Blade Chimera

• Genre: Action Platforming (Metroidvania)
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: 12 Hours?
• Too Short/Long: About right.
• Soundtrack: Pretty standard fair, nothing that really sticks out.
• Why I played: I've played all the other games made by Team Ladybug, which are mostly the same genre.
• Did I cry: No.
• Jank: Not very janky. The only jank is maybe the slight awkwardness of the controls. It's something you get used to, but I definitely had to rebind them to even achieve that.
• Difficulty: It's mostly pretty easy. I don't recall there being a difficulty setting, but your level ups and equipment mostly outpace enemies.
• Recommend to others: Not really, not to most. While I enjoyed it, it's not really the best of it's genre. It's aesthetically pleasing and has a unique mechanic but overall I'd recommend many before it. If you've exhausted almost all other games in the genre though, it's certainly not bad.

Team Ladybug makes some pretty visually appealing games. This is their third action platforming metroidavania of the the four games they've made. The visual appeal is good at drawing you in, or me at least, but you need to have substance beyond that to make something really special and I think that's what each of their games really lacks.

The other two were both licensed so I didn't expect them to be the best things ever. They were both decent, but I think I felt like they were missing something. Especially in the level-design category. This is where Blade Chimera doesn't do better, and arguably even worse. Visually? More appeal - there is more stuff going on in the background. Functionally? Less creative, less interactivity. There are a wealth of corridors where it's just a hallway and you're meant to just fight your way through a dozen enemies. Everything is still very awkwardly angled and random to a point the design just feels like they're using a "metroidvania generator", or a "2d platformer game maker", so they can just place tiles down for each room. Very few rooms offered gimmicks or unique set pieces. They did introduce a mechanic in the level design that interacted with the main mechanics of the game, but only used it only a handful of times. It's a shame because it could have resulted in some very cool puzzle rooms, using that combination of mechanics. So the overall level design kinda stinks.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

• Genre: Action Platforming
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: 37 Hours
• Too Short/Long: This definitely could have been a good 10 hours shorter and not been any worse for it.
• Soundtrack: Nothing too special. Not bad, just kinda generic setting appropriate orchestra.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Very pleased overall. 
• Why I played: I heard it was actually a pretty good metroidvania, so I checked out the demo and picked it up sometime later.
• Did I cry: Nah, though there is some story drama, nothing really sad.
• Recommend to others: I would put it pretty high on the recommendations for metroidvanias, especially those who like both a challenging combat system based around perfectly times parries, knowing when to dodge, and when to use other abilities to out maneuver your opponent, AND precision-based platforming.

I've never really been a fan of the Prince of Persia series. Generally speaking, it's just not my style, but I like "Exploratory Action Platforming" or "Search Action" games a lot and it's been some time since I sunk my teeth into one. Maybe because a lot of them were blending together? Maybe just because I've been playing more RPGs lately. Regardless, The Lost Crown really scratched an itch. I almost want to say it's "more" than your standard metroidvania. There is just so much detail and thought put into the navigational mechanics, the level design, and the combat that it really feels like they blended together a few games that would usually independently focus on one of those points more than the other.

A lot of similar style games come down to "hit the enemy", and even if you have different ways of doing that, it doesn't really change the dance of combat - outside of maybe boss battles. Some similar games that focus too much on the combat, face the problem of just every battle becoming a grueling experience. The Lost Crown walks that line but maintains a balance to keep things mostly quick paced, while allowing you to feel the satisfaction of power scaling as well. Even to the end, it felt like I was more powerful, but I could fail if I didn't give it my all, but of course, mechanics came much more naturally as well.

Laika: Aged Through Blood

• Genre: Exploratory Action Platformer (Metroidvania)
• Time Played: 30 Hours
• Too Short/Long: A little too long, just because of the kind of game play it is, you end up redoing a lot of the areas over and over, and it's a bit more arduous than just passing through in a more standard metroidvania, and things never really get easier, you can never tank more hits to make early areas a breeze. In fact, they scale up with your progression.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Extremely pleased. I loved this game.
• Why I played: Mean coyote lady rides a motorcycle through a desert wasteland. This game was practically made for me specifically.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would... IF you like games like Trials. I am pretty sure there are others that have that kind of gameplay, I am just not thinking of them at the moment. But it's basically QWOP for motorcycles. You have to keep them balanced or else you fall over and die. But yeah, if 20+ hours of Motorcycle QWOP platforming gunfighting sounds like a good time to you, I definitely recommend it.

