Any good metroidvania recommendations?

[DragoFireheart]

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin should not be ignored. If you're interested, I did a long writeup on my rankings of the Igavania games that I've played. I intend to play the rest of the Igavania games to assess where they fall, but for me it's easily Portrait of Ruin > Order of Ecclesia > Symphony of the Night > Dawn of Sorrow, owing to the challenge, upgrades, playstyle depth, and level design on offer. I hear some people like Aria of Sorrow better than its direct sequel, but I've also heard it's similarly unchallenging, and it seems much of the hype around it was for how much of SotN's customization and systemic depth it brought to the GBA, which may have been since outshone. That's just speculation on my part though.

You've played all the rest of the Metroidvanias I could recommend and then some, so I don't have much else to add. Metroid Fusion was my introduction to the genre too, actually. I agree it has some problems, but I think it gets an unfair shake for its linearity. It can be annoying to be caged in all the time, but I found the exploration within each level to be deeply compelling, and the linear, closed off nature of the game allowed them to change the environments as you progressed to make every return visit to a location full of new surprises and challenges. Plus it's probably got the best bosses of any Metroid game; there are some actually challenging fights that require you to master Samus' movment and attacks. I've probably replayed Fusion a couple dozen times since I was young, it's worn out its welcome a bit at this point but I still love it.

I enjoyed your write ups.

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[Grauken]

Timespinner is out. A pretty decent love letter to the Castlevanias, with SNES-style graphics and interesting weapons system (you can equip two orbs with different attacks and speed >> blue fast orb, green sword orb, red flame balls orb, metal orb, blood orb, etc., which can be leveled up).

The difficulty is on the easy side, but the controls are perfect and its fun to play. Be warned, if you're sensitive to SJW/tumblrina mentality, you might get annoyed occasionally. Also, the writers of the game are less subtle and less accomplished as writers than they might have thought they really are. Lots and lots of wordy notes, which you thankfully don't have to read, but help understand the backstory (which, again, is not that interesting and you see the big twist coming miles away). Also one of the notes had the word fascist in it, which felt just wrong to use in a fantasy setting with no relation to Earth.

 

[Grauken]

Finished. The game is too damn easy, I think I only died twice, and both times because I was stupid. Enemies do almost no damage to you on normal, and nightmare mode is only unlocked after you've finished the game (if you really want to play, I advise to unlock nightmare mode from the start https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1523030503). Lots of health items, so bosses will be beaten on the first try, and usually, you don't even need the health items for them, just keep close and attack relentlessly with your favorite orb.

Graphics are damn beautiful. Music is quite nice. The game isn't very long, but on the other hand, it feels quite alright at the length and doesn't leave you at the end with the feeling of Wait, that's it? (like say Chasm did). It tells one finished story, has secret bosses (although it's not hard to find them) and lots of useful weapons. The orb weapon system is probably my favorite part of the game, lots of different orbs that handle and feel differently plus spells that are matched to the orbs, and I could never decide which I prefer overall (lots of good choices).

The writing is... ham-fisted is a nice way of saying it. Even if you don't disagree with the sentiments the game shares (and it fucking shares them a lot), there's a point where I felt I read the personal diary of some emo-kid coming to grips with coming out as an SJW. It's not too terrible in the beginning, but as the game goes on it gets more and more annoying. You can avoid most of the ridiculous stuff by not doing side-quests (almost all of them are fetch-quest or kill 3 of 3 rats type of quests anyway) or reading the various memories and notes you unlock, but then you'll miss most of the background story. But since the story isn't all that great, you don't really miss out and you keep your sanity (choices, choices)

 

[Durandal]

guessing by the steam description, does it turn out that the main character loses her desire for revenge after realizing that the bad guys were the good guys all along?

 

[Grauken]

Sorta, the four endings are

Spoiler

1. Kill the evil emperor (I'm Your Father, Luke) in the present, and get back to your transgender girlfriend, live a normal life
2. Kill the evil emperor in the present, and become a benign empress yourself
3. Kill the evil emperor of the other empire that caused the evil empire of the present to come into existence, you then break time and have to go meet the Sandman (there's also a vaguely Dracula-like secret boss before that)
4. Kill the evil emperor (the one from 1. and 2.) in the past (not done that yet, I assume the consequence is the same as in 3.

The overall plot thrust is that things are more complicated, the bad guys were caused by other bad guys in the past, and you try to mend things, although you still kill the evil emperor of either empire (all males, can't fix that, can you, oh wait...)

