Solid game. But I had some issues like: The level design being kind of meh makes you quite often redo a lot of boring long segments. The game misses two things that I praise a lot in modern metroidvanias, map pin and decent teleport system. The way how an area of map is revealed make the exploration kind of bad. Overall it's a fun game, that I quite often need to take a break of it for being annoyed of boring.
Haha fair enough, it can be a frustrating game indeed, but I'm glad you still call it a solid game. Just keep taking those breaks if you need them, that's totally fine!
To avoid spoiling myself i'm not watching this fully yet but was most likely gonna play this anyways. Your opening enthusiasm and the fact that it is platforming heavy makes me super excited about this one! I'm sure i'll love it and maybe it can make my top 10 metroidvania's, who knows? Keep up the great work joy!
@@GamingwithJoy15 i'm so suprised you beat the game in 6 hours when i did 100% in 15 hours... Now i must say that i really take my time with games, taking a lot of screenshots or taking in the scenery and i also read every dialogue, spoke to every npc multiple times to see if they had somehting new to say when i came back to town, read every quest log, item description and scroll. So all of that probably added a few hours in total, but that was because i LOVED the world, story and characters. I just fell in love with this game due to it's charming and colourfull cast of characters and amazing cutscenes, especially upgrading your tea kettle had such a lovely animation that i could rewatch all day. I mostly loved the platforming too but that egg quest made me lose my mind and took me probably 40 minutes, and a bit of screaming too 😭 Luckily you could slow time down for this, otherwise i wouldn't have been able to do it or the sumo 5 rooms challenge. I also slowed the game speed down a bit whenever i had to move orbs from one place to the other as they felt a bit finnicky with the physics. But kept it at max speed for bosses and chases. I loved these sections with the bridge chases and the kitsune fox boss being my favorite moments. Although this game had many great moments anyways, like the opening cutscene or that big explosion at the start summoning the skeleton. This made my jaw dro, and so too did dropping down to the ice palace. I also REALLY liked the visuals and sound effects as well as the music although that last one was missing sometimes. Not in a bugged type of way but in an intentional way i think. This made for some ambient moments like the eerie quiet of the bamboo forest but in general i love a good soundtrack like ori for example. Which elevates an amazing game to a masterpiece. Still though the game was great and had me hooked from start to finish. It's not one i'll soon forget because it's incredible how memorable this game was. Solid gameplay, lovely story, beautiful visuals and fun bosses were good but if there's on thing i really missed it was an interconnected map. I love a game map like Ori, islets or haiku where each biome links to other biomes in a few spots but this game felt a bit too segmented. Like the mountains was a seperate area completely from the forest and vice versa. I liked the level design on a room by room basis but not on a biome basis if that make sense. As this level design aspect together with platforming is for me the most important thing in a metroidvania i don't think this one makes my top 10 unfortunately but i still loved the game A LOT! So i'm super happy i finally got to play it and other than the egg quest i didn't find it that hard tbh. I played this right after i bought it this autumn sale so i could refund if it was too hard but i actually found it to be perfect. So far in my top 10 games this year but i've yet to play biogun, biomorph, crypt custodian, gestalt, benedict fox, tales of kenzera, voidwrought and ofcourse blasphemous 2. It's unlikely it'll stick in the top 10 because there's a few games before it too like NEVA, noreya, ultros, airhead and hyper light drifter. I'm currently about 8 hours into nine sols and FAR from the end but honestly it is HARD AS HELL... I previously found grime the hardest game i've ever played but this makes that look like child's play. The game has great difficulty settings where you can change damage dealt and taken which i put at 130% and 66% respectively (1/3rd easier for both basically) and i'm still getting absolutely bodied... It's actually making me feel like a total noob and now i think i'm just bad at games because this game is relentless. Even with this drastically reduced difficulty, the 2nd boss took me over half an hour and that's only the second boss. There's some mini bosses that i feel are borderline impossible and even some regular enemies give me a hard time. I can make it easier still but i'm gonna try and stick to this as it still has a significant challenge. While i'm a bit mixed on this hard combat the exploration is absolutely superb. The game is VERY innterconnected and level design is honestly among the best ever. So because of that alone it'll probably stick in my top 10 but on the lower end. If bo had better innterconnected level design i would like it more than nine sols though, as i like bo's movement, visuals more but especially the story and music which i find very mediocre so far in nine sols. I'll keep you posted after i finish this game, which will probably take me a few days at least. (it's a big game)
This game looks stunning, gotta love its artstyle! Its gameplay also feels sharp and responsive! Especially that platforming segment, watching it kinda felt like a mix between Ori and Aeterna Noctis, with a little bit of Hollow Knight's pogo mechanism. Great review!
