Any good metroidvania recommendations?

[Yaar Podshipnik]

RPS has a review, sounds quite fun. It's also on gamepass so easy to try if you have it. I'm downloading now.

EDIT:
After 30mins of playing, it feels a bit clunky. For example, targeting feels more fiddly and less accurate than in Metroid: Dread.

 

[Valestein]

This game has one of the wackiest premises i've seen.

Get injected into the zany world of Bio-Gun. Join Bek, a vaccine created from pig DNA, on his mission to save the dear friend of his creator, DocX. Will you be the vaccine to save dog-kind from extinction or will DocX once again return to the drawing board?

Would rather get injected with this than a covid vax doe.

 

[Lautreamont]

I'm 6 hours into Ghost Song and have probably seen 80% of the map. Supposedly the game is around 8-10 hours if played leisurely. Overall I've enjoyed this and don't regret paying full price. The game is on the easier side of metroidvanias, only moderately challenging during some boss fights. The death penalty of cutting max HP like Dark Souls 2 is apparently a deal-breaker for many on reddit--it's probably the main source of angst and complaint about this game. Using the standard currency dropped by enemies you can repair the HP bar at fast travel points, but by mid-game when you're wanting to rush back to a boss, it means having to farm a bit. On normal, the enemies scale to your level which is a lazy effort to increase difficulty for trash mobs that are already bullet sponges. Scaling discourages grinding, too, a temptation you'll have once you start finding more modules (equivalent to Hollow Knight charms) and need to level up to equip them. I started another game in explorer mode to see how differently it played. Only changes I noticed are the removal of the death penalty and scaling mechanic. I'd suggest explorer mode for a better experience. HP bloat only serves to aggravate and waste time when you've memorized enemy patterns.

I would naturally recommend other metroidvanias before this one, but we've had some disappointing ones lately such as Moonscars and Salt and Sacrifice. So for the short but sweet quality you get here, it's a 8/10.

+ Atmosphere is excellent between the music, art style, and mood conveyed by the biomes and NPCs you find. An impressive achievement for an indie developer and almost at Hollow Knight quality.
+ Metroid-like combat is pretty good, mixing shooting and melee. You can level up three stats (gunpower, vigor, and resolve) depending on your combat preferences of being tanky or doing ranged damage
+ Interesting gun variety, melee weapon movesets, and secret items to find (one gives you an extra mid-air jump so you can triple jump).
+ Exploration is rewarded and balanced well; the urge to find modules, weapons, and abilities like dash and double jump kept me trudging deeper into the map.
+ Story, writing, and voice-acting is uneven at times but surprisingly above average; I've seen much worse in AAA games.

- Too short for a game that was in development this long.
- Few save and fast travel points. Backtracking is a staple of the genre, but the map didn't have to be this stingy with checkpoints.
- The main objective entails finding ship parts strewn about all corners of the world map. Once you pick up a part, you can't use fast travel points and must backtrack across multiple biomes. Special enemies and obstacles spawn while carrying a ship part. I didn't care for this design decision because it felt like an artificial inflation of the game length: force the player to walk back through all the areas again and fight harder enemies.
- Bosses are unremarkable and none seem very grandiose or memorable.

Tip for anyone wanting an easier experience: at the start of the game, if you take a left instead of a right you can immediately fight some sort of miniboss. When you're learning the controls and how combat works this is a frustrating fight at level 1. He is an absurd bullet sponge. But you can run away from his projectiles and jump over him. If you take him down, he'll drop a blaster rifle that carried me through half the game. Otherwise ranged combat in the early game is a slog with the basic gun.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

This is a warning and not a recommendation!

I've only played the demo, so maybe the whole game is better, but I kinda doubt it.

First, IMO the most important feature of all metroidvanias - the general feeling of movement. In this game it sucks. You can fly, so no fancy jumps or similar, but flying doesn't feel fun. Even when you do play the super-powered hero in the very beginning, flying still feels sluggish and unsatisfying. When you switch to the actual protagonist, it feels even slower.

Second, combat is terribly bullet hell. For me that's a big problem, as I really hate this kind of games, but some here might like it. Another very crap thing about combat are your spells. You can have 3 spells, RANDOMLY selected from the deck you build. When you use a spell, a different one from the deck is drawn and placed on the same button. Which means that pressing same button two times in a row won't have the same effect (or it will, if that's the draw)! This kills the lovely feeling of builidng muscle memory and being able to execute everything with precission. Additionally, spells are displayed in the right hand corner, which is very far away from all the bullets you have to dodge (and the wider your screen, the worse it is).

