April Assassination #6 (Backlog / PoP Pick)

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It's a pretty run-of-the-mill Metroidvania that won't win any awards or make it to any "Best Games" probably ever, but is good fun if you're into Metroidvanias.

The best-looking part of the game are the cutscenes, but they are anime-style so if you don't like that aesthetic, you won't like them. The game itself doesn't look bad, but animations are a bit stiff, there's not a lot of variety in the enemies, and locations look different but feel same-y -- it's not immediately easy to tell where you are just by looking at a screenshot. That said, it has a level of polish so I won't be too harsh on it.

The music is mostly good, but doesn't really connect to the levels in any meaningful way. So yeah, I enjoyed it while I played, but I'll hardly listen to the OST afterwards and besides one or two earworms, I already forgot most of the rest.

Gameplay-wise, there are a lot of rough edges. Movement is generally slow and your upgrades don't improve it a lot -- it just got good once I got the light armor, because then you'll be cruising through rooms with extra air, extra speed, and some contact damage to obliterabe mobs. Combat is generally fine -- I like the options you have with melee and projectiles, and the different specials you can unlock with each armor. The armor system, with elemental weaknesses for enemies, is also pretty interesting, and elemental navigation is generally okay (particularly for water and fire, not so much for earth as it's pretty boring and uninteresting). My main issue with the armor system is that you need to cycle through them sequentially using the shoulder buttons, which can be a hassle in intense combat situations. A selector wheel with action slowdown effects would have been a much better choice here. You'll be fighting a lot of bosses, sometimes every 15 or 20 minutes, and these fights tend to be fast, snappy, and fun. You'll die the first time learning their patterns, and then usually crush them the second time (the easier ones) or just persevere many times over (the harder ones), but generally feels fair and manageable. There is a plot, it kind of sucks, it doesn't matter.

What really is lacking is on upgrades, as there are very few, you unlock them pretty slowly, and they hardly make that much of a difference individually. The quests are also pretty meh - find a NPC, defeat a boss, talk to the NPC again, mission accomplished. The map doesn't have markers and you cannot add your own, so make sure you always loot every room you enter the first time, otherwise you'll have no idea what you're missing at the end of the game. And my absolute least favorite part of the game is the light bar -- it doubles as a shield meter but also as a projectile 'ammo' meter. Having dual use is not such a big issue by itself, but some bad design choices compound it.

First, some bosses require their shields to be broken by the use of projectiles, but they usually have some round of attacks before exposing their shields for a short duration. If you're in one of your transformed forms (siren, serpent or phoenix) and you're out of energy (because you got hit before or used the projectile for self-defense), you're left with no way to recharge your light bar, hence, without a way to break the boss weakness, hence, forced to survive another round of attack just to have the chance to hit its shield the next time. Some bosses also punish you if you don't break their shield when you can with attacks that are unavoidable (like the Gryphon boss). And that just sucks! I don't think it's fair that the game forces you to use a tool to break the boss stance when that tool is consumed in myriad ways and can't easily be rechargeable. If you're not getting hit or not using projectiles offensively you're probably fine, but it's very hard to not get hit here.

Second, and related - spike damage. If you fall into a pit, your light bar is immediately drained. Meaning you either get out of there quickly, find a platform, defeat any nearby enemies, and then recharge the light bar, or risk losing important health points in quick succession if you don't fix it. Once your light bar depletes you have the option of immediately filling it by completing a quick-reload mechanic, but it's really, really, really hard to get it right even if you know it's coming, and it's a big distraction. Gears of War pulled it effectively because you usually had a good heads-up when the quick reload would show up and you could focus on it without being distracted by the action around you. 9YOS forces you to pretty much rely on it if you want to stay alive, but makes it very hard to accomplish it, which is just frustrating.

Overall, it does a lot of good things, but so many poor design choices prevent me from recommending this to everyone. For Metroidvania lovers like me, it will be fine. Maybe even good. But for the general public, it'll mostly be a frustrating and disappointing experience.