I forgot to mention, there's a time changing mechanic, you have two maps of the same place and jump around between the present and the past, and can change the future by killing stuff in the past (bosses mainly, it's less exiting than it sounds). You also can stop time for a limited period of time (the irony), but then the devs didn't know what to do with that mechanic and it's mainly used to reach higher places by jumping off time-stopped enemies.

 

[Cross]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/368620/discussions/0/1734340257882956904/

What's funny about this is there's in-game dialogue about how every person in the starting town are pansexual and polyamorous to make sure they have a lot of kids (and spread venereal diseases I imagine).

The ONLY straight people in this game seem to be the antagonists, who are blatant analogues for nazi's and even use white supremacist quotes in their speech.

It wouldn't be so bad if it just wasn't laid on so thick. Every encounter has cringy sexual undertones, the journal memories and letters are like bad slash fanfiction, there's a literal circlejerk scene where the camp sits around flirting with each other and talking about how often they're having sex, want to have sex, who they have sex with.

Even if every character in the game were straight, I STILL wouldn't enjoy the writing due to the uncomfortable amount of sexually charged content. It's just REALLY weird.

And to say the game is a love letter to Castlevania would be an understatement. The environments appear to be almost 1:1 recreations with a palette swap (while not looking as good, obviously):

 

[CryptRat]

Finished. The game is too damn easy, I think I only died twice, and both times because I was stupid. Enemies do almost no damage to you on normal, and nightmare mode is only unlocked after you've finished the game (if you really want to play, I advise to unlock nightmare mode from the start https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1523030503). Lots of health items, so bosses will be beaten on the first try, and usually, you don't even need the health items for them, just keep close and attack relentlessly with your favorite orb.

Argh, sad to hear it's not that fun. If you want a hard one with interesting time mechanisms there's always Bunny Must Die!. Don't blindly buy this game though', I liked it but the controls are weird, I don't know if there's a demo available somewhere but there's a chance you'll just hate the controls.

 

[Grauken]

I don't remember any metroidvania with RPG-like progression that manages difficulty well (all of them are too easy), compared to the more Metroid-like ones like Axiom Verge (although too easy as well) and Environmental Station Alpha. At least we got Hollow Knight, which really did a number on cheap-effort metroidvania games by raising the bar so high, that it makes most games look and play like shit in comparison.

 

[Damned Registrations]

There's really just no way to do that. If the game is going to make something like a double jump an optional upgrade for an area rather than a mandatory one, obviously having it is going to make it way, way easier. Ditto for any significant weapons, spells, etc.

 

[Grauken]

Well, the whole history of RPGs with, you know, RPG-style progression, and having lots of hard games sorta disagrees with you there. It's just that RPG-style progression in metroidvanias is rarely essential and most developers don't balance it well enough for that

 

[Damned Registrations]

Not really, the same issues plague rpgs with open worlds. Morrowind is going to be a joke after you find a daedric weapon way before you should, M&M ditto for obsidian weapons, etc. Hell, most of them have no real difficulty to begin with anyways.

 

[Grauken]

Haven't played a lot open-world RPGs, so maybe you're right. I remember getting the ice sword in Divine Divinity (not open world admittedly), which killed any difficulty for the rest of the game. In most blobbers it's not too much of a problem, although lots of them are easy, enough are nail-bitingly hard. The thing is, I like finding über-powered char builds or party configurations with whom I can own the game, but that is only fun if there's still enough difficulty left, otherwise, it feels like playing a walking simulator.

 

[deuxhero]

Order of Eccelsia is still pretty hard by end-game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's also not really open world though. It's open world in the same sense as something like Diablo- you can backtrack and look at the scenery whenever you want, but you've got to fight all the bosses in order and you're not going to find the ubersword in the first 10% of the game and make everything obsolete.

 

[deuxhero]

True, though most of the post SotN games were relatively linear without a huge sequence break so it's hardly the genre shift that's to blame for the difficulty changing.

 

[deama]

Timespinner is out. A pretty decent love letter to the Castlevanias, with SNES-style graphics and interesting weapons system (you can equip two orbs with different attacks and speed >> blue fast orb, green sword orb, red flame balls orb, metal orb, blood orb, etc., which can be leveled up).

The difficulty is on the easy side, but the controls are perfect and its fun to play. Be warned, if you're sensitive to SJW/tumblrina mentality, you might get annoyed occasionally. Also, the writers of the game are less subtle and less accomplished as writers than they might have thought they really are. Lots and lots of wordy notes, which you thankfully don't have to read, but help understand the backstory (which, again, is not that interesting and you see the big twist coming miles away). Also one of the notes had the word fascist in it, which felt just wrong to use in a fantasy setting with no relation to Earth.

I get triggered by SJWness lots.