@@GamingwithJoy15 Haven't tried it so far, but for sure it's on my must-play list for the near future. Currently playing Death's Gambit Afterlife and after that, it's Animal Well's turn!
Awesome review! I should have figured you'd breeze through the platforming challenges of this game, your skills in the genre are quite reputable based on other reviews of yours I've seen! I'm curious, what did you think about the last two bosses (without spoilers for anyone who might read this :P)? Did you find them challenging?
Haha I just really like platformers, but thanks for the compliment! Oh yeah, the second to last boss fight was a bit frustrating sometimes, but I managed to beat it in one try. The final boss felt like a gauntlet though and I always died at the last phase, after dying for atleast 5 times I decided to get the last attack damage upgrade and after this slight detour I beat it in one try. So it was definitely a challenging fight 😅
There she is! Dont mind me, again, being amazed how quickly you finish games. Bo, for me, managed to wash out the bad, acrid taste Nine Sols left me with. As of writing this, I'm about 90% through this one, taking a small break from the third stage of an optional dummy-destroying, no-touching-the-floor sidequest that managed to consistently frustrate me. But yeah, fun is the main word on this one, and as you mentioned, the movement was super fun, and imo, unlike another very fun mv about a mushroom that's getting a sequel/prequel coming out soon, movement options werent manic, pretentious needlessly awful strings you have to chain together that feel like a chore to do. What really blew me away visually was the parallax scrolling in the main hub town, where you can see the next layer of terrain you can visit, as you scroll left and right. The bosses for me were also very fun, with somewhat simplistic patterns, albeit making them feel kind of easy for the most part though, there is a certain 5-candle siren boss that reaped more lives from me than I'd like to admit, other than that, it was smooth sailing from there on. The fragile egg sidequest (which is 1000% inspired/cut from that one much more terrible Hollow Knight sidequest with the fragile flower) I really didnt have a problem with, as long as you realize and plan the one route thats going to help you make it through, it took a few attempts sure, but Im having a much harder time with this aforementioned dummy-destroying quest, and I also don't think the ice cavern so far, is the "hardest" area of the game, I quite like the flow of it. Atm, I'm at the third stage of the elevator level where you have to power the switches; those foxhead platforms with the directional crystals are interesting to say the least. But yeah, I agree 100% with you, this game does feel quite short, I dont mind a linear game, I'm going through Gestalt a 4th time now; just because that game feels down to the point and doesnt overstay its welcome, but a game like this with imo some pretty well hidden optional treasure merits an overall bigger size/scope. That said, this to me is so far, one of the best if not the best mv of the year yet; albeit it is veeeery early one, it just seems the most competently made and again, fun, and maybe its the nature of the beast, but because its more of a classic mv and not a soulslike hybrid like Nine Sols, its much less divisive and more easily accessible. Tmv~
Hey Ridley, I still haven't played Nine Sols so I can't really share my opinion about it, but I'm glad you are also really enjoying this game! I still have to play Lone Fungus, it's just waiting to be played in my Steam library right now, but hopefully I'm going to give it a try soon. Yeah this game's art style is one of the most impressive achievements I have seen in an indie game, every screen was like a Japanese painting! The hardest area in the game is for me a toss up between the ice cavern and the castle with the elevator, so that's why I said arguably in the review haha I still think BIOMORPH is a better metroidvania, because it had great exploration and a massive interconnected world, but this is my personal favorite as well, I just wished there was more content! Thanks for sharing your in-depth opinion as always!
Solid game.
But I had some issues like:
The level design being kind of meh makes you quite often redo a lot of boring long segments.
The game misses two things that I praise a lot in modern metroidvanias, map pin and decent teleport system.
The way how an area of map is revealed make the exploration kind of bad.
Overall it's a fun game, that I quite often need to take a break of it for being annoyed of boring.
Haha fair enough, it can be a frustrating game indeed, but I'm glad you still call it a solid game. Just keep taking those breaks if you need them, that's totally fine!
