Afterimage Reviews

  • SunnyfishSunnyfish90,100
    18 Mar 2024
    0 1 0
    Spoilers, obviously.

    A fantastic metroidvania. Not quite another Hollow Knight, but still fantastic.

    Pros:
    1. The controls are tight.
    2. The world is extremely big.
    3. Good story, just wish it was told a bit better.
    4. Lots of weapons to vary your playstyle as you go.
    5. Bosses were fun without being Souls-hard.
    6. Bunch of upgrades to your movement tech to help spice things up.
    7. All the environments were beautiful and each was unique.
    8. Tons of enemy types.
    9. A nice little indicator will tell you when you have strayed into an area you shouldn't be in yet. Trust me: when the indicator is there, you probably don't want to be.
    10. Tons of bosses and all were fun. I did have some issue with Brandr as his teleport would put him right inside of me with no way to stop the damage, but that was the only one that felt cheap.

    Cons:
    1. The side-quests points could be found out of order, leading to some jumbled story-telling and confusion. It felt bad in Breath of the Wild (and Tears of the Kingdom) and it felt bad here.
    2. The main story feels like a lot happened that wasn't told to the player. I got the World Flower ending and I still don't know exactly what was happening and why there were multiple Renees. More clear story-telling would have been nice. Ifree's and 42's stories were told clearly, but Renee's definitely was not.
    3. I would have liked some more hints as to how to get each ending. I had to use a guide. The world is HUGE and providing vague hints does nothing to help the player.
    4. Most of the talents costing two points resulted in less impactful level-ups as a lot of them were "Oh, well, I only got one point and I need two to buy anything so this level-up means nothing."
    5. Mana was used up far too fast. I found it impractical and just didn't use it, even with an equipment load-out meant for it.
    6. Some of the weapon skills didn't work, and most of them felt kinda useless. They seemed to do less damage than me just spamming the normal attack, even the final hidden ones.
    7. Hitting A to advance the dialogue sometimes skipped scenes where the characters actually did something, leading to missed story.
    8. It would have been nice if the slower weapons like the 2-handers did more damage to the veins and the 1-sided gates. I kept my dual-blades in my off-hand just for this purpose, but it felt weird that my tiny little daggers did the same amount of damage as my big 2-hander to a gate.

    I mean, no game is perfect, but this game is an utter blast and I suggest any fans of Hollow Knight to give this game a shot. You won't regret it.
    4.5