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.

The face on the cover always caught my attention and I finally tried playing it. It starts very solid and the game surely is super impressive seeing it's made by only 1 person. Sadly it has flaws, which didn't hold up the game as much as I hoped it would.

My thoughts:
(+ = (mostly) positive; - = (mostly) negative)
+ Gameplay;
The upgrades are very unique and work pretty well. There are a lot of different weapon upgrades, but some don't really feel useful and others are just way stronger than the rest. The layout is good, in a way that you never get really lost and always find a way to progress. Sadly the last part to the final boss is a pain in the ass. For me it felt like the difficulty suddenly spiked in an unfair way. The boss fights all felt the same with minor changes.

+ Music;
Memorable and unique. All music really fit the atmosphere of the game.

++ Graphics;
Visually extremely impressive. The pixelart is beautiful and unique.

+- Story/Characters;
The story is fine and to the point. If you want to dive deeper you can read the documents you collect.

Recommend?
Not if it's your first Metroidvania. If not, try it for sure! Took me 9h+ to complete the main story and collected everything I could find on my own.

Un metroidvania de cuando querían parecerse a Metroid, y no ser una copia más sin alma de Hollow Knight (porque no había salido aún, tho).
Tiene un pico de dificultad en la última zona bastante absurdo y hay muchos caminos que están bloqueados por un upgrade (lo típico, vaya), pero cuando pasas esa barrera, hay otra más en la que necesitas otro objeto más. Normalmente eso lleva a mejoras opcionales, pero frustra un poco ver que has desbloqueado un camino nuevo para encontrarte con otro callejón sin salida.
Por el resto, el pixelart es muy bueno, la música y el argumento muy ochentero, etc. Muy guapo.

Wife’s Reaction:
“Items collected at 69%? Nice.”

Guns. Lots of Guns:
My first feelings with Axiom Verge were very positive. An old-school game that evokes the feelings of classic Metroid? Exactly what I wanted. But it never felt like the adventure evolved. There are way too many guns and some of the traversal abilities are odd. In the end, I felt like it was just fine.

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

A stylish Metroidvania, Axiom Verge owes a lot to, well, Metroid. The story follows a scientist, Trace, who after an accident finds himself in an abandoned biomechanical world with no choice but to take up arms and fight his way out. Lots of the narrative is told through the beautifully expressive environments, which you get a lot of upgrades in order to explore. Axiom Verge is unashamedly old-school in its design; if you liked Metroid, or Metroid 2, or Super Metroid and you want another Metroid game that just isn't branded as such, you can't go wrong with this one.

A pretty good Metroid inspired game, but sometimes it became really annoying to play

The exploration is great... sometimes. Although it has some really good shortcuts, the exploration in this game is pretty lacking in comparison to other games. I'm an exploration type of guy, I always check every single corner when I'm playing a game, but with this game, I just wasn't that invested on it. Most secrets are really easy to find, but I never found them all because I simply did not care about finding them.

The movement abilities are mostly good, but some of them just feel like glorified keys, and I personally think that abilities in metroidvanias should work not just to unlock new areas, but also to improve the overall gameplay by changing how you approach new situations, that's the reason why wall jump, double jump, and dash are so common in these types of games, Because they are useful at all times, not just when you need to unlock a new path. The only movement ability in Axiom Verge that made me feel that way was the late game dash, but it is a nightmare to use because you need to press the directional button twice to use it; this generates two issues: 1- You need to stop your movement before dashing, which is annoying and leave you open to attacks; and 2- You can easily use it by mistake when you're just trying to walk, and be prepared, because you are going to do it A LOT.

The combat is also pretty problematic. Most weapons you acquire are either useless or really situational, and I used only 4 or 5 of them to beat the entire game. Every time I got a new weapon I was like "Pretty cool, now back to my green zipitty zap". I doesn't help that some enemies are a chore to deal with, and that last area was really annoying. Also, do not forget that by the end of the game, you are going to use the dash ability in battle a lot, so prepare to deal with misinputs.

The story is... actually, I didn't pay attention to the story, like at all. Most of it is told in some pretty boring cutscenes that are hard to pay attention to when they interrupt gameplay so abruptly. I still have no idea of what the Breach is supposed to be. Maybe if it was told with enviromental storytelling instead of cutscenes and some journals I could be more invested, but we will never know. But some story moments are pretty good, specially THAT moment.

