This came out in 2019 and I never heard about it until the recent Switch version was announced. The one trailer I saw for it looked pretty interesting. So I grabbed it. Now I’m reviewing it. I’m very good at intros.

Let’s just go! This may be a pretty quick review.

Developer: Decemberborn Interactive
Publisher: Elden Pixels (for the console version)
Release date: October 31, 2019 on PC, February 18, 2021 on Switch
Platforms: PC, Switch (Switch version reviewed)
Genre: Metroidvania

So this is a game with pretty nicely detailed pixel graphics, using a Metroidvania gameplay progression style. You have this side-scrolling map to traverse. The map itself is color-coded to different areas. You character starts very basic: walk, jump and attack. He’s always holding his sword right in front of his face which looks pretty wacky but it’s reminiscent of some classic games like Wizards and Warriors (just more cartoony and exaggerated). As you progress through the game you get more moves and items and such that allow you to get to new areas and such.

You basic attack is pretty swift, not super long range but still pretty decent, roughly the same width as your character. Your jump allows for decent control but won’t go very high or far, at first. Without upgrades though your moveset is extremely limited. And even with them, you’re basically gonna be using the basics for a lot of the game. The funnest thing you can do is attack downwards in the air, that allows you to bounce on enemies. But as an attack it certainly feels weaker than your standard slash.

There’s a few different kinds of upgrades. Some are just items, which you can equip and switch between. A magnet, a flying platform maker, arrows, basically-useless-fire (seriously it just lights up torches, it’s dumb) and a gun. Generally you won’t really end up using any of these outside of the intended areas that you need to. The only exception is the crossbow gauntlet thing, it you can attack things from a range… it sucks but there’s a few sections where it’s useful. The gun is a bit better.

The other type of upgrades are these scrolls. At shrines (there’s gameplay design reasons for this though there should be more shrines because… fuck you game) you can switch between 3 scroll categories: magic, movement and combat. Magic allows you to control Soul, your ghostly buddy that joins you early-ish in the game. One of them lets you move Soul around to get through small areas, the other gets Soul to grab you so you can glide a bit…. and the third one lets you do both. Similarly, the movement scrolls have one that let you dash (breaking certain blocks), one that lets you double jump (and also break certain other blocks) and one that lets you do both. I didn’t get all the combat ones since they’re not required. You can only have one equipped of each type, which is kinda bullshit. So basically, if you want to both dash and double jump, you need to get the scroll that lets you do both. So for a bit of the game you need to “decide” which to use, and by decide I mean there’s only one of them that will actually let you progress. Some areas have a lot of shrines so you have to switch between them, basically to solve platforming puzzles. Not a big fan of that. Like, just give me the damn upgrade.

There’s a few other upgrades, some optional like attack boosts which usually require fighting a boss, ammo upgrades which are super useless since you never use the ranged attacks, bottles which give you more healing power and armor upgrades which you can find or buy  (some of these increase your HP on respawn, a percentage change to not get damage, actual defense value). There’s also an upgrade to the crossbow thingy, which is also optional (I  have no idea how to get it).

This is a metroidvania, as I mentioned, and generally exploration is encouraged in these kinds of games. Here… I mean, you CAN explore, to a point. Generally it leads to nothing, or just to seeing an area that you can’t continue through because you don’t have the required upgrade to reach. I’d pretty much recommend not exploring TOO much outside of the immediate area of where you need to go at any point, and then later in the game when you have more moves, that’s when exploring is actually viable. I feel like you’re basically wasting time if you explore a lot. That said, the game doesn’t actually give you markers or anything for where to go, so it does kind of trust you to figure out where to go based on what you have available to you, and at worse there’s a fortune teller in the village that can give you hints. Also there’s teleporters.

This game has some pretty interesting boss battles, but I feel some of the late bosses are a bit on the annoying side. Whoever designed the Thalia boss battle probably hates people. Your attack and movement options are not super great to deal with her, and some of the other bosses are worse. Nidlong might be one of the worst boss battles I’ve ever had to fight. It’s not because he’s even that hard, but his patterns are tremendously annoying to deal with. One of the things you need to do in that battle is use a statue that replenishes your gun ammo, but using that statue makes you stop moving and he likes to just randomly appear on screen while you’re doing that and generally that leads to hits you just straight can’t avoid. And even with full defense upgrades, you still get a LOT of damage dealt to you by enemy attacks. I beat all that stuff, but I didn’t have fun against some of the bosses. The good bosses are really fun (the Necromancer is my favorite in the game), but the annoying ones (Thalia, Nidlong and the Conduit) are actively anti-fun.

I don’t have too much else to talk about, though I will note that I feel you get very small amounts of money considering how much you need for some upgrades, and the bank system is absolute bullshit. You can only put a very small amount of money in the bank, but you can spend money to increase the limit of the bank… Why? Just let me put however much I want in the bank, it’s just annoying. I need that money for some of the expensive updates, but I have to spend most of it on bank upgrades (because if you die you lose a ton of money, so banking it is very important). It’s dumb.

Overall

This is a pretty average Metroidvania overall. It doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen before, but it does it decently well overall. I do have my complaints, like how badly-equipped you tend to be for latter-game bosses.

I really don’t have that much to say about this one. It’s decent, but there’s plenty of similar games you can get on Switch or PC that are better than this. Pretty middling recommendation, there’s better options