Axiom Verge makes a great first impression. The pixel art is nice, the map naturally guides the player to their destination, and the music is fantastic. The setting, inspired by H.R. Giger, is intriguing and feels truly alien like Metroid on NES, a game whose atmosphere is very underappreciated.

As a Metroidvania, it definitely delivers. Easily the best thing about this game is the power-ups. I won't spoil them for those who haven't played it, but just know that they are extremely creative. Every time you think you know what ability you will need to bypass an obstacle, you will be surprised. This subversion of expectations should satisfy Metroidvania veterans who are bored of getting the same power-ups (double jump, dash, hookshot).

Now for the stuff I didn't like. This game has an absurd number of weapons to find, but I didn't find a use for most of them. The starting gun was enough to deal with most enemies, which have an annoying habit of rushing at you on sight. The bosses also left a lot to be desired. They always seemed to be too easy or in the case of the final boss, unfair. Finally, the story was hard to follow at times. This isn't a big issue, however, since there are lots of journal entries to fill in some of the blanks and the story was nonintrusive overall.

Despite these missed opportunities, I would recommend checking out Axiom Verge. The unique power-ups alone make it worth playing. I really hope more Metroidvanias take inspiration from this going forward.

This is one of the early indie metroidvanias that has quite a reputation, but imo has more lows than highs. Right off the bat I have to say that it's simply ugly. Yeah, I know it's inspired by Metroid, yeah it's an 8-bit aesthetic and all. But man it's freaking ugly. As someone who grew up with the NES let me tell you that the vast majority of the 8-bit games have aged like milk visually. So trying to replicate thier aesthetic ain't necessarily a good idea. There are some instances that the game looks okay, mostly in screens where some background looks interesting. But then they're screens that look like the most boring, generic and ugly game you can think of. The glitch effects sound good on paper, but on screen they look like the game has seizures of the worst kind. Also every single enemy looks horrible, the bosses at least look nice.
Speaking of bosses the first three are walk in the park, but some of late ones are annoying as hell to fight, not necessarily hard just annoying. The last boss is pretty terrible as well.
The music at least is pretty good with some earworm tracks, but definitely lacks the atmosphere of Metroid.

Now the level design is mostly good. There are some moments of intense backtracking, but the map is not gigantic so it's not a big deal. The secrets are plenty and mostly pretty fun to discover, but once again the visual design doesn't make the game any favours, like there are instances that you can't tell the foreground from the background.
What's interesting about this game is that your abilities upgrades are fewer than your typical metroidvania. Instead you find a lot of weapons. All of them are fun but not balanced so a few of them are way more useful than the rest. So although I do appreciate the variety in the end you're likely to use 1-2 of them at most.
The disruptor is a cool idea, but way underdeveloped. There are like 3 instances in the whole game that it's used in a creative way like making enemies into platforms while the rest of the time is just used to bypass certain barriers. The most interesting ability is the drone which is used at first for puzzle solving, but later in platforming as well. As for the teleport I didn't have much of a problem of accidental inputs like most people, but teleporting in a top platform is freaking annoying. You have to double tap the button in milliseconds to achieve such a simple action.
The story is interesting, but I stopped paying attention somewhere in the middle.

Although my review appears mostly negative I still had fun with the game. It does interesting things like using passwords for secrets, the drone ability, disrupting the enemies and most importantly it does have its own personality despise looking like a Metroid knock-off at first. But there dozens of better metroidvanias out there.

A very okay Metroidvania that doesn't do anything particularly well, though it was pretty important at it's time of release so I will give it an extra half star for just being one of the kick offs of the indie Metroidvania revolution. The biggest standout in this game is the OST, it's incredibly unique and memorable while pairing very well with the atmosphere. However, with a very lackluster plot and dialogue, often confusing and inconsistent level design and bland enemies, I dropped the game halfway through and have no drive to return to it as all I can think about was how badly I'd rather just play Super Metroid. The upgrades are very uninspired with just a new standouts that don't do enough to make the game stand out.

So many weapons! The music is fantastic!

The fact that a single person developed this game is mind-blowing given the amount of content, the variety of environments, and the attention to detail. It's even more remarkable considering that one person was skilled enough to handle the art, level design, coding, and the stunning music (the music in this game is truly exceptional!). Despite the retro and minimalist style, there are some beautiful scenes, and the game smartly zooms out to surprise the player and to let them experience the scale of this world.

Compared to other metroidvanias, Axiom Verge doesn’t really let you take different exploration paths, it usually points you in the right direction until you have almost all the upgrades you need to reach the end game, but it doesn’t prevent you from backtracking either (except towards the beginning, and that is smart because it saved me getting lost after I missed a section I could reach). My problem is that every time I went to a section I visited before to see if my new powers would unlock anything new I was bored when I had to go back to where I was supposed to be. The names of the areas were also too weird for me to remember which one is which.

The Bosses were the most disappointing part of the game, with their limited attack patterns, with some attacks being impossible to predicts, and the unclear vulnerable spots. Another problem is that secret areas are often absolutely invisible, and I ended up always running around spamming the powers needed to reveal them, wasting a lot of time for little value (I am not a completionist).

So many weapons! The music is fantastic!

One of the first Metroidvanias I played outside of actual Metroid, Axiom Verge is a must play for fans of the genre. The atmosphere aligns itself with that of Metroid Fusion's, a tense, scifi near horror setting that utilizes player tension to keep them more engaged in the experience. The story provided within Axiom Verge is as interconnected as the level design the genre is known for, sprouting multiple fan theories in regards to the actual facts of the story on the game's wiki which are a joy to browse and try to wrap your head around. The sci-fi synthwave soundtrack is a jam all the way through and perfectly encapsulates the setting and tone of the game. The final product is even more impressive knowing it was all made by 1 man, level design to coding to composition. The only hiccups I had with the game was the vast amount of weapons the player can unlock that don't actually do anything other than give you a different type of gun to fight enemies, but with over 20 different guns to unlock the player has probably settled on 2-3 by the mid game. This makes unlocking new powers in the game less exciting because a lot of the time you won't ever actually use what you just unlocked. 8/10

An excellent Metroidvania that 'leaves a penny'

Takes the core competencies of Metroid and enhances them with the power of modern technology. Highly detailed sprites, larger environments, etc... It takes Metroid and does things only a modern game can do.

It then plays with expectations by introducing glitches as game mechanics and eventually breaks the mold entirely with a teleport that goes through walls.

Many of the features are subtly unique to what anything else in the genre has ever done. Breaking out of the boundaries isn't entirely new as a concept but in this case, it's handled in a way that changes how you think about level design and exploration. In changing your perspective, Axiom verge 'leaves a penny'

The minimap is also a masterpiece of game design, handled in a way that prevents it ever filling out until you've found everything, in this way it's harder to miss items/upgrades, and completing this map is made a part of completion throughout the game.

This game solidifies so many genre staples that I would feel as comfortable recommending this as I would actual Metroid.