Team Ladybug has done it once again, and by "it" I mean Symphony of the Night.
Well actually, while Deedlit's sprite and animations are very much influenced by Alucard in SOTN, and the game has a similar weapon system, this game isn't really structured much like that game at all. It's much more in line with previous games from the team like Luna Nights and Synchronicity, in which backtracking is more for finding power-ups and extras, rather than uncovering a new path to take. I don't mind this at all, I love how focused and compact Team Ladybug's games are, Luna Nights is after all my favorite Metroidvania. But after about 4 of these games, I do find this game less exciting than the previous ones.
Once again, it's a Team Ladybug game with a property I'm mostly unfamiliar with, a lot less familiar than I am with either Touhou or SMT. Lodoss War never really interested me as it seems to be a lot of high fantasy-type stuff that's never been my thing, but it does have a 90's OVA done by Madhouse so it's probably pretty tight. Regardless, Team Ladybug has done an incredible job of rendering these characters and the show's iconography in their style, this might be their best-looking project yet. They always go hard on the sprite work in their games, and there were so many moments where I just had to stop to take in the background and animations. The music, while at first, I found to be a little 'typical' of what they've done in the past, ends up capturing the fantasy setting of the world really well, it's more of what this team does best.
This game controls very similarly to Luna Nights in terms of jump and attack feel, but obviously without any of the time stop mechanics or secondary weapons. The two biggest mechanics in this game are the bow, which can be used for attacks but is more often used for puzzle solving, and the two elemental spirits that can be switched out. Each spirit can absorb projectiles of their respective element as well as deal damage of that element to enemies that may be weak to it. The game often has you switching between the two Ikaruga-style, and it's especially important to do so since attacking with one spirit levels up the other, and when a spirit reaches level 3, it can heal you automatically (and rather quickly, I might add). I found this mechanic neat in Synchronicity, but in this game, it felt a little like busy work. It was a lot more interesting to use it as a way to absorb projectiles and avoid damage while traversing a level in Synchronicity, and instead, in this game you just switch to the element the enemy is weak to and continue attacking like normal, there's no real strategy change needed. Also, the automatic healing feels a little too powerful, especially while in the overworld, especially combined with how often you get save points. Luna Nights' graze system was a healing system that demanded a lot more from the player for the same effect, and since reaching level 3 on your spirits is pretty trivial, it was also a lot more satisfying. Bosses are where spirit switching feels most like Ikaruga, and a problem I kept running into was that it was difficult to immediately tell what spirit I was currently using. The game gives some indicators like the spirit being a sprite following you on screen as well as the color of parts of the UI and your outline, but the sprites in this game are so detailed that these indicators can be easily missed, especially in a heated battle with a ton of projectiles on screen. I'd say this lack of clarity was responsible for a decent amount of my deaths in-game.
While the bosses in this game can be fun, they never reach Luna Nights levels of thrilling or demanding. That might have to do with me being more experienced with these games, or there being less to juggle here than in that game. This makes sense, as we've gone from insanely powerful youkai girls equipped with bullet hell attacks to one-on-one fights against either giant dragons or other characters similar in ability to Deedlit, something a little more "grounded". I think some people will enjoy one or the other more. Personally, I can't see any boss fight here sticking with me as much as the one's in Luna Nights.
I mentioned the bow and arrow a while ago now, and while I think the inclusion of arrow puzzle rooms is odd, I do enjoy the mechanics of bouncing arrows off surfaces and rapidly shooting a bunch at distant enemies. Being able to switch between weapons and bows and experiment with them is neat, as they can have huge differences. I do wish being able to hold different weapons on different hands like in SOTN was in this game, but that's only a minor complaint, and it probably would've hurt the whole balance of the game anyway.
The game's story didn't do much for me, someone who has no familiarity with this series, but there is one aspect of it I'm disappointed in. Like Luna Nights, the main character is not actually traversing the world of the series but instead a constructed labyrinth version of it. As I've learned more about this series, I've come to feel like there's so much more potential in a game set in this universe than to just put me in more corridors of mostly indistinct locations. This didn't feel like a huge problem in Luna Nights, and while I haven't nailed why, I think it's a bit of a letdown that essentially the same conceit from that game is being used again. To be fair, the context is different, and I think the payoff for it at the end was cool. Maybe they simply weren't allowed to make the plot of this game matter too much, so I won't be too down on them for it, but hopefully, the next game from them actually has, you know, a setting. The level settings were so strong in Pharaoh Rebirth and Synchronicity, I would love to return to levels like that.
In the end, if you wanted more of what this team does, you won't be disappointed. For me, it doesn't reach the heights of previous games, but that may just be fatigue from this specific formula that they've had for a couple of games now, as well as the introduction of mechanics I never really gelled with. But really, even their weakest effort is something I would recommend to any fan of the genre. Their latest game, Drainus, seems to be a completely different genre, and while I'm not a shmup I'll gladly check it out someday. Oh yeah, and fuck XBOX PC Game Pass for fucking this game up so hard, literally went and just got the game myself on a separate service in order to verify that the app was just running this game at half speed for no reason.
