tell you where to go. In a good metroidvania, the visual language is key, it should be fairly obvious where to go, as you'll have max 2 options. Not here. The maps are so large that backtracking is more of a pain than anything and you'll end up spending fast travel resources (which are consumable, what an insane decision) unless you backtrack enough to reach the free, limited fast travel point.

The story also doesn't help. It is so bad and I completely tuned out minute one. If you're starting the game with a jargon info dump, I'm not interested. In a story-driven RPG or action game, sure. But I'm playing a metroidvania for the gameplay first, and if you're not going to give a quest marker or a checklist, or really any direction then you're not ever going to pull me back in.

And then, this game does two cardinal sins of a metroidvania. So I got thorough this one pretty quickly. The bosses are pretty easy and can be taken down in one go, and I was making decent progress until I needed a few upgrades. The amount of time I spent looking and searching and backtracking (again, with no obvious direction or hint), and god forbid the quest log give you any help. I spent probably about 8 hours aimlessly running around. No good.

The second sin is just completing the map. You get the treasure tracker item way late, but the map is so huge, I wasn't going to spend another few hours scouring every singe inch of the map looking for extra currency or items that are worse than my current gear. Not to mention the quest items that I wasn't even sure I needed or were really told to get and stumbled on in passing.

Overall this game is just a mess. The developers just didn't know when to stop with the map and should have kept the story simple. If you are a die-hard metroidvania fan, check this out. Maybe you'll have a better time than I did with this, but it really did try to fight me at every turn.

As I traversed the upside down castle with whip in hand fighting knights with my cool back dash I thought to myself Castlevania Symphony of the Night is a great game! I was however playing Afterimage, a Metroidvania made by Aurogon Shanghai. It's one of those games that I simply can't remember where I heard about it but It's been on my radar a while for it's gorgeous visual style...and I'll frankly play any Metroidvania you throw at me.

From a Metoidvania point of view it's kind of weak in a lot of ways though. The game is absolutely massive with about 20 locations to explore over the course of the adventure. Some of these locations are almost the size of other games of the genres entire maps and it took me over 30 hours to initially finish it off. The level design is expansive with various secrets to find with more skills and abilities unlocked as you would expect but backtracking is a nightmare and fast travelling uses a consumable item which just seemingly discourages it early on. The mid game I found it difficult to know exactly where to go and there is a weird difficulty spike due to the multiple directions which took a while to smooth out. The story equally feels it lacks cohesion. It's very dialogue, character and plot heavy but at the same time wants to be mysterious and lore intense like Dark Souls / Hollow Knight yet instead just leaves a lot of questions like it was never really finished. Playing the extra mode unlocked after several endings as a side story does answer some of it, as does the true ending but there are still many aspects of the plot that feel very incomplete or unsatisfying.

So why a 7/10 if you are luke warm on the level design and story Fallen? I hear you ask in confusion. It's simply because despite that, I had a lot of fun with it. The locations are varied and the artwork is really stunning throughout, the soundtrack is beautiful and sometimes haunting. The protagonist Renee's animations are smooth and combat for the most part is fun with a variety of weapons, accessories and magic to choose from.

Yes the game could have done with tightening up a little bit where I think they got a little overzealous but overall it's a fun little game.

+ Beautiful art design.
+ I liked the soft haunting melodies of the OST.
+ Combat is fast and fluid with some good options.
+ I just like exploring in Metroidvanias...

- Level's are a little too large.
- Story could be tightened up more, it wants both a lot of dialogue yet mysterious lore and doesn't quite work for either.

Mid chinese hollow knight. I know there's a need for a narrative, but FUCK ME was there a lot of boring exposition "Luca this, Razing that" SHUT UP. At times the dialogue was completely incomprehensible and either the script was written by an AI or there was some deep meaning lost in translation. None of the characters are fun or noteworthy, I'll forget them all in about 3 hours.

The gameplay is just hollow knight, but bigger. Bold choice for the game to start you with the dash and then completely drown out natural progression since the fucking map is ginormous. Like I'm talking MASSIVE, BIG, FUCKING HUMONGOUS. And while it was fun exploring it for the first time, revisiting these areas, traversing them and backtracking through them for some ass cryptic shit side quest is infuriating.

The leveling system is asinine, I don't know why it's RPG-ized. The weapon variety is definitely the best part (low bar, I know), but the titular afterimages (little boosts you can get while resting at confluences, imagine like charms from hollow knight).

Children yearned for silksong and got a chinese knockoff, just like ye olden times.