To my mind, there are two ways to design a good gameworld for a metroidvania. Either make an intricate world of distinct areas that all connect together in a complex but understandable way (e.g. Salt & Sanctuary), or just add a mini-map to the game. I find that my favourite metroidvanias tend to have both of these (e.g. Hollow Knight). Carrion... doesn't do this. The world, while beautifully realised, has some fairly samey visual elements across all of it, and with the amount of times you end up teleporting across the map or between different subregions, its extremely easy to get lost. It made it extremely difficult to backtrack to all the 'come here later!' secrets that the game throws in like a metroidvania should. Also while the game is actually pretty damn good at subtly telling you where to go next, if you miss one of its context clues or come back to the game after a couple days not playing its honestly a nightmare to figure out which direction is progress. Why there isn't a minimap in this game I simply cannot fathom, I would have enjoyed it so much more if they had just added such a simple feature. But I digress...
Overall, the game is pretty solidly made. The art direction and music are both pretty good (although I'm not a huge fan of the main character design), the room designs within levels make for consistently varied encounters, and the powerups you pick up through the game are nice and varied and fun to use. The puzzle sections of the game are consistently solid too, I especially like the mechanic of having to deliberately sacrifice HP to gain access to different powers. But I found the combat sections a bit more of a mixed bag. At its best, the combat has you flailing about like the tornado of chaos you are, launching debris across the room, or hiding in the shadows and creatively using all your powers to pick the humans off one by one. But at its worst, I found myself often trapped in a room with one or two guys with shields, desperately trying to squish past them so I could grab onto their models 1 degree clockwise from where the shield hitbox ended. Essentially I found the exceptionally janky movement controls made more calculated tactical fighting nigh on impossible in enclosed or crowded spaces, and this resulted in frequent trips back to the game's strangely distributed checkpoints followed by long runs back to the combat room again.
Overall, while I see the merits of this one, it just didn't gel for me. While it does some things well, it really drops the ball when it comes to some of the elements that define the metroidvania genre so great.
Overall, the game is pretty solidly made. The art direction and music are both pretty good (although I'm not a huge fan of the main character design), the room designs within levels make for consistently varied encounters, and the powerups you pick up through the game are nice and varied and fun to use. The puzzle sections of the game are consistently solid too, I especially like the mechanic of having to deliberately sacrifice HP to gain access to different powers. But I found the combat sections a bit more of a mixed bag. At its best, the combat has you flailing about like the tornado of chaos you are, launching debris across the room, or hiding in the shadows and creatively using all your powers to pick the humans off one by one. But at its worst, I found myself often trapped in a room with one or two guys with shields, desperately trying to squish past them so I could grab onto their models 1 degree clockwise from where the shield hitbox ended. Essentially I found the exceptionally janky movement controls made more calculated tactical fighting nigh on impossible in enclosed or crowded spaces, and this resulted in frequent trips back to the game's strangely distributed checkpoints followed by long runs back to the combat room again.
Overall, while I see the merits of this one, it just didn't gel for me. While it does some things well, it really drops the ball when it comes to some of the elements that define the metroidvania genre so great.