Even so, I honestly still had a good time playing it, it still is a good game that deserves to be played by more metroidvania fans, and I hope the sequel improves on it. I will play it eventually.

Dear God, this game is so. fucking mid
And the enemies are bullshit
And I don't care about the story
Do you know how much of a slumber a story has to be for me to not give a shit about it?? A LOT MAN, A WHOLE LOT

I'm tilted, I'll get back to it en algún momento
Rn I'm kinda fighting the urge to uninstall it
P.D I did lol

Axiom Verge is an experience that defines the normally nebulous "braindance." Where you will be swallowed by a world of monstrous eldritch flesh, rending it apart with alien weaponry, mending it with that same gun. All the while you will feel the delight of a Hippocampus getting rewarded for exploring such a nebulous place. The Occipital Lobe will familiarize itself with the soundscape of the game, between smooth ceilings, sharp edges, unfamiliar chants, and a booming drum. Though, the navigation particularly towards the end of the experience will make you feel like your Amygdala is being prodded by demands of dodging the undodgable, shooting the unhittable, and navigating the wild wrinkles of the brain. If you can overcome that pain point at the end, this is a masterclass successor to Metroid.

Sights & Sounds
- Excellent pixel art all around. Gave me warm fuzzy memories of playing Super Metroid as a kid and Zero Mission on GBA in high school
- Similar to those games, you'll be fighting weird biomechanical monsters and giant bosses (most of which look pretty cool)
- The music runs the gamut from good to stellar. The music from Kur is going to be stuck in my head for a while
- Even the menus are nice. All in all, the presentation feels well-crafted and faithful to its inspirations

Story & Vibes
- The music and visual style do great job setting the tone of the game, which is largely mysterious and a little ominous
- To give anything away about the story would do a disservice to the game. Let's just say that it's heavily sci-fi with some parallel universe/time travel elements, and is decent enough on its own
- What really makes the world feel more interesting is the environmental storytelling. You'll find yourself clamboring over and shooting bad guys on a bunch of weird scenery. Stuff like piles of skeletons, corridors of cages, and weird incubation tube looking things. If you take the time to explore for notes and pay attention to the dialogue, you'll figure out why most of it is there

Playability & Replayability
- The game's Metroid inspiration obviously bleeds into the gameplay
- Exploration is the centerpiece here. Drill everything, jump everywhere, and use the glitch mechanic on anything that looks slightly out of place. If you can't access a location yet, note the room. You'll be rewarded with some cool stuff
- That "cool stuff" is indeed really fun to use. The drone teleport and labcoats were notable highlights that really open up movement throughout the environment. Some of the weapons are also very fun to use, even if some are only situational or gimmicky.
- The equipment and upgrades are almost enough to balance out all the backtracking they require to obtain, but not quite. Enemies respawn if you move more than two rooms over, and there is no teleport option to speed up traversal in the huge world. This is really my only gripe about the game, though
- Don't think I'll be back for a replay, but I will certainly be tucking into the sequel at some point

Overall Impressions & Performance
- I played the game on the Steam Deck to up the GBA Metroid nostalgia factor. Also, it's way easier to play with the d-pad on the Steam Deck, which is great for 2D games
- Ran very well the whole way through

Final Verdict
- 9/10. I know "metroidvanias" have saturated the indie game scene for several years, but this is definitely one worth playing though (especially if you lean more towards the Metroid side of that portmanteau)

Waiter! One Metroidvania, hold the "-vania" please!

I should really like this game. I think I just had the misfortune of playing the worst possible version of it.

First, the good: the visuals and spritework are amazing overall, and the soundtrack is absolutely killer. If you weren't looking that closely, you could easily mistake this for a Metroid game on GBA, which is pretty cool! And the fact that most collectibles are completely unique weapon types or in-game lore drops is a great change - no more "bomb inventory +5" bullshit here, instead you get rewards like LIGHTNING GUN. And with the password system and secret areas, there seems to be a lot here for people who connect with this game. Cool ideas in a cool world with some cool atmosphere.

