Kingdom Shell

At first I didn't like this game. The animations are stiff and the baddies are tanky. In fact, I stopped playing for a couple weeks until I beat the games "I was enjoying more". However, upon returning and getting a bit further in, I really started to like the game. By the end, I was sad to see it go. Don't play this if you're looking for super tough boss fights as I had very little trouble with any of them and I usually suuuuck at boss fights. However, if you're looking for as chill metroidvania game that focuses more on exploration than combat, then you'll probably leave with positive feelings. Grade: B

Este de hecho me deja un buen sabor de boca, porque está verde en muchos aspectos, pero como si fuera la intención. Parece un juego pequeño, hecho por pocas personas y con un presupuesto bastante limitado. No puedo decir que "está a medias" o "incompleto", porque no, se siente como si todo estuviera hecho exactamente como se esperaba (puedo equivocarme). Es una historia curioseta, eres un demonio y el mundo está en peligro, entonces te "liberan" a cambio de tu "libertad real". Conforme avanzas, descubres un poco más del lore del mundo y tu pasado. No es muy complicada de entender, ni muy larga como para perderse. La jugabilidad es donde empieza a verse como un juego "pequeño". Movimiento tosco, muy limitado, como jugar un juego de la SNES. Incluso avanzando y desbloqueando habilidades, sigue siendo un movimiento un poco lento. Sobre la dificultad... El juego no es difícil, los enemigos no son tan pesados, y los bosses son muy de aprender patrones (eso sí, peleas muy disfrutables). Algunos puedes tanquear mucho, y otros es mejor ir tranquilo. PERO, justo por la jugabilidad, y que se nota (aquí sí) que el juego está pensado para JODER en algunas zonas, hay situaciones de parkour o simples escenarios con enemigos molestos que te obligan a detenerte un momento y pensar cómo avanzar. Un mal salto, un proyectil que justo te alcanzó y toca repetir zona. Diría que, su punto fuerte, es el apartado artístico. El juego brilla por su pixelart en más de una zona, así como la banda sonora que acompaña a cada una. Detenerte a ver según qué escenarios, es bastante placentero, y de nuevo, la música que usan, aunque no necesariamente es "adecuada" para el escenario, lo es para el disfrute general. No es muy largo, quitando momentos donde me perdí y algunas muertes que me hacían repetir peleas o zonas, diría que el juego dura 10 horas. El 100% le añade 1-2 más, por buscar faltantes. Recomendado para nostálgicos de SNES.

Fun Metroidvania, I really enjoyed it!

Kingdom Shell was a huge disappointment for me. Everything was so shallow and boring... The story was incredibly bad, told entirely through static characters talking, and it never stepped outside the clichés. Because of this, I stopped playing right near the end of the game and I honestly don't care about the ending at all. I don't even know where to start with the game's problems. I think I can start with the checkpoints. I understand save points being far apart in a metroidvania until you unlock a shortcut, but I can’t understand why traversing a massive area a second time is pure torture even after unlocking one. Furthermore, I don't understand why I have to walk in a straight line for over half a minute just to get to a boss, and why I have to do this over and over again. This made the gameplay so incredibly tedious that there were times I quit the game purely out of boredom from this grunt work. Coming to variety, the game supposedly gives you equipable items with different traits to buff your character. These make such minuscule differences that it literally does not matter which one you use. They exist purely for the illusion of variety; none of them actually make you any better than the others. What really drove me crazy is the platforming. Even after acquiring the double jump, you still can't reach places designed for it because of a single-pixel miscalculation. I can't count how many times I fell all the way down from giant stairs just because I didn't make millimeter-perfect calculations (and of course, I don't want to ruin my gaming experience doing math). And I must say, there are way too many tall towers with tiny platforms in this game. They are only there as filler to pad out the map. The bosses all revolve entirely around how you dodge their attacks. It doesn't matter how strong you are because you never actually get strong. It's impossible to beat a boss any faster. You are forced to dodge 5 attacks, then land 3 hits, and repeat this exact loop for every single boss. Despite this, the boss designs aren't bad. The NPCs, in my opinion, completely lack depth. You can't form even the slightest bond with any of them. They are just entities that speak, nothing more; they fail entirely to act like they have actual emotions or feelings. The obviously Castlevania-inspired atmosphere, enemies, and art design don't bring anything new to the table, but they don't look bad either. Even though I didn't see anything original, I'm not complaining about it. The music, on the other hand, is quite nice and makes it easy to get immersed in the atmosphere. For these and many other reasons I've probably forgotten, this is one of the worst, most boring, and most infuriating metroidvanias I have ever played in my life.

Nothing groundbreaking, but I thought it was a pretty good Metroidvania. People who like maps filled with obscure secrets will find it especially enjoyable.

I'm going to recommend the game. It's not bad by any means, but it really doesn't do anything special. There's a lot of good here for what looks like the Devs first game. It's a really good stepping stone game for a dev trying their hand at a Metriodvania. Mechanics are pretty solid, and the story they use is pretty good. World building is neat with some things sprinkled in that ups the story. There's some hit and miss mechanics in fighting. Some bad guys hurt when you touch them, some don't, and some hurt only sometimes when you touch them? It's kind of hard to follow who does touch damage and who doesn't. It's not a killer by any mean, but it feels sloppy. The real big issue is the ending. I don't know why but a lot of Indy Devs just down know how to end games, and this is a perfect example of that. When you get to the end section of the game, the game completely changes into a different game. The whole game has been a decent Meroidvania with some platforming thrown in, maybe once or twice its precision based(and that's only on areas you don't need to get to to beat it). But hen the whole end section is precision timed platforming mixed with sections where you have to hit an object to either move forward or up. All of that added with having to time it just right so you avoid obstacles that will kill you in two hits. It was just so violently different it ended up just ruining the game for me. I'd still recommend it. The Music and art were really cool and combat felt pretty good once you get into it.

This game is underrated. If you’re a fan of classic metroidvanias and beautifully crafted pixel art with cool parallax scrolling, give this one a go. Exploration is the focus here with masterfully crafted biome diversity. All the classic ability upgrades and gated areas that require backtracking. They included a magic system without falling into the trap of cluttered rpg inventory management. There’s optional mysterious side quest, collectibles and puzzles for people who want to engage with the game further. Cool boss fights that don’t waste your time like some other games in the genre. My main criticism would be that the opening biome is probably the weakest and doesn’t do a great job setting the overall tone of the game. It starts out as seeming like a dreamy fantasy game but later on delves deeper into the darker eldrtich horror castle realms. Overall, while the game doesn’t do anything particularly groundbreaking, that can be considered a positive for fans who just want a solid pixel art metroidvania.