A Kickstarter blast from the past. This is a metroidvania game that was initially estimated to ship way back in 2014. A solid nine years after the game was funded, Ghost Song has finally seen the light of day on all platforms. There have been a lot of competent entries into the genre during Ghost Song's development - as well as a new mainline Metroid game funnily enough - so how well does it fare against the Oris and the Hollow Knights then? Not that well unfortunately.
Ghost Song starts off promising enough, hopping around foggy areas and caverns clearly inspired by Super Metroid, but the initial intrigue to explore (that I at least tend to have in these types of games) starts to steadily wane after the first hour or so. The combat is mediocre and I never reached a point where it felt satisfying. Weapons overheat way too easily and even by the end of the game some basic enemies still took seconds(!) to kill. There are various ways to upgrade the player character: you can level up, find modules/weapons to equip and unlock new abilities as you progress in the game (duh). Despite all of this you'll never feel like Samus, zipping and dashing from one place to another, nor will you have interesting module combinations to play around with like in Hollow Knight. The movement feels absurdly slow and limited which is a major knock against the game.
A well-designed map is absolutely key in a metroidvania. If the layout of the areas is bad why would I care to explore it? Now I'm not saying Ghost Song's level design is terrible but once you add up the sluggish traversal, the fast travel points' placements (and scarcity as well) and the illogical in-game map it sure starts feeling like it is. Not showing a completion percentage can be a creative choice, I get that, but when you have a map that is hard to parse in general and barely lets you zoom in on it it's not exactly inviting players to fully explore every nook and cranny.
The narrative did nothing for me. Wrecked ship, who/what am I, something something purpose... An anemic and subdued protagonist isn't exactly a new concept but neither is it an easy task to make one engaging and in this case they really weren't. It doesn't help that the dialogue with other characters keeps flipping between automatically played voiced lines and generic text boxes. Voice acting was alright with the exception of some of the boss fights.
I'm not sure how I feel about the art style. The progress is undeniable and I don't want to belittle the efforts that went into it but... it might just not be my cup of tea. Going back and looking at the pre-alpha version of the game (when it was essentially a Super Metroid homage) I was honestly a bit more impressed by those visuals. Your mileage may vary of course. I didn't want to be so down on this game but the more I played of it the less I enjoyed it. Still a totally serviceable metroidvania if you're a fan of the genre but don't go in expecting a new classic. Good on the dev(s) for actually sticking to the project for all this time though, respect.
Ghost Song starts off promising enough, hopping around foggy areas and caverns clearly inspired by Super Metroid, but the initial intrigue to explore (that I at least tend to have in these types of games) starts to steadily wane after the first hour or so. The combat is mediocre and I never reached a point where it felt satisfying. Weapons overheat way too easily and even by the end of the game some basic enemies still took seconds(!) to kill. There are various ways to upgrade the player character: you can level up, find modules/weapons to equip and unlock new abilities as you progress in the game (duh). Despite all of this you'll never feel like Samus, zipping and dashing from one place to another, nor will you have interesting module combinations to play around with like in Hollow Knight. The movement feels absurdly slow and limited which is a major knock against the game.
A well-designed map is absolutely key in a metroidvania. If the layout of the areas is bad why would I care to explore it? Now I'm not saying Ghost Song's level design is terrible but once you add up the sluggish traversal, the fast travel points' placements (and scarcity as well) and the illogical in-game map it sure starts feeling like it is. Not showing a completion percentage can be a creative choice, I get that, but when you have a map that is hard to parse in general and barely lets you zoom in on it it's not exactly inviting players to fully explore every nook and cranny.
The narrative did nothing for me. Wrecked ship, who/what am I, something something purpose... An anemic and subdued protagonist isn't exactly a new concept but neither is it an easy task to make one engaging and in this case they really weren't. It doesn't help that the dialogue with other characters keeps flipping between automatically played voiced lines and generic text boxes. Voice acting was alright with the exception of some of the boss fights.
I'm not sure how I feel about the art style. The progress is undeniable and I don't want to belittle the efforts that went into it but... it might just not be my cup of tea. Going back and looking at the pre-alpha version of the game (when it was essentially a Super Metroid homage) I was honestly a bit more impressed by those visuals. Your mileage may vary of course. I didn't want to be so down on this game but the more I played of it the less I enjoyed it. Still a totally serviceable metroidvania if you're a fan of the genre but don't go in expecting a new classic. Good on the dev(s) for actually sticking to the project for all this time though, respect.