Second, the bad: a modern Metroidvania without any kind of fast travel is just poor design, sorry. I never had fun while backtracking to try and find the next objective since that often required me to trek back across the entire map. Combat is also hampered by the lock button not allowing you to move while aiming, making shooting diagonally while evading nigh impossible. And just like in Metroid, vertical platforming through combat areas just sucks, as does pixel hunting for destroyable blocks that have no visual indication that they should be investigated. I know it wouldn't really be a Metroid successor without that, but that's the kind of thing that kills the completionist in me.

And third, the PS Vita: four gameplay actions (two of them major functions) are relegated to pseudo-buttons on the touch screen that require you to take your fingers off of the movement or combat controls in order to use them. I should not have to tell you that this is awful, but the fake buttons are also visible on screen at all times - and yet, the area of input for each is so small and precise that you will never press that bomb button under duress without stopping to focus on doing so. In addition, for some reason, the game would just completely freeze up for almost a whole second fairly frequently, with the most freezes happening in Edin. This game will also lag and drop frames on Vita, if you can believe it. Several times, I thought the game was about to crash on me, especially when a freeze happened after a lag spike when the music stopped looping but failed to start back up again. And for whatever reason, the PS Vita's thumb stick liked to accidentally activate the "double tap a direction to evade" ability, which is truly a heinous input mapping for a game like this.

I dunno fam, I really wanted to like this one. Kind of bummed out that I didn't care much for it by the end.

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!

This is a game I really wanted to like, but for some reason it never clicked with me.

Axiom Verge's best is in its graphics and NES inspired atmosphere. There is some really great pixel art here, expecially in the bigger beings, so the bosses and the big machine lady thing (she kinda bad tho ngl): I really liked the cutscens too. Not all the areas had the same quality in the design and atmosphere department, with certain much more inspired than others. The music can go from generic to wack, but the general quality is at the very least decent.
It's a solid metroidvania, with some interesting ideas for power ups and weapons, but a lot of them are very situational, so I generally used the same two or three, even though I unlocked most of them. I'm not the biggest fan of the level design, and the enemy placement often feels very annoying, but I don't know how much this was influenced by the fact that i was playing on hard. I'm not a fan of the enemy design either and a lot of them felt like they were there just to annoy moreso than giving you a challenge. Before beating the last boss I wanted to renavigate the whole map to see what i had missed, but traversal is a slog even though there is some kind of fast travel ( a better one would have been very much appreciated), so I just gave up. As far as difficulty goes, it isn't easy, but most of the challenges I had were with normal enemies and my lack of patience (the last boss is tough too).
The core gameplay isn't bad at all, and I also liked the little story beats, but too often going forward it felt more like work than pleasure, expecially in the first and last part of the game. It's a shame I didn't really enjoyed it but I'm sure Axiom Verge has an heart, and will be appreciated by a lot if people.

While I felt that the ending to the story left more to be desired, I still think this game is one of the best Metroidvania games out there. While not super dense, the story was intriguing and had me invested the whole time, and the world design was well thought out and made for good gameplay, and the controls were tight.

Movement felt great, especially when I unlocked more of the options available, and the weapon types were also great to utilize. By the end, I felt all-powerful with nothing that could stop me. That said, Some of the puzzles were quite difficult, to the point of frustration. I also didn't like the backtracking due to no fast travel in the game. Finally, some of the weapons felt very niche and rarely got any use from me.

This game is still a great time and I think that any fan of 2D Metroidvania games will have a great time with this.

A nice Metroidvania game. Unfortunately, I am too stupid to understand the plot xD

The world design is alright, but I would have appreciated more moments, where the map cleverly loops around itself, like Super Metroid. What this game also lacks (at least until the end) is movement. There is just one basic running speed and it works, but it's just kinda boring to control, not very exciting. Some bosses towards the end are also just annoying without any recognisable patterns, the same goes for some of the game's enemies.

But damn it, I still enjoyed it overall. Everything here screams Metroid and it was incredibly refreshing to not know which upgrade would come next for a change, since there are some really creative abilities here!

Axiom Verge is a rare game that really made me feel like I was exploring a strange alien planet instead of just playing a video game. I really enjoyed the peudo hacking mechanics that added a surreal touch to the world and the many of the guns you get are a lot of fun to play around with. One of the most standout features though is the vagueness in a lot of the characters actions and motivations, which really makes you question who are the good guys and the bad guys, especially with the end credits scene.