Third, the "woke" art. I'm really struggling to call it properly, so that's why I used that word. It's like anime, except nobody is sexy, all protagonists are very body-positive, and so far everyone who is a baddie, a baddie in disguise, or just grumpy, is white and/or male. Animations feel a bit low-frame as well, and I can't really say how pixel-perfect the collisions are. Backgrounds are quite beautiful though.

Fourth, general feel. The game treats player bit like an idiot. First you are thrown into a proper boss battle, with all the controls available to you, and only briefly explained via on-screen prompts. Then, after you've beat a boss, you get a stupid and unskippable tutorials that shows you the basics, that you must have already mastered in order to defeat the bloody boss. All dressed up as a gift from your, tall, strong, handsome boyfriend (the protagonist is small, round, and annoying in comparison). So yeah, feels like some stupid design decisions were made.

Avoid I say.

 

[fork]

I'm 6 hours into Ghost Song and have probably seen 80% of the map. Supposedly the game is around 8-10 hours if played leisurely. Overall I've enjoyed this and don't regret paying full price. The game is on the easier side of metroidvanias, only moderately challenging during some boss fights. The death penalty of cutting max HP like Dark Souls 2 is apparently a deal-breaker for many on reddit--it's probably the main source of angst and complaint about this game. Using the standard currency dropped by enemies you can repair the HP bar at fast travel points, but by mid-game when you're wanting to rush back to a boss, it means having to farm a bit. On normal, the enemies scale to your level which is a lazy effort to increase difficulty for trash mobs that are already bullet sponges. Scaling discourages grinding, too, a temptation you'll have once you start finding more modules (equivalent to Hollow Knight charms) and need to level up to equip them. I started another game in explorer mode to see how differently it played. Only changes I noticed are the removal of the death penalty and scaling mechanic. I'd suggest explorer mode for a better experience. HP bloat only serves to aggravate and waste time when you've memorized enemy patterns.

I would naturally recommend other metroidvanias before this one, but we've had some disappointing ones lately such as Moonscars and Salt and Sacrifice. So for the short but sweet quality you get here, it's a 8/10.

+ Atmosphere is excellent between the music, art style, and mood conveyed by the biomes and NPCs you find. An impressive achievement for an indie developer and almost at Hollow Knight quality.
+ Metroid-like combat is pretty good, mixing shooting and melee. You can level up three stats (gunpower, vigor, and resolve) depending on your combat preferences of being tanky or doing ranged damage
+ Interesting gun variety, melee weapon movesets, and secret items to find (one gives you an extra mid-air jump so you can triple jump).
+ Exploration is rewarded and balanced well; the urge to find modules, weapons, and abilities like dash and double jump kept me trudging deeper into the map.
+ Story, writing, and voice-acting is uneven at times but surprisingly above average; I've seen much worse in AAA games.

- Too short for a game that was in development this long.
- Few save and fast travel points. Backtracking is a staple of the genre, but the map didn't have to be this stingy with checkpoints.
- The main objective entails finding ship parts strewn about all corners of the world map. Once you pick up a part, you can't use fast travel points and must backtrack across multiple biomes. Special enemies and obstacles spawn while carrying a ship part. I didn't care for this design decision because it felt like an artificial inflation of the game length: force the player to walk back through all the areas again and fight harder enemies.
- Bosses are unremarkable and none seem very grandiose or memorable.

Tip for anyone wanting an easier experience: at the start of the game, if you take a left instead of a right you can immediately fight some sort of miniboss. When you're learning the controls and how combat works this is a frustrating fight at level 1. He is an absurd bullet sponge. But you can run away from his projectiles and jump over him. If you take him down, he'll drop a blaster rifle that carried me through half the game. Otherwise ranged combat in the early game is a slog with the basic gun.

This reads like a 5/10, not an 8.

 

[Infinitum]

Can second Haak; not quite thorugh it yet but it really is a nice, smooth-controlled explorer. Combat is pretty ho hum and the bosses are few and far between though.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

It's bit meh. Story is childish, and there's some engrish. Exploration feels quite good, but due to everything being underwater, there aren't any hard traversals (you do get couple of areas locked behind a skill). Combat though sucks, because you deal damage with your robo-fish, while it's your blue squishy gill-baby that can get killed. So no nice feeling of dealing damages, and proper positioning to avoid damage is hard. Not many skills (4+1 bit hidden), but quite a lot passive upgrade options that you can mix and match. Bosses mostly feel bullshit, due to how combat works. This is also only metroidvania I've played recently that's nicer with m+kb than with a controller.

