The hallowed Metroidvania has gone from an original, curiously enticing one-off concept, to a highly consumable once-monthly product fit for devouring at speed. If you’re now, as we are, extremely seasoned in the format pioneered by Symphony of the Night in 1997, you’ll likely rip through 9 Years of Shadows like a '46 Ford through a DeLorean. Ergo, like tinfoil.
Developed by Mexican indie outfit Halberd Studios, it would, in our opinion, have made better literary sense to be dubbed ‘9 Years of Shadow’ - but then we're hopeless grammar Nazis because, it’s like, our job 'n' stuff. The story goes that a realm has been afflicted by a nine-year plague and, with it, the colour sapped from the land. Europa, the female protagonist, has watched friend and family pass to a sinister sickness while she somehow stands immune. She then decides to grab a weapon, don some armour, and head into an evil castle to destroy the core, as it were.
Unlike most Metroidvanias, Europa doesn’t start fully powered up and then lose her possessions, but rather begins at her vanilla phase, only able to backward dash and attack. The game follows a typical process of progression: acquire armour with properties; acquire ally with secondary properties; start to unravel your surroundings; explore map bridges; acquire additional moves to reach previously inaccessible areas, and so forth. If you spot a suspiciously placed save room, that usually means there’s a boss fight just around the corner; likewise, if you discover a power-up relic, then you’re probably going to be tasked with using it in some way the instant you snatch it from its glowing plinth.
What sets 9 Years of Shadows apart are its original and thoughtfully implemented ideas. Tonally, it’s interesting, its Mexican development origins having an artistic quality that lands differently to something like Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth and other Japanese works. There's a vast, cavernous feel to the layout, and a dark, magical inner world of towering, twisted sculptures, writhing foliage, crashing internal oceans, and cascading waterfalls running through its apparatus.
Europa is joined directly after the prologue by a floating teddy bear called Apino. In a world of Greek god references and a heady sense of pathos, he's the one thing that hard breaks the thematic schema. He is, however, a solid gameplay attribute, firing projectiles that have specific uses in breaking enemy armour, frozen doorways, and switches of a certain colour, all while bringing a nice slash, slash, fire cadence to the action.
The health and heal properties of 9 Years of Shadows also set it apart from the norm. Soak a couple of big hits and your life bar will be all but done, but it's quickly recovered by simply striking enemies with your weapon. If you’re one hit from death, you can retreat a moment and hold down the shoulder button to call on Apino, who will refill your health with a hug. There are also attributes to be acquired that, when near to death, offer a chance to regain health with a perfectly timed button press — a neat idea that encourages momentary reflex and feels good to get right. We found the combat risk, reward and heal balance to be well established, even if the campaign felt rather easy overall and the enemies somewhat basic.
Another aspect we were happy to see gone is levelling up, removing the temptation to grind. Instead, it’s down to the armour, skills, weaponry and currency you acquire to make you more threatening, and this too is nicely arranged so that you’re always just around the corner from the next bonus. It feels good to keep fleshing out your skills, finding new relics and critical items, and using them to carve through the game. In each major area you can visit a theatre to purchase upgrades, and a forge to enhance your armour, adding another layer that ensures the player's reward feedback is constantly stoked.
Key to Europa’s navigation of the dark and exotic sub-scape are her armour changes. Different armour traces her in different colours, gracing her with a different weapon and combo attack. If an enemy is lit in blue, for example, you simply cycle to your correspondingly coloured armour to ensure your attacks have maximum effect. Certain armour is required to enter new areas, like Gaia, allowing the traversal of poison-filled tributaries, or Helios, for areas requiring heat protection. Halberd Studios have also cleverly programmed armour switches to engage automatically when required, meaning Europa will instantly don, for example, the Poseidon armour the minute she enters a body of water. Additionally, new armour offers interesting sub-forms. The mermaid form, for instance, allows Europa to swim at speed and leap across channels of water, scale waterfalls, and navigate underwater areas in altogether different ways.
