March .... not an Assassination completed, but in progress? (PAGY Snowball)

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Uhhhhhh I agonized for a long time whether to give it a thumbs up or down, but the verdict is down. Consider this a rant, since I'm still playing the game, but very frustrated at this point and there's still so much game left.

Aeterna Noctis has SO MUCH POTENTIAL, but I feel it was squandered by trying to be too much for too long. If you know nothng about the game, imagine Hollow Knight meets Celeste but not as good as any of the inspirations. It prides itself in being a precision platformer Metroidvania, but the platforming is not as good as Celeste, and the combat is not as good as Hollow Knight. It tries to do both, and to a certain extent it succeeds, but it lacks the grace and expressiveness that each of its inspirations show in their respective subgenres.

Platforming here is not great because you don't have the same level of midair control or wall control that Madeleine has, and you frequently don't have visibility over your platforms. Screens here are huge, both vertically and horizontally, and while that's great for an exploration-based metroidvania, it's awful for one where you're suposed to land precisely on platforms that disappear after one second. So, so many of the puzzles require projectile control, which is also awful. I don't mind the idea behind the arrow and the teleport arrow, but they are not smooth to aim and to use, particularly when you have to use them repeatedly in the same platforming challenge. In Celeste, you could always see your whole screen so it was effortless to mentally map your route and execute it. Here you only see chunks of the challenge, have to pray that you'll land where you want with little mid-air control, and if you get it wrong enough times, you're sent back. Also, late game time trials are available and splinkered throughout the world, which makes extremely frustrating when you can't get a single bronze medal in any of them. Gate those things for NG+ or for late game, for Aeterna's sake, since this is not part of the main path which is already long enough as it is. Add the fact that Temple Trials are not only extremely punishing, but they are also required since many critical-path skills are locked behind them, and you have a game that's super punishing even in the easiest difficulty and even before getting to the optional content.

Platforming is so hard and punishing that I was pretty much forced to always have the gem that prevents you from losing souls when you die and the one that slows down time when shooting arrows, because without these two, progress is effectively impossible. Even with the souls gem, levelling up was incredibly, incredibly slow, gaining less than one skill point per hour usually, and with good upgrades locked behind 20 or 30 skill points. When you're forced to waste two of your gem slots just to stay alive and be able to cope with the normal platforming challenges, you're left with very little room to experiment with the remaining gems.

Then there's combat. It's not …. bad. It's just also not good. The dash doesn't truly connect, your jump usually is too short to avoid threats, the weapons you acquire throughout the game are mostly gimmicks, and your base damage after 20 hours of game is mostly the same as when you started …. it's just weird. Enemies become progressively more spongy and come in bigger packs with more tricky attack patterns, but it feels you don't become more skilled or more apt to deal with them, you just become more tanky and able to soak damage while trying to outdamage them. Hollow Knight excelled at boss fights. Boss fights here are, at best, good (never great), usually boring (basically outcompeting DPS), at worse grating like the Phoenix or the Underground Fortress AI, one of the most grating combat encounters I can remember facing on a Metroidvania.

And my last complaint is that the game refuses to end. It just can't take no for an answer. I'm 21 hours into the game, and at that point I was already on the final stretch of Hollow Knight and was already deep into Chapter 9 of Celeste. Here I'm barely over 50%, and I can clearly see there are huge areas in the map completely unexplored. Every area is bigger than it has to be, and require more backtracking than you would like. Fast travel is limited and usually forces you to keep redoing the same stretches over and over and over and over. Mapping is a chore - if you miss the cartographer when you arrive at an area (highly likely as most areas have multiple entry points and branching paths very early on), then you're navigating blind for a good hour or so until you find him, if not more.

And everything I said is such a shame, because if the game just was a bit tighter, shorter, with faster progress through the upgrade tree, more of these platforming gauntlets placed after the credits roll or on optional late-game areas, this could potentially be one of the best metroidvanias I had every played. For my first 5 or 10 hours I thought this looked better, sounded better, was more interesting and more fun to play than Ori, for instance. The visuals are incredible, with beautiful areas, a lot of parallax, variety in the environments and enemies, and lots and lots of good visual effects. The piano track is haunting like the world we inhabit, but each area has its own energy and pace. The plot truly is interesting and go to some wild places when you less expect. It's a hauntind and beautiful world with intriguing lore.

But unfortunately, by trying to be too much for too long and failing to land its main hooks (combat and platforming), Aeterna becomes a chore that refuses to end, but also refuses to let you reach the ending through punishing platforming and unexpressive combat. Buyer beware.