Beautiful looking game, I'd love to give this one a try, thanks for another indepth and awesome review
Any time, trik! Thanks for watching! ☺
To avoid spoiling myself i'm not watching this fully yet but was most likely gonna play this anyways. Your opening enthusiasm and the fact that it is platforming heavy makes me super excited about this one! I'm sure i'll love it and maybe it can make my top 10 metroidvania's, who knows? Keep up the great work joy!
Oh, if challenging platforming is to your tastes, you'll probably love this one :D
Thanks d00mnoodle, I'm pretty sure you are going to love it as well! Let me know your thoughts when you had time to play it 😊
@@GamingwithJoy15 i'm so suprised you beat the game in 6 hours when i did 100% in 15 hours... Now i must say that i really take my time with games, taking a lot of screenshots or taking in the scenery and i also read every dialogue, spoke to every npc multiple times to see if they had somehting new to say when i came back to town, read every quest log, item description and scroll. So all of that probably added a few hours in total, but that was because i LOVED the world, story and characters. I just fell in love with this game due to it's charming and colourfull cast of characters and amazing cutscenes, especially upgrading your tea kettle had such a lovely animation that i could rewatch all day. I mostly loved the platforming too but that egg quest made me lose my mind and took me probably 40 minutes, and a bit of screaming too 😭 Luckily you could slow time down for this, otherwise i wouldn't have been able to do it or the sumo 5 rooms challenge. I also slowed the game speed down a bit whenever i had to move orbs from one place to the other as they felt a bit finnicky with the physics. But kept it at max speed for bosses and chases. I loved these sections with the bridge chases and the kitsune fox boss being my favorite moments. Although this game had many great moments anyways, like the opening cutscene or that big explosion at the start summoning the skeleton. This made my jaw dro, and so too did dropping down to the ice palace.
I also REALLY liked the visuals and sound effects as well as the music although that last one was missing sometimes. Not in a bugged type of way but in an intentional way i think. This made for some ambient moments like the eerie quiet of the bamboo forest but in general i love a good soundtrack like ori for example. Which elevates an amazing game to a masterpiece. Still though the game was great and had me hooked from start to finish. It's not one i'll soon forget because it's incredible how memorable this game was. Solid gameplay, lovely story, beautiful visuals and fun bosses were good but if there's on thing i really missed it was an interconnected map. I love a game map like Ori, islets or haiku where each biome links to other biomes in a few spots but this game felt a bit too segmented. Like the mountains was a seperate area completely from the forest and vice versa. I liked the level design on a room by room basis but not on a biome basis if that make sense. As this level design aspect together with platforming is for me the most important thing in a metroidvania i don't think this one makes my top 10 unfortunately but i still loved the game A LOT! So i'm super happy i finally got to play it and other than the egg quest i didn't find it that hard tbh. I played this right after i bought it this autumn sale so i could refund if it was too hard but i actually found it to be perfect.
So far in my top 10 games this year but i've yet to play biogun, biomorph, crypt custodian, gestalt, benedict fox, tales of kenzera, voidwrought and ofcourse blasphemous 2. It's unlikely it'll stick in the top 10 because there's a few games before it too like NEVA, noreya, ultros, airhead and hyper light drifter. I'm currently about 8 hours into nine sols and FAR from the end but honestly it is HARD AS HELL... I previously found grime the hardest game i've ever played but this makes that look like child's play. The game has great difficulty settings where you can change damage dealt and taken which i put at 130% and 66% respectively (1/3rd easier for both basically) and i'm still getting absolutely bodied... It's actually making me feel like a total noob and now i think i'm just bad at games because this game is relentless. Even with this drastically reduced difficulty, the 2nd boss took me over half an hour and that's only the second boss. There's some mini bosses that i feel are borderline impossible and even some regular enemies give me a hard time. I can make it easier still but i'm gonna try and stick to this as it still has a significant challenge. While i'm a bit mixed on this hard combat the exploration is absolutely superb. The game is VERY innterconnected and level design is honestly among the best ever. So because of that alone it'll probably stick in my top 10 but on the lower end. If bo had better innterconnected level design i would like it more than nine sols though, as i like bo's movement, visuals more but especially the story and music which i find very mediocre so far in nine sols. I'll keep you posted after i finish this game, which will probably take me a few days at least. (it's a big game)
This game looks stunning, gotta love its artstyle! Its gameplay also feels sharp and responsive! Especially that platforming segment, watching it kinda felt like a mix between Ori and Aeterna Noctis, with a little bit of Hollow Knight's pogo mechanism.
