Possessor(s)

♥♥♥♥♥♥ soulsvania checklist: ✅ no minimap ✅ bad fast travel ✅ bad hit detection, parry, and hitboxes ✅ delayed frames when landing attack ✅ enemies stun lock you ✅ full of runbacks cause we've stopped asking what makes game design good at this point ✅ corpse loot ✅ thin and unsatisfying exploration Put it all in the exact same post apocashit setting you've seen 800 times at this point, add a dash of naive annoying protagonist, and you've got yourself a recipe for success (you do not) I'm so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sick of my beloved metroidvania genre being plagued by souls trend chasing. Stop trying to make every metroidvania into Hollow Knight! Only a remote few succeed at it, and the rest fail at being a metroidvania and a souls game, pleasing neither fan base. As hank hill said, you're not making christianity better, you're just making rock and roll worse. Soulsvanias could go extinct and I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep.

Possessor(s) is one of those games that doesn't really do anything new, unique or groundbreaking at all, but rather takes tons of different elements from lots of other games and blends them all into a pleasant and tightly crafted package. It succeeds in taking all of those different elements and also successfully expresses itself with amazing artwork, a beautiful lo-fi soundtrack and a rich atmosphere that perfectly hammers home the melancholic apocalypse the game takes place in. I don't play metroidvanias very often but I do enjoy them a lot, so take my review from the perspective of a casual enjoyer of the genre, but it's safe to say I really liked Possessor(s) a ton. The gameplay is largely your standard metroidvania affair; you run around the game world, fighting enemies, doing platforming, discovering new abilities, using those abilities to traverse new areas and finding some sneaky secrets on the way, it does all of that really well with some pretty interesting abilities compared to most metroidvanias I've played that have a lot of good use in traversal and combat. The world map in this game is pretty huge and extremely dense, there's a lot of explore and filled with things to find. The combat is a very prevalent part of the game, and definitely one of its best aspects of the game in my opinion, connecting hits feels punchy and satisfying, enemies react in really fun ways and can even launch enemies into each other when you break their poise with a really solid swing, creating a lot of fun strategies in areas with a big group of enemies. It also has plenty of fun enemy types and great bosses that felt tough but fair with solid telegraphed attacks and allowing for numberous ways to deal to overcome every fight in the game. While there are only a few primary weapons to use, they all feel very unique and there's one for each kind of player. There are also a solid variety of sub-weapons that expands your available strategies, comboing from primary attacks into sub attacks for much added depth against enemies and bosses. The game does also have a parry system, which is extremely useful and very powerful, and while it is strict in timing and also encouraged against some enemies and bosses, I can say it never felt required. There is no doubt a lot to like here for people who really enjoy the combat in metroidvanias. The game also has a really compelling story, while others have noted they didn't much care for it, I personally found it to be another highlight of the game. The whole premise established within the first 5 minutes of the game is demons have invaded the city of Sanzu, and the only way they can survive in our world is by possessing objects, whether they're living beings or inanimate objects, and your character, Luca, gets mortally wounded in the whole mess and has to strike a deal with a demon, Rhem, to survive and get the heck out of the mess you both find yourselves in. A very simple but interesting idea with quite a few twists and turns along the way, with Luca and Rhem being stuck with each other in a tense but necessary alliance. I personally love the premise and I really enjoyed how all these elements get expanded on throughout the story. I especially enjoyed how Luca and Rhem's relationship developed throughout the game, so much so I felt incredibly feelsy towards the end with the rather sad but heartwarming end I got. It's a great story, with a lot of heart and soul to it and even tackles some heavy and interesting themes while also having those much needed moments of levity and banter that got a good chuckle out of me. It's far from a perfect game though, I have ran into numerous bugs, most of which are minor graphical flaws from the 3D environments, but I have ran into a couple of soft locks. One is really early on in the game where an enemy knocked me underneath a wooden plank and I couldn't move anywhere at all since I couldn't attack while crouched under there and I didn't unlock the slide ability yet. Another is when I jumped inside a moving elevatory and I somehow managed to slip out of it and got stuck in the shaft with no way out. Luckily these aren't a huge deal, as I could just reload a save point I got a minute or two previously, but it's something to keep in mind. Another grip I had is some of the sub weapons came off feeling quite useless, the baseball in particular was pretty terrible as there were plenty of other sub weapons that were just better in every conceivable way. Another one I have i chroma, the game's primary currency, always felt really scarce (even with the affix that grants more) and made experimenting with items not as viable as I would personally like, since you need to upgrade your weapons for those much needed affix slots, but I'm sure people who don't mind grinding for chroma won't have much issue there. And lastly my final personal gripe has got to be the lack of enemy variety. Don't get me wrong, what enemies are in the game are really fun and pretty interesting to fight, they all have unique ways of dealing with the player and I can't really think of an enemy I flat out disliked. However, with the concept of demons invading the world and being able to possess quite literally anything and everything, you'd hope the game would have a veritable array of opponents to choose from, but sadly no. To further compound the issue, each enemy type has stronger variants you find throughout the game, and while most of them have expanded movesets, it still doesn't get around that feeling that Heart Machine could have done much, much more when it comes to the enemy types. But yeah I think I've said everything that needed to be said, but to summarise; I think Possessor(s), while not doing anything new or groundbreaking, is a great metroidvania with numerous strong aspects that really pulled me in from start to finish. I feel extremely happy and satisfied with the time I spent with it, especially after doing all the side quests and getting all the achievements. One day I would love to return to Sanzu City again, and I think the current asking price at the time of this review is perfect for what you're getting, so I hope I can help encourage others to give Possessor(s) a try!

