I’m a big fan of metroidvanias, and this was one I hadn’t heard of, but a friend of mine is a big fan of. They happened to have a spare key for it lying around, and they very graciously gave it to me so I could play through it! Other than the bits of praise I heard from that friend, this was honestly a game I’d just never heard of. Judging from all the friends who jumped in call with me to watch me play it and how much they talked about loving it, it seems it’s certainly a popular one, and now that I’ve finished it myself, I can certainly see why! I played through the game three times. Once on normal mode and getting the good ending, which took about five hours. After that, I did a “Boss Mode” (this game’s version of the old Castlevania’s Julias Mode) playthrough that took about 2.5 hours, and then I finished it off with a hard mode playthrough to get the true good ending (which can only be gotten on hard mode after you’ve beaten the game once), and that was another 3.5 hours.

Lost Ruins is the story of an unnamed Heroine (who is simply called such throughout the game), who is summoned suddenly into some, well, mysterious and unfamiliar ruins. She has no memories of her life before being summoned, but judging from her clothes, she assumes she used to be some kind of school girl. A helpful witch quickly informs her that she is only the most recent to be summoned here, and that the evil Dark Lady is summoning all sorts of souls from other worlds to serve as sacrifices for a dark, ultimate ritual. With not a ton of help from her witch friend, our heroine sets off to take down the Dark Lady’s subjects and perhaps even get home in the end. The writing is nothing special, but it’s fine silly fun for what it is. The character writing is funny and weird in ways that make its small yet colorful cast charming in their own absurd ways, and that’s especially evident in the Boss Mode. It’s a lot less horny than you’d think a metroidvania about school girls would be, which was nice, though that’s not to say it’s not horny at all, of course XD. It’s at a perfectly tolerable level of it for me, and I found the writing fun for what it was and a good motivator for the adventure~ (clearly good enough to get me to go through it three times, at least XD).

The gameplay of Lost Ruins is a 2D action/adventure metroidvania, so there’s going to be a lot of familiar elements for anyone even remotely familiar with the genre. However, there are a few interesting things that this game does that makes it stand out among the crowd of other high quality metroidvanias. First of all, this game has no mobility upgrades. There’s some recursive exploration, sure, but beyond going back to tackle trials or puzzles you just couldn’t beat the first time, the game is honestly fairly linear if you choose to play it that way, as the only thing keeping you from progressing are the bosses blocking your way and not the upgrades you might’ve otherwise gained from them.

On that note, the game is actually very sparse on the upgrades full stop, really. You start with 20 HP and 20 MP, and by the end of the game your base stats will, at most, be 35 HP and 30 MP. The weapons, magic, and armor you find as well don’t really scale in power too much (though there certainly is some scaling to them), and you really end up playing through the whole game at a very similar durability to how you started it out as. You’ll find better weapons with different sorts of passives, you’ll find armor and trinkets that give different sorts of passives both defensive and offensive, and you’ll even get the ability to wear more pieces of armor/trinkets at once, but you don’t really play the game that differently at the end than you did at the start.

This particular aspect of the game makes it particularly fun to replay, I think, as it’s both not terribly long and you’re not really getting much of a downgrade in your arsenal when you restart. As my hard mode playthrough that took 1.5 hours less than my original normal mode playthrough indicates, the skills and strategies you pick up from one playthrough carry over very easily to other playthroughs, and the different modes and little modifiers they give you make for some very fun challenge runs if you’re up to tackle them (such as Witch Mode, where you can’t use anything but magic spells the entire game).

The aesthetics of the game are very pretty, and the pixel art is done very well. Both in the VN-style portraits for when the girls are talking as well as the animations on attacks, you can really tell a lot of time and effort went into bringing Lost Ruins’s cast to life. Several friends unfamiliar with the game actually thought I was playing a Momodora game, which is high praise in and of itself so far as I’m concerned. The music is also very fun and fits the mood of the game very well, and it all makes for a really good and fun time~.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. As far as more action-focused metroidvanias go, this is a pretty damn good one! The story is fun, and the action and exploration is even better. Heck, the fact that I played through it so many times is in and of itself a testament to just how fun the game is to play. If you’re a fan of the genre, then Lost Ruins is definitely one you don’t wanna miss out on.

