This, like Trash Quest, was a $2 game on sale on the Switch eShop that Prfsnl told us about a week or so ago. It looked like a really great little Wonder Boy-like, and I snapped it up as quick as I could. It took me a little under 5 hours to play through the English version of the game with a 94% or so item collection rate.

Aggelos is a pretty standard fantasy story. The land is under attack by dark fantasy forces, and you, the hero, must venture forth and collect the four elemental orbs to gain the power of light and seal it away again. It's very explicitly constructed as a love letter to old Wonder Boy games, but compared to another retro-inspired metroidvania like Alwa's Awakening, this game actually has quite a bit of dialogue in it, and quite charming dialogue at that. It does the job of getting the story going and telling you were to go nicely, and the combination of good character animations and well done dialogue make it a treat to go through despite it not ultimately being all that important.

Mechanically this game is certainly a Wonder Boy love letter, as it's a Metroidvania more based around moving across a flat world than one with much verticality. Now it isn't as flat and stage-based as something like Shantate often is, but it's a wide open world with a welcome teleport feature to help get around once you hit around the halfway point. You go around, fight monsters, collect money to buy new equipment, and go through dungeons to collect magical orbs and get more powers. You can learn new sword moves from secret scrolls and those combined with the magic powers you get from rings in dungeons help augment your movement and power to explore more and more. That aspect gives it almost a Zelda 2 kind of feeling just as much as it does a Wonder Boy one. The whole mechanic of regaining magic via landing melee hits on enemies is a really cool idea, and it allows them to do some very cool stuff with platforming and puzzle design. It also lets them make some pretty damn brutal (though almost always optional) platforming challenges for those daring enough to try. The game is definitely on the harder end of more modern metroidvanias I've played, but it's generous enough with healing items that it's not too too bad.

The presentation is also very nice. The music is very good, and the graphics are pretty and vibrant. It all gives a good retro feeling while still feeling very modern. It's not quite as high quality as something of a Shovel Knight, mind you, but that feeling of "this is what Wonder Boy would be if it were made today" really shines through, just like how Shovel Knight so often feels like a modern day 8-bit Capcom game.


Verdict: Highly Recommended. There is very little to complain about with Aggelos. Honestly the only complaint I can really come up with is that I wish it were longer so I could've kept playing it! XD. If you don't mind a bit of a difficult time with platforming, this is a real joy of a metroidvania to play, and it's an absolute steal at $2.