I've checked some reviews before playing it, but in the end, while this game have flaws, I really enjoyed it. The gameplay is honestly fine, while it may be "clunky", it's totally manageable. Once you learn to play around your powers, you can actually do some "combos" or rather, juggling enemies and it's pretty satisfying. This game can be easy if you use the right tools. Overall the difficulty was alright (played on normal), this is definitely not a punishing game where you can make a lot of mistake and still be alive. It is a metroidvania and like any metroidvania, it doesn't tell you where to go. Thing is, there are areas that you will not access because of missing abilities n stuff, so depending of your "luck" in where you go explore, prepare to do some backtracking, as this game does have a fast travel system but it's not amazing. Not necessarly a drawback depending of what you like about metroidvania, but I'm sure some people would hate that. The story is... fine. I think the dialogues are pretty uninteresting though, a lot of "shut up! what do you know about me?!" type of dialogues... not really anything deep, don't play this game for that in my opinion. Music wise, I think this game is also lacking,not memorable. A lot of time I also had simply no music too, wonder if it's a bug While I understand the complains about the gameplay/clunkiness, I personally think it's not as bad as people make it out to be. It's a matter of learning to play with it rather than forcing something that you know can/will not happen.

it was alright i guess. a lot of the art was pretty but the gameplay wasn't very well put together.

Avaliação: Muito Bom. Metroidvania com arte estilosa e gameplay veloz é uma receita que me agrada demais. Possessor(s) tem uma história bacana, mapas cheios de segredos e muito backtracking divertido com várias habilidades e mecânicas interessantes. O combate ágil com muitas esquivas, parrys e armas diferentes tornam o loop de gameplay muito agradável, com destaque para as lutas de chefes. Dificuldade tranquila no Normal.

Buen juego, si quieres sacarle todos los logros es un dolor de cabeza les advierto...

It's a janky game, a bit bloated, and half the length came from the baffling progression, tedious backtracking, and inconsistent boss attacks. Compared to Nine Sols, this game's a mess, but... it's got soul! I loved the art, the action was sharp and snappy (most of the time), and the plot's depiction of strained relationships was incredibly real and deeply affecting. I likely won't come back to this game, but it was an experience absolutely worth playing through.