Cult Classic Action Game 'El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron' Is Getting A Switch Port

Last year, Ignition Tokyo's biblical-inspired action game El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron got a Steam port. And today, in a video broadcast shared by the game's director Sawaki Takeyasu — who famously designed monsters and characters for Okami and Infinite Space — he has revealed that the game will be making its way to Switch.

In the above video, Takeyasu says that we'll be getting more information on 28th April, which is the 11-year anniversary of El Shaddai's PS3 and Xbox 360 release. Regardless of how long we have to wait, this is fantastic news for fans who have longed to play the game on a modern console.

El Shaddai gained attention back in 2011 for its arresting art style and visuals, which were inspired by Studio Ghibli. The game follows Enoch — a man brought to heaven to act as a scribe for God — who must descend to Earth to retrieve God's secrets back from seven fallen angels who have become infatuated with humans. Our sister site Push Square was pretty fond of the game back in the day, calling it "imaginative and fearless":

• Review - El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron

Here's a summary of this unique game, straight from its Steam page:

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, originally released in 2011, is a unique third-person action adventure filled with a deeply artistic world-building, outstanding aesthetics and thrilling battles. Experience an incredible mix of 2D-like platformer action and a colorful 3D world in an exceptional setting.

An ever-changing endless visual experience
El Shaddai's artistic setting aims to provide a canvas-like world that changes in an organic way as long as you progress your adventure. The world keeps changing constantly in the most creative and innovative ways, perhaps even nostalgic.

Easy to play, hard to master
You'll only have four buttons: jump, attack, guard and weapon stealing. But this simple way of proceeding is deeper than one can expect. There is no need of manuals or walkthroughs to get into the game, but if anyone is ready to deepen into the mechanics, the game will offer a profound, precise and rewarding timing-based action experience. The motto of El Shaddai's gameplay always was to be "easy but profound". Many of the game's mechanics such as the offense-defense systems were carefully created to provide the best possible game feel.

The game received the "Future Game of the Show" award in the Tokyo Game Show 2010 and the script, noting some of the characters lines, got a gold mention on the Internet Buzzword Awards 2010 as well. The original aesthetics, the uniqueness of its concept and the feeling of being ahead its time (2011) were widely discussed on the international media.

Back in 2017, El Shaddai got an RPG follow-up in the form of The Lost Child, which unfortunately lacked the magic and uniqueness of its predecessor. We were less than favourable about it in our review of the game, and said that "its dungeon crawling underpinnings are just too dull and repetitive, and its narrative approach too stilted to draw in anyone but die-hard fans of the genre."

El Shaddai certainly seems like it's a lot more polished, and we'll be sure to keep an eye out for more news on 28th April. Let us know if you've played the original release or the Steam version in the comments.