Cyber Shadow

A conflicting array of design elements and annoying difficulty spikes Cyber Shadow is a game that I wanted to enjoy, but I found the more I played, the more annoyed I was at how the game was designed. I LOVE metroidvania style games. The ability progression, along with the fun way you can unlock upgrades by smartly backtracking and noting areas/items you can't interact with yet is something I find very cathartic. Cyber Shadow attempts to integrate a few of these elements, but it does so in a manner that failed to capitalize on them. In any good metroidvania, you NEED to have a map. Even if your map isn't great, having a way to navigate the world without memorizing where everything is around you is very important. Cyber Shadow doesn't have a map, at least not a map that allows you to navigate the world. On top of that, you really can't backtrack until very near the end of the game. This is because your final upgrade is needed to unlock almost all the areas you couldn't reach previously. So, rather than getting upgrades periodically through the game as you go back to unlock new areas, you mostly just have to wait until the very end, and then go back through all the levels seeking upgrades you couldn't reach before. This sucks because you have to halt all your momentum right at the end to get the goodies the game has in store. Finally, there are only 2 types of upgrades, health and ammo, so doing the cleanup is pretty unmotivating since you don't really get anything interesting (or really all that helpful). This is a difficult game, but learning level layouts and boss patterns so you can overcome them is satisfying and fun. The game unfortunately goes from and interesting puzzle to pick to an obnoxious gauntlet that requires some luck to bypass as the game progresses. The final areas of the game have an inordinate amount of enemies and obstacles, while also requiring you to complete tight platforming challenges. These final sections of the game started to feel like I needed to be lucky to overcome, rather than feeling like I simply needed to learn how to get through them. One area went poorly each time I tried to methodically go through it, but then I made it through by YOLOing it, simply because the enemies left me completely alone. This kind of difficulty is more tedious than truly challenging, and I think it's unfortunate how many times this seemed to repeat itself. I don't mind challenge, I just want the challenge to be FUN. Challenge simply for challenges sake isn't what I like to play games for. In conjunction with the levels becoming tedious, there are other mechanics that I found to be frustrating, even if I did mostly get a handle on them. One of the later abilities you get, and one that becomes INCREDIBLY important, is the ability to reflect projectiles. Unlike most games (at least just about every game I've ever played) that has deflecting/parrying as in important mechanic, you don't press a button to activate deflection. Instead, you must move towards the projectile just before it hits you. If you're running towards a projectile, you'll get hit, you have to time it precisely to make it happen. I found that this meant that the deflection was unreliable. I had a LOT of instances where the effect of the deflect would pop around my character, but the projectile wouldn't actually be deflected. In addition to its unreliability, you also HAVE to both stand still prior to attempting to deflect and MOVE during the deflect for it to proc. This SUCKS for both pacing AND precision platforming, as you'll often need to deflect things while making your way through a platforming gauntlet. I think all my complaints would be gone if they simply allowed you to deflect with a button press instead of movement. Then you could move freely AND deflect, and it wouldn't interfere with platforming. I managed to get really good at deflecting, but it never felt GOOD to deflect, and that's really the root issue. Finally, I didn't really enjoy the games story much. It attempts to be a compelling love story, but with one of the characters being essentially non-existent (the main character has no dialogue and no real characterization) that aspect really fell flat. All told, this isn't a horrible game by any means, but the more I thought about my time with it, the more I felt it was annoying and not worth the effort. I think it's great when different genres are pulled from for inspiration, but I think you really need to critically analyze WHY you want something, and HOW to make it fun, as the design pulls in this game did NOT add to the fun.