9 Years of Shadows

This game reminds me a lot, and I mean a lot, of Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, which had its moment on streaming a few years back. The gameplay feels incredibly fluid, and honestly, I love that. It doesn't ask anything unreasonable of a casual player, and the flow really shows. I did notice a bit of parallax and some odd line artifacts that pop up occasionally, but I think that's more likely on my end (rig-related) than an issue with the game itself, so I won't ding it for that. What really won me over is how much lore this game packs in. There's a whole library of items and powers that looks genuinely great, and crucially, it doesn't feel hollow. This isn't a game that was thrown together just to parody or coast off a franchise we all already know. You can tell real effort went into every layer of it: it manages to feel like a heartfelt homage to Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth while still carving out its own identity. I'm extremely satisfied with what they pulled off here. The enemies are excellent, that part is undeniable. The art direction holds together with strong coherence throughout, and it honestly doesn't ask anything less of itself than a AAA title would. Genuinely impressive work. Note: this review comes a bit late. I've been deep in curating Latin American indie titles, but this Mexican game deserved a spotlight and wasn't one I was willing to skip.

And here we have one of the prettiest pixel art metroidvanias I've played so far, being an enjoyable ride through full completion. From animated cutscenes to general graphics of the game, the pixel art and animations are very stunning and pleasant to look at. Without a doubt, a lot of effort was put into that, and deserves to get praised. The story of the game is rather standard and not too complicated to get an idea of, characters being there without too much depth and also as quickly gone for a lot of those, acceptable yet could've been a bit better. Would put it into the average tier of what to expect from it. Music is nice and has some good tunes, giving each area and bosses a nice vibe without sounding annoying or anything related. The difficulty is a mixed bag of fine but also has its moments where you think the opposite. Enemies and bosses aren't too difficult to figure out what their patterns are, paying a bit of attention to what bosses do will give you a quick idea what's the game plan with those. But a lot of those hurt like a truck, making me question if there's a point in getting more health upgrades because the health bar is often gone with a single hit (you have more than one health bar). You have your ways to heal in two ways, one by reacting fast enough, the other consuming a bit of time which you may not have, resulting in dying, or losing another health bar directly. If I died, the next attempt was a successful one as it's not hard to figure out how to avoid taking damage once you've seen what bosses do. It's also not too difficult in terms of platforming like I've experienced in other games, rather tame if it comes to those. The pace of the game is rather fast, getting your upgrades and new abilities in short durations. A few of the abilities were neat and a good change from other metroidvanias I've played so far. Which in the end made me beat the game rather fast (suiting time related to the game's name without intention), something I personally enjoy more if a game tends to be 20-30h, but I can see the appeal being more geared towards people with less time for games. It's also not too hard to find everything given the game gives you enough input about where you may have missed something. There were a few things I came across which felt off, one time softlocking after I probably hit the button too early when getting an upgrade, stuck on that window which had me reset the game but never happened again. Would just say be careful with too early inputs. While looking for something in an area which I've explored already, I had a boss I've beaten trigger again for some reason, fighting that boss as if I never beat that one, even the talks afterwards resulting in a character talking who wasn't with me due to the story anymore. For my personal tastes, the game has a bit too much of handholding offered, telling you what inputs to use for a new situation which you didn't even try yet, the map pretty much giving it away where secrets are (not hard to notice if paying attention, but still), and your abilities change by themselves if a place or area requires it by default. Which rarely ended up in problems when I deactivated an ability when wanting to active at it, taking high damage because of it. Especially one situation near the end caused me to die from that as quick reactions were needed, and me trying to activate something which in the end deactivated it. You have buttons for these changes so that would've been fine to keep like that in my opinion. The enemy roster is nice in their designs but very recycled into up to five different versions of the same enemies. They differ in a specific way, have different color palettes, but are the same enemies you've fought in other areas in the end. It's a bit too lazy and could've had some more enemies for sure. A minor tech issue I encountered was that interacting with characters or things in general wasn't always 100% responsive, needing to take a little bit of distance and then go back and try again to get it done. Didn't cause any real problems just felt a bit awkward. Regardless of the minor flaws it has here and there, wishing it was a longer game, I had fun with going through the game and getting 100% completion and achievements. Noticed that it didn't spread much of news about the game existing unless missing it on other platforms, thinking that anyone who likes metroidvanias and eventually doesn't have too much time for games will enjoy 9 Years of Shadows.

Excelente metroidvania.

A very good metroidvania. The entire game`s aesthetics are magnificent, being one of the most unique and pretty indie games I've seen. Combat is fun but be aware that is not the game`s focus so it's rather simple and limited. The traversal on the other hand is amazing, having several unique ways of interact with the environment. Exploration is unfortunately is not very good if compared to more complex mvanias, there`s not much backtracking to do although to 100% you will probably take a while looking around. Story is simple but effective and the protagonist is estoic and has significant depth for an indie game. If you're a big fan of mvanias I would definitely recommend, but if you're looking for super complex level designs with a lot of backtracking this might not be your thing. I would love to see a more ambitious project from this team in the future, they showed they can bring quality and uniqueness together.

good indie game. lots of fun. can be hard sometimes and feel unfair, but that's metroidvania

Ta piola, extraño que la energía y la vida sea lo mismo pero después de un rato te acostumbras