I played this coming off of Sea of Stars wanting to see how they're connected. I wasn't 100% sure what I was getting myself into, but I'm big into 2D platformers so I figured I'd like it. The game has a really interesting premise and a gimmick that I've personally never seen before, but I feel like the game missed a lot of potential and falls short as a Metroidvania.
You play as a ninja who is soon revealed to be a prophetical hero of legend, a Messenger. You're tasked with taking a scroll to the top of a mountain. It's somewhat nondescript, but it's fleshed out later. The game opens as an 8-bit side-scroller where you traverse from level to level eventually reaching the mountain. Later on down the line you gain the ability to travel to the future and the game flips into a Metroidvania that swaps between 8bit and 16bit to show the passing of time. It's really really interesting visually, and the music having different renditions for each period adds to that feeling. The presentation here is great and the music for the most part is pretty good.
The Messenger is able to cling to walls, glide slightly, use a grappling hook, and later learns to walk on water. The real special mechanic here is the Cloudstep. If you're airborne and land a hit on an enemy or projectile, you get another jump. You can do this indefinitely and many of the levels are built around this. Sometimes it's great! There were so many times that I felt a really nice flow climbing walls or jumping off of enemies, but sometimes they get very demanding with the timing and precision on these jumps. I wouldn't mind this so much if I was able to map my controls a bit more comfortably. One button acts as your jump and glide, so it's a lot of mashing A to keep height and rolling your thumb to X to swing your sword. It's just a little uncomfortable and I'd like to be able to use the triggers more. While the moveset itself is fine, some kind of dash would've been appreciated as well. The Messenger isn't that fast, so an air dash or something would've made platforming more quick and snappy imo.
Level design is all over the place. There are often some odd difficulty spikes like in the Tower of Time, or they just say f-it and the whole level is spikes and pits like in Glacier Peaks. The game asks you to backtrack through the same 3 or 4 areas over and over again because not every world gets a portal. It takes forever to get anywhere in this game. It all feels so spread out. There were multiple moments were I walked away because I just didn't feel like going through Autumn Woods for the 4th time in a row. It would help if maybe you could warp between warp points in a given world when you reach it. Maybe as a late game power up to help with clean up. Some areas don't even feel like they're meant to be back tracked through, meaning you HAVE to go around a longer way to get where you need to go. The prime example is Glacial Peaks. Right in the middle of the level is an object of interest, but the portal takes you to the top of the mountain. Getting down is a MAJOR pain, so you HAVE to climb up from the prior area. It just feels like this game often wants to waste your time, but this is just one instance where I felt it was unnecessarily annoying.
The Messenger was an ok 10 hour game. It lacks that sense of progression that games like Hollow Knight or Symphony of the Night have, but for the $5 I picked it up at I can't be too upset. The lore makes no sense, the link to Sea of Stars is barely there, but it was cool to see the links in real time while playing. I probably won't come back to this one.
You play as a ninja who is soon revealed to be a prophetical hero of legend, a Messenger. You're tasked with taking a scroll to the top of a mountain. It's somewhat nondescript, but it's fleshed out later. The game opens as an 8-bit side-scroller where you traverse from level to level eventually reaching the mountain. Later on down the line you gain the ability to travel to the future and the game flips into a Metroidvania that swaps between 8bit and 16bit to show the passing of time. It's really really interesting visually, and the music having different renditions for each period adds to that feeling. The presentation here is great and the music for the most part is pretty good.
The Messenger is able to cling to walls, glide slightly, use a grappling hook, and later learns to walk on water. The real special mechanic here is the Cloudstep. If you're airborne and land a hit on an enemy or projectile, you get another jump. You can do this indefinitely and many of the levels are built around this. Sometimes it's great! There were so many times that I felt a really nice flow climbing walls or jumping off of enemies, but sometimes they get very demanding with the timing and precision on these jumps. I wouldn't mind this so much if I was able to map my controls a bit more comfortably. One button acts as your jump and glide, so it's a lot of mashing A to keep height and rolling your thumb to X to swing your sword. It's just a little uncomfortable and I'd like to be able to use the triggers more. While the moveset itself is fine, some kind of dash would've been appreciated as well. The Messenger isn't that fast, so an air dash or something would've made platforming more quick and snappy imo.
Level design is all over the place. There are often some odd difficulty spikes like in the Tower of Time, or they just say f-it and the whole level is spikes and pits like in Glacier Peaks. The game asks you to backtrack through the same 3 or 4 areas over and over again because not every world gets a portal. It takes forever to get anywhere in this game. It all feels so spread out. There were multiple moments were I walked away because I just didn't feel like going through Autumn Woods for the 4th time in a row. It would help if maybe you could warp between warp points in a given world when you reach it. Maybe as a late game power up to help with clean up. Some areas don't even feel like they're meant to be back tracked through, meaning you HAVE to go around a longer way to get where you need to go. The prime example is Glacial Peaks. Right in the middle of the level is an object of interest, but the portal takes you to the top of the mountain. Getting down is a MAJOR pain, so you HAVE to climb up from the prior area. It just feels like this game often wants to waste your time, but this is just one instance where I felt it was unnecessarily annoying.
The Messenger was an ok 10 hour game. It lacks that sense of progression that games like Hollow Knight or Symphony of the Night have, but for the $5 I picked it up at I can't be too upset. The lore makes no sense, the link to Sea of Stars is barely there, but it was cool to see the links in real time while playing. I probably won't come back to this one.