After the initial charm of giving this game a quick glance, a deeper dive (first three areas) into it left me feeling kinda mixed about things.
What's good:
-- I'm not sure if it's going for an 8-bit or 16-bit feel, but it feels like it falls somewhere in between. Regardless, it's a nice aesthetic, for what it's worth.
-- The bosses. They're not particularly complex, but they require a bit of thinking on your toes and are rather fun when the game doesn't get in the way of that fun.
-- The soundtrack. This is a mixed-good situation, in that the music is pretty enjoyable at first...but also extremely short and feels repetitive for the time you spend in each individual area.
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Maybe I should have referred to that as "What's mixed:" instead. The game does have charm to it, but there are a number of caveats worth knowing, especially for Metroidvania purists.
First, the game operates on a hub world concept with portals that take you to each area and unlock after completing other areas. You can revisit these areas for secrets from the hub world, but you're basically playing a level in each instance and then going back to it later, a la the Mega Man X series.
There are abilities that allow you to access new sections of those areas of the game you traverse, but since everything is done at the hub world, as far as I can tell, gating isn't a prominent feature. Granted, there are some passages I can't pass through yet as of beating the first three areas and at least one additional floor, but I've got a strong feeling that accessing all of these sections is gated simply behind completing the necessary previous areas (and not getting specific abilities).
There is a person in the hub world that will sell you abilities in exchange for skill coins -- which you can find by exploring the portal areas thoroughly. I'm pretty sure some skill coins are gated by a couple of these abilities, so you're kinda spending coins to reach more coins if that's the case.
One other thing I want to mention is the knife-throwing system. You get some little daggers that you can throw up to three of at a time and they recharge after a short bit, allowing you to throw them again. Throwing is axis-directional, so you can throw diagonally...but you'll walk if you do. The answer to doing that is to hold the Circle/B button (the button that throws your knives) and then you can aim directionally with a cursor without moving. This takes a bit of extra time to set up, making it impractical for a lot of on-the-fly finesse you could normally do if the game allowed you 360 degree free-aiming with the Right Analog Stick instead (not sure how this would apply for keyboard users, but you're missing out on a lot of potential trickery by only allowing for up to 8 specific points).
What's put me off a bit is the level design. In certain places, it's fine and the loads of secret treasures hidden in walls (and hidden passages) is a nice touch, but making the pathing for moving through these areas smoothly and cohesively doesn't seem like something that was at the forefront of the level designer's mind. It's not always intuitive as to whether you need to backtrack in other areas or not and some areas are just unpleasant to deal with in general.
Example 1:
After the initial area and getting to the hub world, you open up two more areas to check out (beating these opens up another one). In the latter two areas, the castle-like one has secret areas that give you access to keys and it's not immediately apparent if you need to drag these keys further back if you don't explore carefully. In reality, there's three colored keys (bronze, silver, gold) that open appropriate doors, but the bronze door is way back in the start room, the silver door is right below the silver key (but the key is cleverly hidden), and the gold one requires you to go forward to near the end of the level. The thing is, if you get the bronze key, you might beeline for the silver key door because it just looks kinda gray, like it's suggesting you need to insert any given key if you weren't paying attention to the color of key shown for the initial door. When you die, your keys get returned to where they previously were, though this also isn't apparent...so I may have gone forward, beaten a mini-boss, then picked up the gold key and thought it was the bronze key because the color is close enough that I doubted myself on what I was initially carrying.
This isn't ultimately a big deal because you don't need ANY of the keys, but there's no way to be certain that the silver door doesn't lead to a boss room, so I ended up carrying the bronze key WAY across the map for no reason. And going back to reach each sub-area/section and come back from them is kind of a pain -- it's more convoluted than some major backtracking you get in more standardized Metroidvanias.
Example 2: The swamp level is just frustrating design all around. There are lots of things that LOOK like platforms but aren't, which leads to a lot of jumping and whiffing and landing far below and redoing all your jumping because everything else so far had seemed so obvious in terms of what was or wasn't solid ground.
Moreover, the swamp area asks you to go swimming down below the water level and gives you an oxygen level. How do you recover it? Either by reaching the surface...or waiting on bubbles to sprout from small spots. These bubbles alternate between ones that are too small to do anything and ones that refill your oxygen completely. They're plentiful enough, but they slow down gameplay and feel like the worst parts of Labyrinth Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog. There's also a lot of intentional backtracking through this area with a bunch of spikes (spiked brambles) under the swamp, and some hazards that will try and push you into the spikes. This means you spend A LOT of time just sitting around and waiting to rush through a hazard while avoiding spikes, only to sit around and wait for an air bubble so you can repeat the process. It's just padding time needlessly in what is actually a pretty short level at this point in the game compared to the castle area or the initial area.
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Long story short, the game seems like it has potential to be fun, but it's something that -- at least for me -- is only playable in short bursts because it hamstrings itself in ways that keeps me from engaging in that fun factor -- why is there even a life system? Authenticity? The game doesn't feel distinctly NES or SNES-era, so it misses that entirely!
At 15 bucks, I'd say wait for a sub-10 sale, but I should note again that I've only played through three areas, so there may actually be a lot of content I haven't seen that makes it worth your time. Your mileage may vary, and if you're a diehard fan of these kinds of games, you're probably going to check it out anyway.