Well actually, while Deedlit's sprite and animations are very much influenced by Alucard in SOTN, and the game has a similar weapon system, this game isn't really structured much like that game at all. It's much more in line with previous games from the team like Luna Nights and Synchronicity, in which backtracking is more for finding power-ups and extras, rather than uncovering a new path to take. I don't mind this at all, I love how focused and compact Team Ladybug's games are, Luna Nights is after all my favorite Metroidvania. But after about 4 of these games, I do find this game less exciting than the previous ones.
Once again, it's a Team Ladybug game with a property I'm mostly unfamiliar with, a lot less familiar than I am with either Touhou or SMT. Lodoss War never really interested me as it seems to be a lot of high fantasy-type stuff that's never been my thing, but it does have a 90's OVA done by Madhouse so it's probably pretty tight. Regardless, Team Ladybug has done an incredible job of rendering these characters and the show's iconography in their style, this might be their best-looking project yet. They always go hard on the sprite work in their games, and there were so many moments where I just had to stop to take in the background and animations. The music, while at first, I found to be a little 'typical' of what they've done in the past, ends up capturing the fantasy setting of the world really well, it's more of what this team does best.
This game controls very similarly to Luna Nights in terms of jump and attack feel, but obviously without any of the time stop mechanics or secondary weapons. The two biggest mechanics in this game are the bow, which can be used for attacks but is more often used for puzzle solving, and the two elemental spirits that can be switched out. Each spirit can absorb projectiles of their respective element as well as deal damage of that element to enemies that may be weak to it. The game often has you switching between the two Ikaruga-style, and it's especially important to do so since attacking with one spirit levels up the other, and when a spirit reaches level 3, it can heal you automatically (and rather quickly, I might add). I found this mechanic neat in Synchronicity, but in this game, it felt a little like busy work. It was a lot more interesting to use it as a way to absorb projectiles and avoid damage while traversing a level in Synchronicity, and instead, in this game you just switch to the element the enemy is weak to and continue attacking like normal, there's no real strategy change needed. Also, the automatic healing feels a little too powerful, especially while in the overworld, especially combined with how often you get save points. Luna Nights' graze system was a healing system that demanded a lot more from the player for the same effect, and since reaching level 3 on your spirits is pretty trivial, it was also a lot more satisfying. Bosses are where spirit switching feels most like Ikaruga, and a problem I kept running into was that it was difficult to immediately tell what spirit I was currently using. The game gives some indicators like the spirit being a sprite following you on screen as well as the color of parts of the UI and your outline, but the sprites in this game are so detailed that these indicators can be easily missed, especially in a heated battle with a ton of projectiles on screen. I'd say this lack of clarity was responsible for a decent amount of my deaths in-game.
While the bosses in this game can be fun, they never reach Luna Nights levels of thrilling or demanding. That might have to do with me being more experienced with these games, or there being less to juggle here than in that game. This makes sense, as we've gone from insanely powerful youkai girls equipped with bullet hell attacks to one-on-one fights against either giant dragons or other characters similar in ability to Deedlit, something a little more "grounded". I think some people will enjoy one or the other more. Personally, I can't see any boss fight here sticking with me as much as the one's in Luna Nights.
I mentioned the bow and arrow a while ago now, and while I think the inclusion of arrow puzzle rooms is odd, I do enjoy the mechanics of bouncing arrows off surfaces and rapidly shooting a bunch at distant enemies. Being able to switch between weapons and bows and experiment with them is neat, as they can have huge differences. I do wish being able to hold different weapons on different hands like in SOTN was in this game, but that's only a minor complaint, and it probably would've hurt the whole balance of the game anyway.
The game's story didn't do much for me, someone who has no familiarity with this series, but there is one aspect of it I'm disappointed in. Like Luna Nights, the main character is not actually traversing the world of the series but instead a constructed labyrinth version of it. As I've learned more about this series, I've come to feel like there's so much more potential in a game set in this universe than to just put me in more corridors of mostly indistinct locations. This didn't feel like a huge problem in Luna Nights, and while I haven't nailed why, I think it's a bit of a letdown that essentially the same conceit from that game is being used again. To be fair, the context is different, and I think the payoff for it at the end was cool. Maybe they simply weren't allowed to make the plot of this game matter too much, so I won't be too down on them for it, but hopefully, the next game from them actually has, you know, a setting. The level settings were so strong in Pharaoh Rebirth and Synchronicity, I would love to return to levels like that.
In the end, if you wanted more of what this team does, you won't be disappointed. For me, it doesn't reach the heights of previous games, but that may just be fatigue from this specific formula that they've had for a couple of games now, as well as the introduction of mechanics I never really gelled with. But really, even their weakest effort is something I would recommend to any fan of the genre. Their latest game, Drainus, seems to be a completely different genre, and while I'm not a shmup I'll gladly check it out someday. Oh yeah, and fuck XBOX PC Game Pass for fucking this game up so hard, literally went and just got the game myself on a separate service in order to verify that the app was just running this game at half speed for no reason.