 

[Grauken]

Then this is the perfect game for you

 

[DraQ]

I still recommend Ori And The Blind Forest (DE), whether it counts as a full metroidvania, metroidvania lite or just an open structured platformer with skill-based exploration and backtracking.

My only gripes with this game are that it is too short (at 10+-2h), combat is about as barebones as it gets and there is one moment in the story that feels a bit like an asspull.
Everything else is an unusual combination of brilliance with insane amounts of polish:

• Visuals are insanely gorgeous (you might as well measure framerate in wallpapers per second and it looks even better in motion)
  
• Animations are ultra-smooth and detailed (there are transition animations between pretty much all animations plus some sort of programming logic - possibly a state machine - for picking the animation that flows the most naturally)
• Each location has its own distinct audiovisual flavour and apart from the most interconnected hub-like ones unique mechanical gimmick
  
• Soundtrack is awesome
• The game does an admirable job engaging the player story-wise (even though the story is simple)
• Story is well constructed and logically consistent
  
• Platforming is both hard and very satisfying mechanically, especially after you get what amounts to Ori's signature move - bash, that effectively transforms enemies from obstacles into potentially very valuable assets
• Novel save point mechanics ensures that you can save almost whenever you please and minimizes pointless backtracking on failure, while at the same time preventing cheesing through save-spam
• The controls are incredibly smooth and responsive

 

[Grauken]

I think the last few years have been pretty good for metroidvania fans (I actually have some I haven't even played yet), and while Hollow Knight is the high point, in my opinion, it doesn't detract from all the other good ones we got, and Ori is up right there. The only thing I was missing was boss fights, but otherwise its a lovely game

 

[DraQ]

One older recommendation for certain values of metroidvania - the original Soul Reaver.
In terms of overall structure (exploration and skill use) it's actually quite similar to Ori, although obviously it differs in tone and amount of combat focus. Raziel is rather more talkative as well.

I think the last few years have been pretty good for metroidvania fans (I actually have some I haven't even played yet), and while Hollow Knight is the high point, in my opinion, it doesn't detract from all the other good ones we got, and Ori is up right there. The only thing I was missing was boss fights, but otherwise its a lovely game

As befits a game centered around movement rather than combat, you get escape sequences rather than boss battles in Ori.
Works for me and it's not like platformers are my go-to genre when it comes to killing stuff (hell, up until Ori I was completely disinterested in platformers for the better part of the last three decades - Ori took me by surprise and frankly stunned me senseless).

As for the Hollow Knight, I'm strongly considering getting it.
My main worries are the sparse checkpoint system (I don't like games wasting my time) and the fact that the animations seem choppy and I'm not really a fan of visual style (not concepts themselves, those are fine, but linearty stuff).
Plus I'm not sure if I'm going to like your typical combat heavy 2d metroidvania.
On the upside, I would definitely prefer a longer game and while I don't mind handholding (or in Ori's case funneling), I could definitely do without.

 

[Beastro]

What's funny about this is there's in-game dialogue about how every person in the starting town are pansexual and polyamorous to make sure they have a lot of kids (and spread venereal diseases I imagine).

How the fuck do those two work together in their mind?

 

[lightbane]

More importantly, I haven't checked the game yet but wasn't the setting something like medieval fantasy with magic? Do they have "gender change" spells ready for these situations? How do they deal with diseases and child-raising, if any?

 

[funkadelik]

Tomba! was the best.

 

[J1M]

I still recommend Ori And The Blind Forest (DE), whether it counts as a full metroidvania, metroidvania lite or just an open structured platformer with skill-based exploration and backtracking.

My only gripes with this game are that it is too short (at 10+-2h), combat is about as barebones as it gets and there is one moment in the story that feels a bit like an asspull.
Everything else is an unusual combination of brilliance with insane amounts of polish:

• Visuals are insanely gorgeous (you might as well measure framerate in wallpapers per second and it looks even better in motion)
  
• Animations are ultra-smooth and detailed (there are transition animations between pretty much all animations)
• Each location has its own distinct audiovisual flavour and apart from the most interconnected hub-like ones unique mechanical gimmick
  
• Soundtrack is awesome
• The game does an admirable job engaging the player story-wise (even though the story is simple)
• Story is well constructed and logically consistent
  
• Platforming is both hard and very satisfying mechanically, especially after you get what amounts to Ori's signature move - bash, that effectively transforms enemies from obstacles into potentially very valuable assets
• Novel save point mechanics ensures that you can save almost whenever you please and minimizes pointless backtracking on failure, while at the same time preventing cheesing through save-spam
• The controls are incredibly smooth and responsive

That's the one that replaces boss fights with "run away sequences", isn't it?