Freedomgamespl
1 review liked by Freedomgamespl
Dandara
2018
A very solid metroidvania all round; great music, decent visual design, beautifully interconnected world map and memorable boss fights. More people should definitely play this!
The main gimmick of the game is its strange movement; you cannot walk or jump, you can only leap in straight lines between surfaces covered in 'salt'. This movement is... honestly a double-edged sword. It took an awful long time to get used to it and I never really feel I mastered it, but it did feel great to succesfully pull off some of the trickier platforming and combat challenges. It's a novel way to structure one of these games, and the devs really maximise its potential and the game is clearly designed around it.
However, the leaping movement does strange things to the game's pacing. Obviously moving across an empty room is easy even with the strange movement, but its not /trivial/, so it feels like the game is lacking in downtime and I found it hard to play more than an hour or so at a time (not a problem I normally have with metroidvanias). The breakneck pacing that the movement encourages also leads to a lot of smacking into enemies off the side of the screen, which never stops being a bit frustrating.
The strange movement also hampers one of the cornerstones of the genre; backtracking! The game is full of new and unexpected abilities to use to go back and explore new areas, but the movement makes anything more than a tiny amount of backtracking feel like a chore. Combine this with the deliberate lack of directionality and the tendency for new rooms to rotate on entry, meaning I had to constantly check the map to make sure I was going where I thought I was. There is a fast travel system in the game, but you don't unlock it until very late.
The story takes a leaf out of the Soulsbourne book of storytelling (read 'I never had more than 20% of a clue what was going on'), but enough of it leaks through to make the world feel rich and vibrant, and this in turn was enough for me to push through the aforementioned issues and really just enjoy my time in the world. The good definitely outweighs the bad here, and I can highly recommend!
The main gimmick of the game is its strange movement; you cannot walk or jump, you can only leap in straight lines between surfaces covered in 'salt'. This movement is... honestly a double-edged sword. It took an awful long time to get used to it and I never really feel I mastered it, but it did feel great to succesfully pull off some of the trickier platforming and combat challenges. It's a novel way to structure one of these games, and the devs really maximise its potential and the game is clearly designed around it.
However, the leaping movement does strange things to the game's pacing. Obviously moving across an empty room is easy even with the strange movement, but its not /trivial/, so it feels like the game is lacking in downtime and I found it hard to play more than an hour or so at a time (not a problem I normally have with metroidvanias). The breakneck pacing that the movement encourages also leads to a lot of smacking into enemies off the side of the screen, which never stops being a bit frustrating.
The strange movement also hampers one of the cornerstones of the genre; backtracking! The game is full of new and unexpected abilities to use to go back and explore new areas, but the movement makes anything more than a tiny amount of backtracking feel like a chore. Combine this with the deliberate lack of directionality and the tendency for new rooms to rotate on entry, meaning I had to constantly check the map to make sure I was going where I thought I was. There is a fast travel system in the game, but you don't unlock it until very late.
The story takes a leaf out of the Soulsbourne book of storytelling (read 'I never had more than 20% of a clue what was going on'), but enough of it leaks through to make the world feel rich and vibrant, and this in turn was enough for me to push through the aforementioned issues and really just enjoy my time in the world. The good definitely outweighs the bad here, and I can highly recommend!