The Messenger é um jogo que brinca com a evolução dos Jogos 2Ds pixel art de uma forma extremamente criativa e divertida. O jogo é um deleite para pessoas como eu que amam plataformers antigos, principalmente como Ninja Gaiden.

As músicas e bossfights são muito boas, além do jogo passar uma boa mensagem no final de tudo.

Meu único problema se dá ao sistema de portais (fast-travel) que é muito limitado, mas de resto é um jogo formidável.

I didn't know much about The Messenger upon jumping into it. I just knew it had quite the positive word of mouth and it was pretty much a love letter to Ninja Gaiden and similar games of the NES era. On its own that would've been quite enough as a legit good game, but The Messenger blew my expectations away when it comes to its ambition as a 2D game.

It's hard to talk about the game without spoiling too much, so I'll limit myself to what was shown in trailers, since one of the twists of the game is being able to hop between past and future versions of the levels you're traversing, which not only changes the layout and the look of the current stages, but it also bounces the player between NES-styled graphics and Genesis-styled ones, complete with accurate soundfont for each of the versions of the stage.

The game is mostly a straightforward action platformer with a bit of an interesting mechanic for air-hopping, kinda like how Shovel Knight can bounce off elements of the stage or enemies with his shovel. In this case, the Messenger can earn an extra jump each time he hits either an enemy or some other interactable stage element. It's not quite as intuitive as Shovel Knight, and it needs a bit to be mastered properly, but thanks to a very expansive and varied level design, along with a simple, but effective power up system, The Messenger proves to be one of those though as nail platformers that will challenge your expertise of the genre. The lack of lives isn't devoid of consequences, thanks to a little demon spirit who will bring you back to life everytime you die, in exchange of stealing any game currency you find for a limited time since your last respawn.

The boss battles are another highlight of the game. Very varied, impressive and each completely different in scope and patterns. It's hard not to gush about them without spoiling anything, but they're the kinds of boss battles that tend to be pretty memorable, even long after you finish the game.

The story also has quite a few interesting quirks in terms of events, though the constantly self-aware meta jokes may brove to be too much for many if you'd want something a bit more earnest and involved. I'm not against self-awareness, but games like Shovel Knight and Hi-Fi Rush managed to also have some emotional involvement along with it, if you catch my drift. Thankfully a lot of the jokes are actually good, so it's not like you won't get enjoyment out of it.

Also kudos to the composer, as the soundtrack may as well be the best element of the game. fantastic, memorable tunes, both for their past and future versions, I certainly look forward to see the work of this guy in the future.

I feel like the only thing keeping this title from getting a perfect score from me, aside from a few negligeable gripes, is the ending feeling a bit too sudden, it feels like it should've had at least one more boss phase to really top things off.

Despite this, it surely is an experience worth playing through, definitely one of the best indie offerings out there.