Laika: Aged Through Blood is a game that makes you go "Hell Yeah" when you launch your motorcycle off a ramp into a pit surrounded by enemies, pick off the first couple mid-air, then pull off a backflip to deflect incoming fire and reload, mid-air sideswipe to deflect a shot coming in from behind right back into the enemy, and fire off one more shot to clear your landing. At it's best it can be an exhilarating rush that puts you in the center of some of the best choreographed gunplay on a motorcycle.

At it's worst, it can be a bit frustrating because the controls are not always cooperative and you have to redo this entire section over and over. Or redo this entire boss fight which has several sequences that there is no way to hurry along. Or you have to return to this one area for the sixth time because of a side-quest. There aren't a ton of side-quests, so it feels important to do them, especially some more than others. But the rewards are minimal, just some materials you may already have a ton of or easier ways to farm. The currency, which is literally the blood of your enemies, could be a little easier to come by. I never "lost" any money past the first area of the game, and still had trouble affording everything I wanted by the end of the game. I had to play a lot of blackjack.

Overall the complaints are minor though. I had a hell of a time with Laika. The general gameplay is awesome, the music was amazing, and though each were very brief, the little animated scenes were a nice touch. The writing could have been a little better. It's pretty story heavy for the type of game. Some of the choices made and the subject matter in which they relate that to with the main story seems a little sloppy/clumsy, maybe in poor taste? But it's not terrible. It's just kind of "we get it" after they say something so many times. Kinda feels like they're trying to make a statement or prove something. That said, the game also made me cry several times, so the writing did well enough, but the atmosphere helps and they nailed that.

Rabi-Ribi

• Genre: Exploratory Action Platformer (Metroidvania)
• Time Played: 17 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Too long. It should have ended at the "fake out ending" which is definitely not the real ending because nothing is resolved, it literally tells you there is more to play, and you don't get any of the "post game" content until after the second, "true ending".
• Pleased/Disappointed: Kinda disappointed.
• Why I played: I thought the sprite art was cute and this gets a lot of praise from people who like metroidvanias, and it sits at Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam with over 9000 reviews. 
• Recommend to others: Not really. There is better of... everything this is trying to do. Even, very specifically what it's trying to do/be; there are better kawaii shmup metroidvanias.

Rabi-Ribi didn't impress me much. A lot of people really like it, but I just found it to be kind of a mess. The controls are messy, the maps are messy, the enemies are just kind of chaotic and go at you, the dialog/writing is... poor at best. It tries to employ a kind of coy titillation that I feel it's not even appropriate to say is only for "teenage boys" but rather, a certain kind of person who just really likes when things are surrounded with obvious innuendo but it's okay because there isn't any REAL sexual content? I dunno exactly how to put it, but it's the kind of stuff that makes the Neptunia games look like a form of high art. It just an excuse to have several girls run around calling each other "master" and do dumb anime trope stuff.

And there are games that do it better, at that. If that's what you're into it. It would be more forgivable if the game was genuinely good outside of that, but like I said, it's a mess. It's the kind of game you say "This was clearly made by one person" (derogatory), not "I can't believe this was made by one person!" (non-derogatory). That said I'm not even sure it's made "by one person" it just feels like it. It feels like someone's little pet project they worked on to practice game design. Everything is just so sloppy, and having fully played through it now, I just can't believe how much praise this game gets. I know my tastes are not always the same as the greater voice - I don't think Hollow Knight is that great, but I wouldn't call it a bad game and can definitely see why people are taken with it. This I just don't get.

