#charle plays

[charlezarrd]

Ultros

Time Played: 25 Hours

Status: 100%

Rating: Phenomenal

Big Pro: Music, Story, innovativeness

Big Con: Busy Visuals

Ultros is the strangest Metroidvania i’ve ever played. If you can tolerate how weird it is compared to other metroidvanias, you will likely agree with me on how beautiful it is.

The core mechanic of Ultros is a time loop, which deletes all your abilities, upgrades, and inventory. However, there are seeds you can plant which grow into different types of plants, which then mature and grow even bigger between cycles. This is one of the things that lets you access new areas. Most of your upgrades then have to do with tending to these plants in one way or another.

The art is gorgeous, alien, and psychedelic. The music is ambient, strange, and somehow comforting and disquieting all at once.

It seems like the time loop would feel like you’re being reset, but it doesn’t. Ultros is about working with and cultivating the map itself, and it builds itself around that so much that it’s coherent.

It’s a beautiful and strange game, and I love it dearly. Games like this are the reason I’m doing this quest to begin with.

[charlezarrd]

Worldless

Time Played: 8 Hours

Status: Dropped

Rating: OK

Big Pro: Innovativeness

Big Con: All Style, Little Substance

The art style for this game is very pretty, it takes that specific minimalist artgame aesthetic, like Gris or Monument Valley. It is very pretty.

The weirdness in this game comes from the fact that combat and movement are distinct and seperate. Combat takes on an active turn-based action-command structure where a timer ticks down on your turn while you perform combos, and then you do your best to block and dodge enemy attacks on their turn.

The actual platforming movement isn’t half bad, but it’s pretty standard.

The reason this game doesn’t work for me, is that it fails to establish itself. From a story perspective, the game is almost textless. There are these strange guys with horns that spout vagueries at you that don’t make any sense. The most I was able to gather was that this universe was newly created.

The environments you travel through are bare, and mostly featureless, mostly being destinguished by colors. There are some landmarks but there’s no environmental storytelling, as a result of both the aesthetic and the story explanation of this being a universe that was just born.

The body language of the characters is a highlight of this, but it’s the only aspect of the story I can see. There are battles that feel important but they’re never given any weight in the narrative. Why is the Angel so hard? Why does it matter?

There’s a lot of potential here but it could have been better used if they actually tried a little harder to make the story apparant.

[charlezarrd]

Axiom Verge 2

Time Played: 18 Hours

Status: 100%

Rating: Good

Big Pro: Expanded lore

Big Con: Weaker than previous entry

This one’s clearly taking more of a setup piece than its predecessor. That’s ok, but it means on its own, it doesn’t stand as strong as the first game.

There are a number of plot reveals that shake up the lore of the first game a lot, and I’m all here for it, but I’m also left with more questions than answers.

In terms of combat, it’s not bad. I do find myself missing the awesome boss battles from the first game. There are boss battles here, kind of, but they’re just big regular enemies, and the music doesn’t even change. You can also walk past most of them, so they don’t feel as weighty or interesting as the first game.

AV2 has taken a backseat to the first game, acting as kind of a bridge between the AV and AV3, whenever that comes out.

I can’t wait for it!

[charlezarrd]

The Quest To Find Metroidvanias That Don’t Hate Me

(Masterlist)

I love metroidvanias but they don’t always get along with me, so I’ve been exploring as many as I can. I’ve been trying to document them here, because I’ve found some hidden gems.

I’ll put links to my reviews below the cut, as they come out:

I’m trying to be unbiased about my reviews so I’m not using letter or number grades here, and I’m also trying to think of a stand out high and low point of every game.

Hollow Knight

Primal Planet

Axiom Verge

Axiom Verge 2

Worldless

Ultros

[charlezarrd]

Axiom Verge

Time Played: 107 Hours

Status: 100%, Multiple Runs

Rating: Phenomenal

Big Pro: Creativity & Puzzle Solving

Big Con: Secret Worlds are difficult to find

This game is a loving homage to Super Metroid, but is by its nature, weirder.

