9 Years of Shadows

I like the plot setup and general art direction. The music is quite good, if repetitive. The gameplay is where the whole package falls apart, which is a large problem. You have a pool of mana that's both your life (basically) and ammo for ranged attacks. The ranged attacks are sometimes used for environmental puzzles. This mostly becomes a problem during some boss fights where you'll get stuck trying to restore your mana, except there are no safe spots to do so. So, if you get hit in the middle of a boss pattern, you're just SOL - forced reload. Or wait like 2 minutes before you can try to hit the obvious boss pattern again. The above wouldn't be such a big problem if the first couple hours of the game didn't drag for an exploration action game. You're given damage numbers, but you don't really level up to boost them (ended up simply disabling in the options). I didn't feel like I received particularly meaningful upgrades during that time, either. The platforming and actions, generally, feel a bit stiff. Ultimately, I ended up bored and dispassioned. If this game gets a refined update down the road, I'd say maybe check it out. As it stands, it's a bit slipshod and really doesn't seem like it's worth the 20 bones.

This is a great game. It's a shorter (about 6 hours "save game" play time to do a full clear; but much longer if you consider replaying from failed attempts and deaths, depending on your skill. But everything that is there is well done. Every boss fight felt good. Some were harder, some were easier. There is some backtracking, but not a lot. Upgrades are mostly for progressing forward. But each one has at least one bit to go back, at least a little bit, for. Visuals are top-notch. Music is really good. Enemies generally feel good to fight. And all the fighting does feel good. The traversal skills also all feel good to use. I never felt too slow, but I definitely felt faster over time. I only had a couple small frustrating spots (one required jump, late game, that's a bit too close to "perfect required"; and one timed sequence element that's a bit tight in its allowances. Replaying bosses never once felt frustrating. Most, especially the required ones, trend toward the easier side. No "RPG elements" (XP and levels, player-chosen skill tree, random drops, etc). This game is more on the Metroid side of the Metroidvania equation: find a new thing (usually related to things you've been seeing recently), and get it. As of writing, I do have a full clear to my knowledge (saved game reports 101%, and nothing seen to increase). The game does indeed have bugs (including periodic freeze-on-reload-after-death), but I'm confident they'll likely be worked out, considering how much polish the rest of the game has. Is there room for improvement? Of course. But, as-is, is definitely a good game, especially at its price point.

A very pretty but otherwise "just okay" Metroidvania. Movement and overall control generally feel fine but the enemy AI is quite simplistic and combat scarcely evolves much beyond the opening tutorials; most of the "challenge" along the way can be laid at the feet of annoying baddie placements that further limit your options and encourage - if not require - plodding, repetitive "cheese" strategies to force your way past them. Boss encounters in particular, it should be noted, are all over the place; some are "...wait, that's it?" simple to conquer while others will fill the screen with so many random and at times undodgeable attacks that whether you have ample time to recover or are invariably crushed can come down to the luck of the draw. The setting and story work just fine to keep things moving forward, but progress felt gratingly padded thanks in large part to a striking lack of QOL features genre fans have come to expect; fast travel is very limited, the map can't be manually marked, pre-boss dialogue can't be skipped even on retry, and even the loading segments between certain zones constantly slow you down and stretch the journey out considerably more than they ought to. My playthrough took between 6 and 7 hours, but felt considerably longer; the occasional crash I experienced within that span certainly didn't help matters. All that being said, however, the impeccably stylish window dressing throughout is impressive enough that for some it will be worth grinding through the low points; the developers are apparently at work on another metroidvania title at the time of this writing, so hopefully they'll be able to use this release and the feedback it's garnered as a stepping stone to a more robust and polished end product. As things stand for 9 Years of Shadows right here and now, though, I'd recommend that anyone still suitably intrigued wait for a significant discount before giving it a whirl, while most everyone else should be safe giving it a pass.

Obviously I can't speak for anyone else but I haven't encountered any crashes, and performance has been absolutely flawless for me. The graphics are absolutely beautiful. I haven't felt too challenged, I will admit that the game perhaps doesn't do the best job of explaining how it's mechanics are supposed to be used, but nothing has been so esoteric that I haven't been able to figure it out yet. I have seen reviews both saying that it is too easy and that it is too hard, so obviously your experience will depend on you. There hasn't been anything with wrong enough with this game to prevent me from having a great time. Get it on sale if you are unsure, but whatever you do, don't miss out on this experience just because you think it's some sort of bug-ridden incomplete product, it absolutely isn't.