Lost Ruins é um indie metroidvania com alguns puzzles, durante o jogo o player controla uma garota que do nada acorda em um outro mundo sem nenhuma memória e vai atrás da seguidoras da Dama das Sombras, pois se matá-las vai, supostamente, vai recuperar a memória. O game tem uma gameplay um pouco complexa que demora um pouco para dominar, tendo lutas que demandam extrema precisão com os controles, diversos inimigos com diferentes padrões de ataque e alguns deles aplicam status negativos, dois slots de armas na qual cada uma tem uma velocidade de ataque que influencia diretamente da gameplay, dois slots de feitiços que tem extrema importância para passar de alguns obstáculos, slots para itens passivos o que possibilita a criação de algumas builds e a presença de itens ativo que são a única forma de cura/ recuperação de mana existentes nesse jogo, já que as outras forma são a de ter sorte de dropar de um monstro ou vim de um item passivo. Além disso, cada efeito das armas ou dos feitiços podem interferir em certos ambientes, por exemplo, caso use armas que aplicam veneno na água, o líquido será contaminado e causará dano no jogador ou seja é um jogo que tem como forte o combate que é extremamente completo que vai se atualizando conforme libera equipamentos e descobre novos monstros. Os bosses são garotas que normalmente tem três fases de luta, que quando passa muda o padrão de ataque, porém quando domina esse padrão fica fácil, pois em nenhuma fase elas têm muita vida, o único boss que eu tive muita dificuldade foi a menina inseto que usa um arco. Os mapas são bem simples em comparação com outros metroidvanias, sendo relativamente lineares e tendo puzzles bem tranquilos de resolver. Falando em aspectos gráfico, o game é bem bonitinho e tem um visual que eu gostei bastante, mas quando se fala de efeitos sonoros e trilha sonora o game fica bem mediano, tendo uma trilha sonora que muda de acordo com os ambientes do mapa, porém achei as músicas meio me e os efeitos sonoros caem em uma repetição extrema. No geral achei um jogo que tem uma gameplay extremamente acima da média, gráficos legais, efeitos sonoros que no geral são meio abaixo e uma história meio fraca. Acho que deve haver outros jogos desse gênero que valham jogar antes desse.

Simplesmente Dark Souls em 2D, controles responsivos e rápidos, pixel art e estilo gráfico lindo pra porra, história final sendo até bem interessante e bom plot twist, recomendo pra caralho, só acho que faltou um pouco de trilha sonora, a e bosses muito bons e bem variados.

9/10

trilha sonora quase não existente.

- No es H -
Me tomo casi como unas 7 horas terminarlo y no lo siento como un desperdicio de tiempo pero si esperaba más, mire que tiene varios finales pero no siento que valgan la pena y más por su gameplay que si es variado y tiene cositas en cuanto a el uso de las armas, pero no me termino de gustar que sea tan lento.
La historia está meh, es una tipo isekai pero con waifus en todos partes.
Ah y sus waifus sinceramente son muy lindas y estan bien animadas, su pixelart está muy bien hecho y son muy esteticas.
Al final es un metroivania más del monton al que le tenia expectativas altas por como se miraba :/
Tambien note que si no lo corria en modo administrador el juego se me congelaba o no arrancaba y se quedaba cargando sin más.

I thought this was terrible, no other word for it. I got as far as the first boss before giving up, and even that was a painful and deeply unpleasant experience, and I simply do not want to subject myself to any more.

So before getting into the breakdown of what I didn't like here, I'll take a moment to say I like the visual design of the environments. The pixel art is pretty good and, for the most part, this game looks the part. Also, I can't say if this carries on throughout of course, but the early game enemy diversity at least is pretty decent too.

But apart from that.... no. Nothing about this feels good to play. The combat and platforming both feel incredibly clunky; movement is floaty and slow, and even the weapons with 'fastest' strike speed kinda waft across their strike arc with the speed, weight and grace of a fly swatter. I can feel the Dark Souls influence in the enemy design here but it just... doesn't work at all. Most enemies provide no threat at all, and you can either trivially stunlock them to death or just walk on by. But others are just... unfair. Despite how little of the game I got through, I had already run into multiple enemies where so much as grazing one of their attacks would result in a certain stunlock until you died.