If you're a fan of the genere, and can get it for cheap, and have nothing better to play, then it's good for what it is.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

This is really good. Very difficult, but in a Dark Souls sense. Every enemy has a pattern, including bosses. There's no bullshit (at least so far, game says I'm 39% done), you can learn enemies behaviours and fight them without loosing health. Healing is scarce, and not very effective, so it's really important to do things carefuly and deliberately. No button mashing combat here.
Bosses so far are quite interesting, with increasing number of patterns as they get harder. I'm currently stuck on an escape sequence, but it does seem a bit optional.
Platforming/exploration is very good. Nice tricky areas to traverse, movement skills are standard fare but feel good to use. Plenty of hidden areas, but all of them so far have nice environment cues, so no bullshit here either. Map system deserves a mention as well. Initially, you only see an outline of the area with approximate location of exits indicated. Once you find the map vendor, for a modest fee, you can get a high quality map. Map connectivity is quite good, there's plenty of shortcuts to be found, though fast travel to the hub is rare.
Art is really nice IMO, though not everyone will like it. The game uses a very small palette of colours (varies by biome), mostly desaturated. Given that it's supposedly in purgatory from Japanese myths, it seems appropriate. Shades of red are used to indicate things that can damage you, as just bumping into an enemy doesn't really hurt you.
Skill points take some work to get, so upgrading feels very satisfying. Very likely there aren't enough points in game to max out all 3 skill trees, so choice matters. Respec is available, but gets progressively more expensive every time you use it.
Music/sound is nice, very unobtrusive. You can play without sound if that's your thing.

All in all, very nice feeling, has Hollow Knight feeling, except with bit less combat. Recommended!

 

[deama]

I've played some and it's very much a JRPG-esque metroidvania.
The story I thought was ok, but very typically traditional JRPG, though the music is good, and sometimes the atmosphere is good too.
Tends to be a bit grindy though, especially on higher difficulties, and could use more interesting mechanics being introduced much later in the game to keep it more fresh as the game is decently long.

Also has new game + modes

 

[Modron]

Wouldn't really call it a Vania, more a sidescrolling rpg with next to no platforming. Worth checking out as it's a pretty long game, you finish the "final chapter" then have an epilogue that is half as long as all the previous chapters. Is a single indie dev labor of love that took him 14 years to make.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

While being stuck on a fucking escape sequence in 8Doors, I've played this little game:


Lovely backgrounds, ok tiles, cute characters and so-so anims. One of those games that look better on screenshots than in actual play.
However, it's quite cool my-first-metroidvania. Combat isn't very varied, though bosses are pretty cool. Upgrade system is simple (if a bit too random to my taste), and some skills feel very underutilized (esp blink arrow). Exploration is quite cool. Not a single part of this game shines on its own, but the whole thing plays quite nice, and is a lovely 7-10h distraction from more complicated games. My 6yr old really liked watching me play.

 

[Arthandas]

I'm currently playing through Death's Gambit and it's pretty sweet. It's basically 2D Dark Souls with exceptional pixel art but unlike Salt and Sanctuary it has its own identity and some original ideas.

 

[Curratum]

I'm currently playing through Death's Gambit and it's pretty sweet. It's basically 2D Dark Souls with exceptional pixel art but unlike Salt and Sanctuary it has its own identity and some original ideas.

DG wishes it had half the artistic flair and atmosphere of S&S.

 

[Arthandas]

"artistic flair"

 

[Vic]

 

[Valestein]

Don't know if you guys heard but last month Aeterna Lucis was announced, which will be the sequel to Aeterna Noctis and where you play as the Queen of Light(hence the title).



Oh and Aeterna Noctis is getting a DLC too.

 

[Lautreamont]

Finished this one in about 8 hours and that's getting 100% of the map. Recommended for the beautiful pixel art and animations, smooth combat and movement, and extensive bestiary, weapons, and spells. The game introduces an interesting mechanic of toggling between a wind or fire status element to cancel out damage from elemental traps or deal more damage to enemies' weaknesses. While using one element to hit an enemy, you boost and level up the opposite element to a max of level 3. Toggling to that level 3 element then enables automatic HP regen. But if you get hit while that element is toggled you go back to level 2 and HP regen ceases. You're meant to be switching between these elements and thinking carefully about how to maximize them and toggle to the other quickly if you need to heal. There are numerous platforming and boss attacks that require good reflexes for switching between elements.