What's good:
-- I'm not sure if it's going for an 8-bit or 16-bit feel, but it feels like it falls somewhere in between. Regardless, it's a nice aesthetic, for what it's worth.
-- The bosses. They're not particularly complex, but they require a bit of thinking on your toes and are rather fun when the game doesn't get in the way of that fun.
-- The soundtrack. This is a mixed-good situation, in that the music is pretty enjoyable at first...but also extremely short and feels repetitive for the time you spend in each individual area.
--------------------
Maybe I should have referred to that as "What's mixed:" instead. The game does have charm to it, but there are a number of caveats worth knowing, especially for Metroidvania purists.
First, the game operates on a hub world concept with portals that take you to each area and unlock after completing other areas. You can revisit these areas for secrets from the hub world, but you're basically playing a level in each instance and then going back to it later, a la the Mega Man X series.
There are abilities that allow you to access new sections of those areas of the game you traverse, but since everything is done at the hub world, as far as I can tell, gating isn't a prominent feature. Granted, there are some passages I can't pass through yet as of beating the first three areas and at least one additional floor, but I've got a strong feeling that accessing all of these sections is gated simply behind completing the necessary previous areas (and not getting specific abilities).
There is a person in the hub world that will sell you abilities in exchange for skill coins -- which you can find by exploring the portal areas thoroughly. I'm pretty sure some skill coins are gated by a couple of these abilities, so you're kinda spending coins to reach more coins if that's the case.
One other thing I want to mention is the knife-throwing system. You get some little daggers that you can throw up to three of at a time and they recharge after a short bit, allowing you to throw them again. Throwing is axis-directional, so you can throw diagonally...but you'll walk if you do. The answer to doing that is to hold the Circle/B button (the button that throws your knives) and then you can aim directionally with a cursor without moving. This takes a bit of extra time to set up, making it impractical for a lot of on-the-fly finesse you could normally do if the game allowed you 360 degree free-aiming with the Right Analog Stick instead (not sure how this would apply for keyboard users, but you're missing out on a lot of potential trickery by only allowing for up to 8 specific points).
What's put me off a bit is the level design. In certain places, it's fine and the loads of secret treasures hidden in walls (and hidden passages) is a nice touch, but making the pathing for moving through these areas smoothly and cohesively doesn't seem like something that was at the forefront of the level designer's mind. It's not always intuitive as to whether you need to backtrack in other areas or not and some areas are just unpleasant to deal with in general.
Example 1:
After the initial area and getting to the hub world, you open up two more areas to check out (beating these opens up another one). In the latter two areas, the castle-like one has secret areas that give you access to keys and it's not immediately apparent if you need to drag these keys further back if you don't explore carefully. In reality, there's three colored keys (bronze, silver, gold) that open appropriate doors, but the bronze door is way back in the start room, the silver door is right below the silver key (but the key is cleverly hidden), and the gold one requires you to go forward to near the end of the level. The thing is, if you get the bronze key, you might beeline for the silver key door because it just looks kinda gray, like it's suggesting you need to insert any given key if you weren't paying attention to the color of key shown for the initial door. When you die, your keys get returned to where they previously were, though this also isn't apparent...so I may have gone forward, beaten a mini-boss, then picked up the gold key and thought it was the bronze key because the color is close enough that I doubted myself on what I was initially carrying.
This isn't ultimately a big deal because you don't need ANY of the keys, but there's no way to be certain that the silver door doesn't lead to a boss room, so I ended up carrying the bronze key WAY across the map for no reason. And going back to reach each sub-area/section and come back from them is kind of a pain -- it's more convoluted than some major backtracking you get in more standardized Metroidvanias.
Example 2: The swamp level is just frustrating design all around. There are lots of things that LOOK like platforms but aren't, which leads to a lot of jumping and whiffing and landing far below and redoing all your jumping because everything else so far had seemed so obvious in terms of what was or wasn't solid ground.
Moreover, the swamp area asks you to go swimming down below the water level and gives you an oxygen level. How do you recover it? Either by reaching the surface...or waiting on bubbles to sprout from small spots. These bubbles alternate between ones that are too small to do anything and ones that refill your oxygen completely. They're plentiful enough, but they slow down gameplay and feel like the worst parts of Labyrinth Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog. There's also a lot of intentional backtracking through this area with a bunch of spikes (spiked brambles) under the swamp, and some hazards that will try and push you into the spikes. This means you spend A LOT of time just sitting around and waiting to rush through a hazard while avoiding spikes, only to sit around and wait for an air bubble so you can repeat the process. It's just padding time needlessly in what is actually a pretty short level at this point in the game compared to the castle area or the initial area.
-------------------------
Long story short, the game seems like it has potential to be fun, but it's something that -- at least for me -- is only playable in short bursts because it hamstrings itself in ways that keeps me from engaging in that fun factor -- why is there even a life system? Authenticity? The game doesn't feel distinctly NES or SNES-era, so it misses that entirely!
At 15 bucks, I'd say wait for a sub-10 sale, but I should note again that I've only played through three areas, so there may actually be a lot of content I haven't seen that makes it worth your time. Your mileage may vary, and if you're a diehard fan of these kinds of games, you're probably going to check it out anyway.
Vaudevillain
1 year ago