9 Years of Shadows is a strong effort. If you eat Metroidvanias for breakfast, consider this another hearty sausage alongside your hash browns. It’s a large game that's well-formed and correctly paced. If it suffers any imperfections, it's in things like animation, which lacks a certain fluidity and feels static in places. The initial swim animation, before Europa can dive, is literally no frames, just a frozen sprite skating the surface. We didn’t like the run animation or backdash much, either, and some of the enemies feel composed of animation shortcuts rather than genuine hand-drawn frames. This pseudo-artistry extends, in places, to the stylings of its various enclaves, which may or may not be true pixel art at all. And, while generally the environments are very nice, they are repetitive under scrutiny, using a lot of palette swapping and element rearrangements for new areas.
Additionally, while combat feels solid enough, with basic strikes able to be combo’d into your slower, heavy attack, the enemies don’t offer a huge amount of strategic variety outside of armour switching to colour match, and are fairly easy, almost to the point of being lacklustre. Instead, the difficulty sits almost entirely with the excellently devised and rightly challenging boss battles, which require deft reflex and usage of all your tools. Some of them will take several attempts to figure out, and are enjoyable to overcome.
The music is very nice: a kind of soothing, jazz lounge arrangement of atmospheric tones and soft beats that capture the evocative surroundings. It is, however, quite samey throughout, with only a few specific points where there was any kind of prominent tonal switch-up. It blends well with the visual design but doesn’t offer up anything you’ll be humming once you hit the Switch’s sleep button. We were perhaps expecting something more from Michiru Yamane, Japan's god-like composer responsible for Rocket Knight Adventures and Symphony of the Night, who not only contributed to the soundtrack, but also appears as an in-game NPC.
For some, however, the most heinous of infractions will be the frame drops, even in docked mode. They’re not action-breaking, they’re not overly prominent, but they’re most certainly there, and we can’t for the life of us understand why.
Conclusion
Halberd Studios has crafted a Metroidvania with a really encouraging number of unique elements. We have no issue in declaring it A Good Game™ and a great time thanks to its careful crafting and implementation of a number of original ideas that elevate the gameplay, rather than stifle it. It is just another Metroidvania at heart, yes, and it doesn’t revolutionise the genre; but, while there are a few scrappy bits where you can see a thinning of the budget compared to works by larger studios, it holds its own as an inventive, pretty, and consistently enjoyable adventure.
Comments 23
Sounds intriguing… and I’ve been a fan of this genre forever. To the wishlist!
Wishlist for me as well; I really like the artstyle.
"Unlike most Metroidvanias, Europa doesn’t start fully powered up and then lose her possessions" ??? I feel like the reviewer has been playing some super specific Metroidvanias.
I literally play Metroidvania games every week.
I just finished Zapling Bygone, Dog World, Astalon, Blasphemous 2 and Moonscars all in the last few weeks so this is definitely going on the Wishlist.
Is there any news on a physical?
Hope so, I prefer to buy them physically when I can.
Looks good.
I’m definitely interested. Finally on Switch!
Is this available physically yet?
So strange, if I read the review it sounds like a boring badly arranged game (5-6), while it gets 8/10 and seems like the reviewer had a great time with it.
So combat is uninteresting (except the boss fights), visuals are very basic, music is nothing to write home about... doesn't make me want to even play a demo. Probably in the same category as Disney's Illusion Island ... not bad per say, but not worth an 8. Always good to know.
Steam reviews for this one gave me the sense it was middling at best and made me pass on it (despite being "mostly positive"). Lots of folks spoke of game freezing bugs. It's a Metroidvania so it's always going to get my attention, doubly so for having a female protagonist, but I think I'm going to wait for a sale.
@Dualmask yes unfortunately it feels fairly mediocre. there is nothing new here from my time spent with it. the mechanics are good but it feels hollow. I would suggest to wait on a sale for it.
Symphony of the Night was one of the early examples, probably early enough to be a pioneer, but there’s good reason to have “vania” as the second part of the genre name. The way I experienced it was Metroid (NES) taking the Zelda formula somewhere new and Castlevania 2 (NES) taking some influence from Metroid and Zelda, while Super Metroid (SNES) set the major conventions and Symphony of the Night (PS1) kept Castlevania in the mix.