Great review!
Thank you so much, are you going to give it a try soon or have you played it already?
@@GamingwithJoy15 Haven't tried it so far, but for sure it's on my must-play list for the near future. Currently playing Death's Gambit Afterlife and after that, it's Animal Well's turn!
Awesome review! I should have figured you'd breeze through the platforming challenges of this game, your skills in the genre are quite reputable based on other reviews of yours I've seen! I'm curious, what did you think about the last two bosses (without spoilers for anyone who might read this :P)? Did you find them challenging?
Haha I just really like platformers, but thanks for the compliment!
Oh yeah, the second to last boss fight was a bit frustrating sometimes, but I managed to beat it in one try. The final boss felt like a gauntlet though and I always died at the last phase, after dying for atleast 5 times I decided to get the last attack damage upgrade and after this slight detour I beat it in one try. So it was definitely a challenging fight 😅
Heerlijk, dat Engelse van een Hollander. Kan niet wachten tot je volgende aflevering.
There she is! Dont mind me, again, being amazed how quickly you finish games. Bo, for me, managed to wash out the bad, acrid taste Nine Sols left me with.
As of writing this, I'm about 90% through this one, taking a small break from the third stage of an optional dummy-destroying, no-touching-the-floor sidequest that managed to consistently frustrate me.
But yeah, fun is the main word on this one, and as you mentioned, the movement was super fun, and imo, unlike another very fun mv about a mushroom that's getting a sequel/prequel coming out soon, movement options werent manic, pretentious needlessly awful strings you have to chain together that feel like a chore to do. What really blew me away visually was the parallax scrolling in the main hub town, where you can see the next layer of terrain you can visit, as you scroll left and right.
The bosses for me were also very fun, with somewhat simplistic patterns, albeit making them feel kind of easy for the most part though, there is a certain 5-candle siren boss that reaped more lives from me than I'd like to admit, other than that, it was smooth sailing from there on.
The fragile egg sidequest (which is 1000% inspired/cut from that one much more terrible Hollow Knight sidequest with the fragile flower) I really didnt have a problem with, as long as you realize and plan the one route thats going to help you make it through, it took a few attempts sure, but Im having a much harder time with this aforementioned dummy-destroying quest, and I also don't think the ice cavern so far, is the "hardest" area of the game, I quite like the flow of it. Atm, I'm at the third stage of the elevator level where you have to power the switches; those foxhead platforms with the directional crystals are interesting to say the least. But yeah, I agree 100% with you, this game does feel quite short, I dont mind a linear game, I'm going through Gestalt a 4th time now; just because that game feels down to the point and doesnt overstay its welcome, but a game like this with imo some pretty well hidden optional treasure merits an overall bigger size/scope.
That said, this to me is so far, one of the best if not the best mv of the year yet; albeit it is veeeery early one, it just seems the most competently made and again, fun, and maybe its the nature of the beast, but because its more of a classic mv and not a soulslike hybrid like Nine Sols, its much less divisive and more easily accessible. Tmv~
Hey Ridley, I still haven't played Nine Sols so I can't really share my opinion about it, but I'm glad you are also really enjoying this game! I still have to play Lone Fungus, it's just waiting to be played in my Steam library right now, but hopefully I'm going to give it a try soon.
Yeah this game's art style is one of the most impressive achievements I have seen in an indie game, every screen was like a Japanese painting!
The hardest area in the game is for me a toss up between the ice cavern and the castle with the elevator, so that's why I said arguably in the review haha
I still think BIOMORPH is a better metroidvania, because it had great exploration and a massive interconnected world, but this is my personal favorite as well, I just wished there was more content!
Thanks for sharing your in-depth opinion as always!
Im definitely pickingthis game up
Awesome, I hope you are going to enjoy it!
There’s some footage in this video that’s definitely a bit spoiler-y…otherwise, nice review!
Oh sorry for that, glad you still enjoyed the review!
@@GamingwithJoy15 No worries. Still absolutely stunned at your completion time for this! I finished yesterday and it took me 16 (hard) hours!