The upgrades involve glitching walls and enemies, and abusing in-universe cheat codes. All of which is cool as hell. Some of the Passcode Tool puzzles are really creative, too.

Trace also has access to a wide variety of interesting weapons that are all useful in different situations, and almost all of them are fun to use, making secrets feel like they have an actual gamplay impact, because here’s this weird gun you found that you get to use.

Of all the metroidvania games I’ve played, this is one I would actually consider doing a randomizer of. Maybe not a speedrun, I don’t think I’m good enough for that.

[charlezarrd]

Hollow Knight

Time Played: 95 Hours (2 attempts)

Status: Dropped

Rating: OK.

Big Pro: Visuals & Music

Big Con: Difficulty

Full review under the cut

Hollow Knight is what started this quest for me. I have a very complicated relationship with it. First off, when I initially played it, I bounced off of it incredibly hard. My second playthrough went much better, though not without turmoil.

Hollow Knight is a HARD game, but what I consider to be a great example of what makes and breaks a Metroidvania all at once.

It’s decently forgiving, provided you have prior knowledge of its mechanics. Unfortunately, there are several points which I would not have made it through without the assistance of the wiki, or a friend to tell me That could just be a skill issue, I’m not sure, ultimately it was fine. Confusingly, I also apparantly missed a good quarter of the lore, despite doing everything I could at points where it made sense to. Everyone I talk to has no idea how I missed certain lines of dialogue, when I played the game normally.

But overall, if you get stuck on it, there is usually another path you can travel down and come back later. When I got stuck at Sentinel Hornet, I went to go fight the Arena so I could come back to her with the Perfect Nail. This is a great example of what I mean here.

On the other hand, when you are backed into a corner and there’s nothing to do but fight a boss that you’re struggling with, it quickly became frustrating for me. For the most part, I managed to make it past everything. Mantis Lords, Sentinel Hornet, Traitor Lord, I managed everything eventually.

Which brings me to the biggest black mark on the game: The White Palace. The White Palace kills this entre game for me. Because they suddenly decide to switch genres from a Metroidvania into a Kaizo Platformer, when nowhere else in the game do they prepare you for this level of precision. Even this, I managed to get through most of, despite hating it the entire time, aside from one obstacle that I just couldn’t wrap my head around. In the end, I had a friend beat that specific part for me so that I could go back to the game being fun again.

Unfortunately, by that point I had already stopped caring. I was too frustrated. When I got to the radiance and learnd that dying to it it sends you back to before the Hollow Knight fight, which I was not even consistantly able to beat, I realized the game was through with actually being fun for me.

This is what I mean. Hollow Knight is almost a perfect Metroidvania, but it can’t manage to stick the landing.

I hope Silksong is better.

[charlezarrd]

Primal Planet

Time Played: 13 Hours

Status: 100%

Rating: Great

Big Pro: Short & Fun

Big Con: Lack of Diverse Playstyle

Primal Planet’s upgrade system works on both getting EXP points to assign to different skills, and crafting simple useables with recipies. You rescue your fellow villagers so they can teach you new recipies.

This game is super short, but manages to tell a concise, heartfelt story with no dialogue whatsoever. The sprite work is great, and the upgrade system fits the theme.

The combat is incredibly simple: first you Unga* then you Bunga**.

*Stay behind the enemy and spam spear attack. Press dodge roll if they turn to face you.

**If you get low on health, cram meat or medicine in your face to heal. Use Poison and Firestarter on your spear to increase your DPS.

It’s a cute game that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

[charlezarrd]

Ok i’m going to start posting metroidvania reviews here now, I think I’ve collected a fair few of them.

If you don’t want to see them, go ahead and block idk one of the tags on this post.

I’ll schedule them to queue once a day in the order that I played them (with some exceptions).