And the UI looks terrible it's literally just textboxes in some default-looking font and looks so odd with all the pixel graphics. And the writing is next-level dreadful; the story and textlogs you can find read like they were written by a ten year old. And for some reason you can't save whenever you want, and have to rely on built-in savepoints. But who cares about any of that right? Because as far as I can tell, this game is just an excuse to put endless scantily-clad underage anime girls on the screen. As far as I can tell, literally every character (most of the enemies included) is an underage anime girl. And the game is super thirsty... it's really, really uncomfortable. All the characters gyrate around constantly in their idle animation like someone gave Shantae a line of cocaine. Every time you or one of the anime enemies takes damage they scream and grunt in that classic anime young girl voice, and every attack is some kind of thrust or suggestive lunge. Like, I'm not here to kink-shame if this is what you want out of a game, but it made me feel physically sick. The final straw for me was the second phase of the first boss, when the mandatory slime girl emerged from the arena floor, breasts flapping so violently they took up about a quarter of the screen. No. I'm not doing this to myself. I want no part in this.

So yeah. I think I actually hate this game. It gets a full star rather than 0.5 for actually having a somewhat playable game in it and, like I said, for having some pretty decent pixel art in the backgrounds and environments. But I will now be uninstalling this game, uninstalling steam, turning off my PC and throwing it in the nearest river.

Review in progress:
In spite of being pretty heinous, this game has like, unreasonably polished sound design and visuals. I particularly like how the lighting works, as it's seemingly 3D in a 2D game. It's really cool when you walk over some floorboards and the light filters through the cracks, or reflects off a background detail in a realistic way. Gameplay is also super tight, and refreshingly challenging. I love all the immersive-sim style shit where you can light things on fire by destroying braziers and such.
Anyhoo, Woodoo signing off.

A pretty solid Metroidvania with anime girls in it. I particularly liked the way elements interacted with stuff in the environment in ways that both help and kill you. The story is pretty predictable unfortunately, so that's nothing to write home about, but the gameplay is pretty good! The game is pretty weak on backtracking though, which may be a positive or negative depending on what you're wanting out of a game. This isn't the best game from the genre I've played, but it's not bad by any means.

A história é padrão anime Isekai, ela não é nada incrível, mas guia bem o jogo, o que mais me chamou atenção foi o design, tanto dos cenários quanto das personagens, todos eles são chamativos e criativos.

Na parte técnica é um jogo deveras bem feito , a arte é muito bonita, os sprites são muito bem feitos e fluídos(principalmente nas tetas kkkk). Os inimigos tem uma boa variedade e o level design é bacana, não deixando chato nem quando tem backtracking.

Foi bem tranquilo de jogar, a dificuldade é desafiadora, mas não chega a ser injusta. As boss fights são criativas e bem dinâmicas, além de serem diferentes e únicas são muito satisfatórias, só senti falta de uma OST melhor, praticamente nenhuma música é memorável.

Tirando esse defeito da OST acho um ótimo jogo, com certeza valeu a pena.

The game looks great and has decent atmospheric sounds, ruined by constant cries from your character getting hit or the enemies. Seriously, the yelling is reason enough to not play this game.

If you can go past that and the frustration of constantly dying at the beginning, it's an alright enough plateformer. Note that it is NOT a metroidvania at all. Also, even though you get a lot of gear, I found myself playing the same setup from beginning to end because of a combination that allowed me to increase the attack of my Gladius and heal by attacking. The healing system is terrible and does not encourage experimentation much.

This game also feels highly fetished and that's somewhat disturbing, in my opinion.

É um jogo pixelmente bonito, porém adota uma mecânica de gameplay de "atacar parado" (apesar de ser mt chato) é um desafio de adptalidade, além disso o jogo traz armas variadas q tu consegue usar qualquer hora e dependo do q tu usa facilita mt em um combate especifico e oq acabei mais curtindo foi os modos diferentes de rejogar, sendo um com os 3 boss q tu derrotou na gameplay principal e contando a historia deles após ela, mudando as mecânicas de gameplay e mesma assim fica balanceado e mt bom. Agora os defeitos eu diria são as interfaces de inventário e modo de uso delas e além da história simples. Melhor mimico dos jogos <3