I had actually forgotten that Twitch Prime started giving away games until I saw a comment on Steamgifts saying that this game was available for the current month, so I had to spend my free trial right then (Hyper Light Drifter was a bonus).

This is an action platformer. I’ve seen a bunch of people call it a Metroidvania, and while I’m not saying they’re wrong, I’m saying that this would easily make it the most linear, least interconnected Metroidvania I’ve played. It practically is just a linear action platformer, with the vast majority of split paths leading to optional Power Seals (collect all of them for an upgrade) or a large cluster of Time Shards (this game’s currency; also optional). Heck, you don’t even get access to the map until around half-way through the game, at which point you unlock a few quick-travel points so you can go back and get what you missed easier (though you’ll have to pass up quite a few of them since you won’t get certain power-ups until later). Basically, think more Celeste and less Iconoclasts.

Anyway, something I’ll start pointing out every time I come across it is that this game’s combat doesn’t waste your time: not only is there absolutely no delay with the controls (you can even move and attack at the same time!) and no physics applied to the jumps (even in midair, letting go of the D-pad stops your forward momentum instantly), but you can kill most enemies in one hit (even without any upgrades); this is balanced because enemies are threatening before you get close enough to attack them, which is how it should be. In fact, off the top of my head, I can only think of two standard enemies that take more than one hit to kill: a slow moving turtle-thing that doesn’t do anything besides shamble forward (three hits), and one of the tiny jumping blob-things with sharp teeth (two hits). Combine this with level design that slowly gets more difficult as you progress without relying too much on introducing new enemies and gimmicks, and this is the perfect example of what I look for in platformers. EDIT: The only issue I have with the mechanics is that, if you want to attack while gliding, you have to buy an upgrade first (and the upgrade doesn’t become available until after you get the item that lets you glide, so you may not realize it at first); without it, you have to let go of the glide button, then attack, then push the button again. Not realizing that was what resulted in my first death.

The difficulty builds a bit too slowly at first (even though the second boss has an attack that might be unavoidable, it took until the fourth level’s boss before I really started having trouble), and then the difficulty kinda flat-lines again as you get near the end (the Demon King’s second in command is probably the hardest boss in the game, even harder than the Demon King himself), but as I wrote in my post about Sutte Hakkun, I can forgive an inconsistent difficulty curve as long as the game actually has one in the first place. My biggest issue is with the Tower of Time: not only does the difficulty randomly drop for this entire level, but the challenges are centered around moving objects, so there’s more waiting here than any other point in the game. In fact, there are blue crystals in this level (and only this level IIRC) that transport you across a fixed path at a fixed speed, with one room having, like, six of these and all you do is wait for the previous crystal to spawn you by the next one so you can hit it and wait some more.

As mentioned previously, you unlock quick-travel points and the map around half-way through the game, but you also NEED to use these to go back to certain spots with your new-found abilities. What’s worse: if you want to know where those locations are, you have to solve riddles! You might think “oh, I probably only have to check all the split paths that are very clearly indicated on the map” but NOPE; at least one of the items you need is in a location that you’ve already visited, and is quite a few screens away from the nearest split path. Luckily, for when the riddles aren’t super obvious (or get solved by accident), the game gives you the option to pay in-game currency to add a marker on your map for where you need to go next, and the game is surprisingly good at keeping up its fast pace despite all the backtracking.

As for the fetch quests themselves, it is a little annoying having to backtrack (especially if you miss something the second time), but the game actually changes up the level design of all previous levels slightly in order to keep things interesting and keep the difficulty curve from going completely flat. There are even a couple new levels that you’ll inevitably stumble across during these fetch quests.

EDIT 2: One of the new levels is part shoot ‘em up, but it’s not that great since it only has, like, three different enemy types for the shooter segments (and only one of those enemy types actually shoots at you), and all of them take quite a few hits to kill (unless you use a charge attack, since that can defeat and pierce multiple enemies). These shoot ‘em up segments are only in this one level and are broken up with more platforming segments. On one hand, it’s a gimmick that doesn’t get much chance to be built upon (which does happen a few times in the game), but on the other hand, since there isn’t much to these segments in the first place, it may be for the best that they weren’t stretched out longer. This is probably the second worst level (right after the Tower of Time).

Beyond that, there really isn’t much else I can say. The fetch quests and riddles are annoying, and while they do take up a decent chunk of the game, everything else is so well done that I recommend the game overall if you’re a fan of linear action platformers (and maybe Metroidvanias).

Potential spoilers: The game represents time travel with NES 8-bit being the present and Genesis/Mega Drive 16-bit being the future. Honestly, this aesthetic choice for the split-world gimmick isn’t that uncommon; heck, I’m pretty sure there was even an SMBX level that did this. I don’t mind this too much; I’m really only typing this to express my mild disappointment that the “corrupted future” (the one level that’s supposed to take place even further ahead in time than the 16-bit future) isn’t 2.5D 32-bit (or even full 3D). That would be an actual twist on this gimmick, and something I’d like to see attempted. Oh well, at least the final phase of the final boss was made of Super FX polygons, though I’m equally disappointed that it was just a quick time event instead of a proper second phase (especially since the first phase recycled that Ocarina of Time final boss tennis mechanic, which even if it had merit for its time, is incredibly overused by now). Oh well.