I do REALLY like the sprite work, and if I am being completely honest it wasn't a completely terrible game. It was just messy, sloppy, and felt amateur in many ways and my expectations were higher. It also was unnecessarily long and has you go through quite a few grueling gauntlets. Which I may not have minding as much if the game was more polished, had tighter controls, and more direction with how it's enemies deal damage and how you avoid damage. You get a moment in each boss battle where it reminds you where your hitbox is, like a bullet-hell shmup where you only have a little diamond hitbox. But many of those you can press a button to always see your hitbox, or there is a clever indicator in it's design like the blue window on a red ship design, or a necklace's pendant on a character sprite. But none of that in this. That wouldn't have been enough though. It needed a lot.

Blasphemous 2

• Genre: Exploratory Action Platforming(Metroidvania)
• Time Played: 15+ Hours
• Too Short/Long: A little longer than it needed to be, granted, I did 100% it, if I would have just played through more casually maybe it wouldn't have felt too long.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Pretty pleased. I thought it was overall an improvement on the first, which I thought was fine anyway, if not a bit flawed and overrated at the time.
• Why I played: I liked the first well enough to want to play this one.
• Recommend to others: I'd recommend it over the first and some other well known Metroidvania titles.

Blasphemous 2 is a pretty solid improvement over the first. I remember the first being a bit frustrating in the platforming aspect and a bit too easy in the combat past the early stages of the game. The second is a bit better balanced and your special movement is no longer tied to button/directional inputs that make it easy to accidently execute a different command in their place.

While I found it to be an overall better experiencing from a mechanical perspective, I feel like the flavor wasn't as strong in this one. Don't get me wrong, it's still filled with allegories for the high level biblical mythology, but as someone who doesn't really know too much about that stuff outside of video games, it's honestly kinda over my head. While I don't entirely follow, I still appreciate the theming. I just feel like that theming isn't as strong as it was in the first one. The art and overall direction of the game is just a little bit more standardized, and a little less original.

Don't get me wrong, it's still great in this game, and maybe part of it is only because now it's been done, so it just had less impact than the previous for me. While gameplay was generally better, I do feel some of the quests are a little obtuse and some regular enemies are a little too spongy. 

I liked how it handled your starting weapons and what the means for how you approach the early stages of the game, and how they each had progression based abilities tied to them. It's a bit of a shame the best progression mechanic was tied to what I feel was the worst weapon, and the best weapon had the worst progression mechanic. I would have liked to have seen more puzzles and challenges that explored the mirror jumping mechanic. If the other two weapons had cooler abilities like that, it would have really left an impact. 

Otherwise, it doesn't really do much from a gameplay standpoint to really set itself apart. It just does what it does pretty well. 

Haiku, the Robot

Since I made this blog, I'm going to try updating throughout the year, rather than hold onto thoughts I may lose and clean up a post about the ~30 some games I post at once. Plus I guess I can use labels and other things to help me find the games I'm looking for when I want to reference the game throughout the year.

• Genre: Exploratory Action Platformer(Metroidvania)
• Time Played: 9h 41m
• Too Short/Long: Just about right, leaning toward too long for what it offers.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Very pleased.
• Why I played: I kept seeing it in "Indie Hidden Gems of 2022" lists, I did have it in my wishlist, but it was released in April, so it took me a year to finally pick it up.
• Recommend to others: Somewhat strong recommend, if you think it's your cup of tea.

Haiku is easy to pick up, but can be pretty challenging at times. Early game I was worried it was leaning too hard into the Souls formula, but I think early game might just be the toughest parts because you haven't quite gotten all your upgrades. While it does have a dodge roll and stamina bar I think that's where the similarities end. I wouldn't call this a souls-like.

That said, I did 100% it and many metroidvania style games leave you a bit overpowered if you get to that point, so maybe I was just overpowered come later game? But I was feeling a significant difficulty decrease roughly 75% of the way through and it helped me get through the map quickly to achieve that 100%

Bosses were still pretty well rounded, taking a couple tries to finish, but by the end traversal wasn't an issue at all.

The story/lore are fine. It's just corrupt robot nonsense, but it does a lot with the atmosphere with the music and sound effects despite a limited screen-to-screen color palette.

Few complaints with this one, I liked it most early on but am glad I played it through.