I'm as split on this game as the dual protagonists. I can't remember the last time a game simultaneously frustrated and fascinated me. There's some really interesting stuff in this but there's an equal amount of maddening stuff.

So to start there's something happening for the story. Stars or something are clashing, blue and orange, and resulting in one dominating the other. You play as one of these star beings and roam around a sorta-metroidvania map. I say sorta because it doesn't really feel like metroidvania much to me but maybe it's just a bad one? Anyway you roam around and encounter both orange and blue star beings and engage in a combat.

Here's where they fascinating gameplay is. You can simply defeat them but to truly progress you need to beat them in such a way that you absorb them completely. Battles are all turn based and you have a myriad of techniques at your disposal as you progress. Basically what you need to do is fill a meter that makes the opponent susceptible to absorption without killing them. This gets progressively more difficult as enemies will have shields you have to break but doing that wrong will lead to you killing them quicker or they have ways of ending the battle in X amount of turns so you need to do it quick. It's a system that can be satisfying when you figure it out and succeed.

The frustration here is how, despite the game inundating you with tutorials at the start, just won't tell you that suddenly there are new mechanics when dealing with certain types of enemies which is an annoying inconsistency when earlier they stop you mid combat to explain the details of breaking blocks. The other annoyance is back to the multitude of moves at your disposal you can't see while actually IN combat. Even offline single player modes in fighting games will let you pause to check your set list so for a TURN BASED game to not have something like that even when on your turn
feels like a blatant misstep.

The other side of the game here is platforming. As I said, it's sort of metroidvania? There's only like four items you get to access areas you can't get to and you just sorta stumble on them. It never had the feeling of like "oh neat I got this thing after beating a boss/finding a hidden area" because it just presents itself awkwardly. All the enemies in the game feel the same level of threat for the most part and if they don't it's because you found them in a weird order. There's only like arguably four fights that really scream "boss fight" and those don't bestow you means of traversal. It just feels awkward.

On top of that, the movement just feels a bit too rigid. I appreciate what they're going for with swapping characters who only have certain abilities each but it's not snappy enough to really flow that well. I had a few times where a toggle just didn't register and I would fall to somewhere I didn't want to be. The game is designed well enough that it doesn't feel like too much of a slog if you mess up but it does get annoying at times.

There's not really any hazards either so a lot of the core gameplay loop is just kinda basic platforming from one encounter to the next in an empty world. Makes you wonder why it had to be a metroidvania at all. There are at least collectibles to find. One set will increase your time to attack and another your health. There's a third one that unlocks like the "challenge" area but that ended up being my breaking point.

You go through the mostly empty map with backgrounds like mid 2000s Windows screensavers and collect all the green triangles. Your reward is the final part of the map, an optional challenge area. The first part of this area is a platforming gauntlet that isn't even that difficult but the switching mechanic was so finnicky for me that after like 15 failed attempts or so I just said "fuck it" and went to the final boss and finished the game. Shame too because what I do like, the combat system. would probably shine against the secret super boss that laid ahead of said platforming gauntlet but I just couldn't be arsed to do it. Doesn't give you anything special or change the ending anyway so whatever.

So then you get to the final boss and WOW they just fall on their face by having the final boss be an interactive cutscene that is just total nonsense like Somerville or something you have to dive DEEP to know the literal meaning. I just didn't care at that point. The story was boring and the lore was uninteresting. I just was done and that was it.

I suppose this means frustration won out in the end. There's elements of a really neat game in here but I had just enough little frustrations to be done with it when I got near the end. I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone but it could be worth checking out anyway., Maybe you'll click with it sooner than me or have less issues with the platforming. I'm glad I got to experience it but I'm also happy its over lol.

One of the more interesting games I've played a good while.

Worldless is at it's core a turn based rhythm game where you need to master patterns (and how to react to them). When it's good, it's REAL good. Some fights felt downright euphoric once I understood how to tackle them. But god, sometimes it's just such a frustrating combat system to engage with. It's very unforgiving in the sense that it leaves very little room for error. If you fuck up, chances are, the enemy wipes you and you have to start the fight over. Which I'm of two minds of. On one hand, this lends to the hostile nature of the game and makes the highs feel higher. But it also makes the lows feel lower and occasionally felt akin to banging my head against a wall. I do appreciate what it's going for. TLDR; skill issue.

The metroidvania stuff is good. There's are fun platforming puzzle sections sprinkled throughout the map that made it interesting enough to traverse. But overall it's a little unremarkable in that respect.

Graphically, the simply cosmic art style looks great. The animations in combat look especially punchy. I dug it.

So yeah. Worldless is an interesting game. Not really an easy one to recommend but I'm glad I played it.

This game was better than it had any right to be. I adored so much of it from the visuals to the main gameplay loop that from start to finish I was having an exceptional time. The turn based combat was an interesting gimmick to break up long stretches of platforming and the platforming itself was designed well enough to not mandate exploration but heavily reward those who did.

The combat was far deeper than I was expecting, it allowed me to struggle early on without any real punishment that gave a natural sense of progression and feeling of mastery as I became more knowledgeable on the types of fights the game had. I'm a sucker for anything with perfect parries so that being included and not a surface level block/attack system was a welcome addition. The combat really does an incredible job of being lenient enough to not require full mastery but still challenging enough to encourage a deep understanding of what is being asked of you until you hit late game. The four boss fights leading up to the ending were PHENOMENAL (mostly). They were all good but some felt more polished and satisfying than others.

The exploration was another aspect I felt was incorporated well. Your "life" bar being tied to organisms and cards that you had to seek out instead of being tied to your skill tree made all the backtracking feel not like a waste of time and I thought that was something handled adequately. The progression of movement mechanics was done alright enough, the early game can feel kind of slow with only dash b being available but once you get run, shift and shadow grapple after being introduced to shift the game flows a lot more naturally.

My only real gripe with the game was the ending. I later learned there is a secret boss fight that sort of makes up for the whacky ending but even then not really? The game loosely does a job of guiding you towards the conclusion that the story is about the big bang and the creation of the universe and what I believe to be a statement on trying to deny "fate" but I dont necessarily feel that story is told in an all too comprehensible format and this becomes exemplified at the final "boss" which is effectively just an entity speaking an unknown language at you as you waste turns in a pseudo quick time event. The game up until this point was going great and the bosses leading up to this one were handled well so it's a strange ending to me to have the final stretch of the game being effectively just a minimally interactive cutscene.

All in all still a solid game, just one blemished by a lackluster ending.