@aaronsullivan I've always thought the Vania part was to acknowledge the stats and rpg elements...
Looks cool to me! I'll pick it up. Ty for the review.
Overall great review (although I have to say I'm also confused by the "Unlike most Metroidvanias, Europa doesn’t start fully powered up and then lose her possessions" part), looks cool despite its issues so to the wishlist it goes!
@aaronsullivan So really the genre should be called "Metreldavania"
edit: Also Castlevania 2 did it best. No handholding, multiple endings with no warning, and no pity.
The studio has a new project, another Metroidvania, now is being crowdfunding in kickstaters and will be for Nintendo Switch, too
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/halberdstudios/mariachi-legends-a-combat-oriented-metroidvania?lang=es
@JohnnyMind
Perhaps that should be 'many'. I'll see if I can have an edit done. Thank you for reading!
@Smug43
How much time did you spend with it? It's a very competent Metroidvania, but you do need to get deep into it and start flexing the new armour's alternate properties. It does have an austere feel, but I think its 'haunting' vibe was intentional.
@LikelySatan
Thanks for reading, much appreciated.
@SakuraHaruka Thank you for mentioning it, I backed the new project up!
I backed the project originally. I asked for a switch key first but asked for a steam key later (because I got a steam deck) and they were extremely helpful in changing my key. Hell my ugly ass face is in the game also. XD
I also backed their new game which I will have a sculpted tome in this game. XD
@aznable Metroid (NES) had the same. No hand holding, multiple endings with no warning, and no pity. To be fair, almost every NES game had no hand holding unless you had the issue of Nintendo Power with that game or it came with a thick instruction manual (or like Zelda a map and starter hints).
Depending on what you played first, your experience might be different, but Metroid was 1986 and Castlevania 2 was 1987 (88 in the North America).
It is strange that the top-down exploring seems to make Zelda very separate from the Metroidvanias as the all enjoyed the action, exploration and gating by discovered abilities (not just keys). Zelda felt a bit more open world with puzzle-levels than the continuous connected areas of Metroid and Castlevania, but I think how they are side view and both feature solitude and a creepy aloneness set them apart. (Also part of why Hollow Knight feels so right as a Metroidvania to me, at least.)
The more distinct RPG elements came with later Castelvanias like Symphony of the Night and the GBA and DS games, as I remember.
Zelda 2 barely escapes the weird Metroidvania distinction maybe because of an overworld that separates the areas? This is mostly exploring my own built-up definition not anything that is generally accepted.
@aaronsullivan Too true, too true. Perspective prevents Zelda from getting the Metroidvania moniker, even though traversal and access to regions are completely locked behind certain items/abilities.
Which of the two first Zelda games did you prefer? Personally, I always loved Zelda 2 more than the OG, even back in the late 80s.
@aznable The original NES Zelda was a revelation that remains one of my favorites, Zelda 2 was a brief experience for me as I was kind of in a competition to complete it quickly at the time, but I did enjoy how different it was and loved many aspects of it even though I think it felt kind of unfinished to me at the time. A Link to the Past made me partly forget it for awhile, too. (You should definitely check out HoverBat's PC remake of Zelda 2, if you haven't: https://hoverbat.itch.io/ziiaol )
I guess Zelda 2 really begs to be included in the Metroidvania genre. Maybe another reason why I was orginally surprised when the name took on the Castlevania influence...
@aaronsullivan If only I had a PC I have a mac for my job, and I can't do a whole lot with it. Boo.
@aznable Yeah, I tried it on my Mac via Whisky and no luck, yet. Might have to blow the dust off the PC. Kind of annoying because it's made with a Multiplatform game engine (GameMaker Studio). There's always CrossOver (expensive) or Parallels (more expensive).
@Yalloo The review doesn't say that the combat is uninteresting, just that the normal enemies lack variety and are somewhat easy to beat. From what I read, it sounds like an exciting well-arranged game with only minor flaws which fully deserves its numerical score.
Add to future Wishlist...
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