Enemy variety is some of the best I've seen in a modern Metroidvania with almost no reskins or recycled mobs. The game supplies many different weapons with their own attack speed and damage trade offs; I found that attack speed produces the best DPS, so small swords are OP. Apart from regular melee you get ranged attacks with a bow. Naturally there are plenty of bows to find that have unique attacks (multiple arrows, elemental arrows, etc.). On top of all this you have a limited arsenal of spells to find across the map, and these are powered by a slowly replenishing MP pool. So the developers really put a lot of effort into combat. It is not simplistic and you can mix it up with ranged, melee, and spells to a satisfying degree. Overall the game is quite easy, though, because you have so many tools to take out enemies fast, an abundance of save points, and, in addition to the HP regen from maxing an element, you can buy healing potions and other consumables that make combat easier. Sometimes I want a break from the punishingly brutal Metroidvania and this one delivers a slight to moderately challenging experience while still managing to be fun.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Finished this one in about 8 hours and that's getting 100% of the map. Recommended for the beautiful pixel art and animations, smooth combat and movement, and extensive bestiary, weapons, and spells. The game introduces an interesting mechanic of toggling between a wind or fire status element to cancel out damage from elemental traps or deal more damage to enemies' weaknesses. While using one element to hit an enemy, you boost and level up the opposite element to a max of level 3. Toggling to that level 3 element then enables automatic HP regen. But if you get hit while that element is toggled you go back to level 2 and HP regen ceases. You're meant to be switching between these elements and thinking carefully about how to maximize them and toggle to the other quickly if you need to heal. There are numerous platforming and boss attacks that require good reflexes for switching between elements.

Enemy variety is some of the best I've seen in a modern Metroidvania with almost no reskins or recycled mobs. The game supplies many different weapons with their own attack speed and damage trade offs; I found that attack speed produces the best DPS, so small swords are OP. Apart from regular melee you get ranged attacks with a bow. Naturally there are plenty of bows to find that have unique attacks (multiple arrows, elemental arrows, etc.). On top of all this you have a limited arsenal of spells to find across the map, and these are powered by a slowly replenishing MP pool. So the developers really put a lot of effort into combat. It is not simplistic and you can mix it up with ranged, melee, and spells to a satisfying degree. Overall the game is quite easy, though, because you have so many tools to take out enemies fast, an abundance of save points, and, in addition to the HP regen from maxing an element, you can buy healing potions and other consumables that make combat easier. Sometimes I want a break from the punishingly brutal Metroidvania and this one delivers a slight to moderately challenging experience while still managing to be fun.

It's by that touhou game developer iirc, which was a metroidvania touhou game i greatly enjoyed despite knowing nothing about touhou except for the memes and soundtrack

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS FINISHED FORGONE

I WOULD SAY THAT PRESENDERATION IS AS GOOD AS DESD CELLS THE GRAPHICS SOUND AND VOICEOVERBI IS GREAT

COMBAT FEELS SMOOTH LIKE DEAAD CELLS

ITEMIZATION IS SHIT IT SEEMS LIKE YOU ARE CHOOSING BETWEEN OBVIOUS OR INCONSFEQUENTIALLLD UPGRADES

COMPLETELY LINEAR AND MOVEMENT UPGRADES ARE NEEDED ONLY IN THE NEXT AREA

FUN FOR TEN HOURS OR SO FOR LIKE THREE FREEDOMDS MONIEYS

 

[Visperas]

Foregone looks pretty nice.

It's a crime how underappreciated Aeterna Noctis is. It's a great metroidvania and I'm 100% playing the DLC and Aeterna Lucis when it comes out. Hopefully, that DLC and sequel means that it did well enough money-wise for them.

 

[Lyre Mors]

HAAK and Aeterna Noctis are next up for when I'm in the mood for another metroidvania. Played the HAAK demo and it's really good. It's been on my radar since early access, but I kind of forgot about it until recently. Very excited for that one in particular.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Can confirm, HAAK is excellent. Occasional Engrish here and there, but gameplay is super solid.

 

[Valestein]

Foregone looks pretty nice.

It's a crime how underappreciated Aeterna Noctis is. It's a great metroidvania and I'm 100% playing the DLC and Aeterna Lucis when it comes out. Hopefully, that DLC and sequel means that it did well enough money-wise for them.

Aeterna Noctis and Death's gambit are amongst the greatest 'vanias.