Victor Vitório's Reviews
Awita: Journey of Hope is visually beautiful and delivers responsive controls and fluid animations. In other words, it has the solid skeleton of a good metroidvania, but it lacks substance to cover those thin bones. The lack of content in terms of systems, level design and items is further mitigated by its short length, as the game ends before the player gets tired of it. Without something to compensate for its shortcomings, there is nothing to make it reach the average of the genre.
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Ashina: The Red Witch comes to expand on a story told in other games, but it works on its own as a supernatural mystery tale that, even without being especially striking, can please those who like Japanese folklore. The gameplay is kept to a minimum of finding and delivering items and its simplicity disrupts the pace at times when the player would rather continue the story instead of making trades that don't seem relevant. Recommended for anyone who wants a playfully dark tale in retro game form and for those who enjoyed My Big Sister and Red Bow.
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With varied gameplay in its minigames and alternating perspectives, Makis Adventure is a pleasant and entertaining first game from a solo developer, but it doesn't reach its potential and ends just when it could have deepened its good ideas. The three-hour running time is worth it for those curious and enthusiasts of compact adventures with metroidvania elements.
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With a modest production that adapts the 2019 series material well, Carmen Sandiego serves its young target audience well, alternating geography- and history-based investigation and simple minigames. For older audiences, however, the educational entertainment essence may have less appeal, as the simplicity in the mechanics and initial enigmas make the really good challenges show up only in the second half of the campaign.
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By confining gameplay to groups of four people, whether locally or online, All You Need is Help restricts the ways we can enjoy its simple but cute and fun ideas for a while. This practical limitation doesn't fit with the game's casual intent, which also doesn't attempt to deepen the gameplay to the point of being a memorable cooperative puzzler.
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Kukoos: Lost Pets is a mixed experience. It's a pleasant, fun and dynamic game when its imprecise movement and bugs aren't annoying [the players]. Nothing makes it unplayable but the occurrences hinder the enjoyment of what the game has to offer and may demand patience. It's a shame because Petit Fabrik's title is a well-made game that doesn't reinvent the formula but justifies its existence as a 3D platformer that can be enjoyed alone or with others, especially children.
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MARS 2120 has the potential for a good game and even succeeds in visuals and tool versatility, but execution problems and an early-looking release prevent it, in its current state, from reaching the average in a medium as prolific as today's metroidvanias.
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Quiet and aesthetically pleasing, SCHiM has good ideas about the use of shadows in 3D platforming, but doesn't make efficient use of them enough to stand out as it could.
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The Mobius Machine is, at its core, a decent metroidvania hampered by the disproportion between the enormous size of its map and the low variety of scenarios, discoveries, rewards, and even resources that help revisit the world more efficiently. Those who like challenges will have something to find here, but for the rest, the real challenge will be to maintain interest and patience.
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Playing the metroidvania Plus Ultra: Legado, it's up to individual preferences whether the refined historical setting and great comic book aesthetics make up for the basic gameplay and imprecise controls. For me, the balance manages to be somewhat positive, but the unintuitive exploration and unbalanced boss fights remain the biggest drawbacks of this Spanish colonialist adventure.
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My experience with Everdeep Aurora was a mixed bag, filled with lovely highs and uncomfortable lows. The beautiful visual presentation and impeccable music are certainly the highlights, as are some intuitive objectives that made for some great exploration here and there. However, the superficiality of mechanics, the complete lack of directions and tutorial, the poorly articulated narrative, and the questionable layout of the game screen and menus marred my adventure.
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To appreciate The Siege and the Sandfox, you need to keep in mind that almost everything in it is focused on building atmosphere and narrative and stealth gameplay. The “stealthvania” approach is legitimate, but the simple mechanics and laborious navigation through the levels do not contribute to making its execution worthwhile. I recommend it to those who want to appreciate beautiful aesthetics and immerse themselves in a fantasy from the Arabian Nights while listening to a lovely narrator who accompanies each step of the journey.
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Curse of the Sea Rats is never actually bad. Even with the lack of graphic and mechanical refinement, we can still find fun and adventure in its shores. There are a few interesting things in how it creates a diversified world but nothing impressive and the exploration isn't always rewarding.
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Cats and Seek: Kyoto takes two steps forward with its coloring mode and prettier art than its predecessors. Having only two stages is a step backwards that makes the enjoyable experience even more fleeting, and even the low price isn't well-proportioned in comparison to similar games from the same publisher. In the end, it's pleasant and relaxing enough to make me hope the follow-up, Cats and Seek: Tokyo, already available on PC, also comes to PlayStation.
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Awaken: Astral Blade has managed to grow as a satisfying game, but still with obvious limitations to its production ambitions. Thus, although it cannot stand out above the average of action metroidvanias, it also does not fall below this level and caters to those looking to explore an unknown world of sci-fi in command of an anime girl.
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Frogun Encore features versatile grappling hook mechanics and local co-op for two people to have fun together. However, the brevity of the campaign and the deaths from parallax-induced falls can detract from the experience. Those who will benefit the most will be speedrun enthusiasts, willing to perfect the paths and find shortcuts in levels that seem to have been made for it.
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With its high points outweighing its low points, Primal Planet sets the platforming action in the harsh survival of a Stone Age populated by dinosaurs and invaded by alien ships. The mid-campaign, with its narrative emptiness and trivialization of some mechanics, gradually loses the emotional strength and gameplay dynamic of the beginning, which is compounded by the poorly functional mapping. However, those who enjoy facing dinosaurs and exploring the corners of dangerous, interconnected 2D worlds will have reason enough to venture into this prehistoric world.
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The best thing about Shadow Labyrinth is the unusual idea of transforming Pac-Man into a metroidvania and also a minigame that reinvents the classic format we know. The adaptation in itself is successful and the execution delivered a competent game, but one that lacks relevant highlights that make it above average in the genre, marred by unnecessarily long areas and low-quality visuals.
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No More Heroes 2 is more than just a 3D version of the previous games. The variety of weapons and scenario conditions deepen the strategic aspect of the gameplay, and the freedom to choose any level to play from the beginning provides a very welcome openness, ranging from accessible to challenging. The presentation is quite generic, lacks any story and has some UI elements with positioning issues, but what matters most really works: the cooperative fun for up to four people to coordinate amidst the good old chaos of playing as a team.
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With a simple and pleasant audiovisual presentation and an interesting and well-developed story, Wings of Endless convinces as a retro action RPG. Although the combat suffers from long fights against unbalanced bosses and the trio of playable characters does not balance the individual relevance very well, exploration is fun and has a good atmosphere of a satisfying adventure in a fantasy world.
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