Probably the best non-combat roguelike to come out in years. The only reason I'm not giving this a 5 is I would be afraid for my life if this was 5 stars. Let me get to it.

Reading other reviews, you can largely get the gist. You play poker hands to earn points (chips) and defeat two stages (blinds) and the boss to get to the next level (ante). Between rounds, you can spend money you've earned to manipulate your deck and buy Joker cards, which do a variety of things, from retriggering cards, to changing card behaviors, to earning you extra money, etc. There's a lot more to discover but that's really part of the fun, manipulating your odds to chain massive combos.

One thing I really love is when you're able to complete a game (finish Ante 8) and can play endless mode. You look at the score limits and Ante 14 is 2.900e13, or 29,000,000,000,000, from your measly 50k for Ante 8 and you wonder "What is the ungodly combination of cards..." and you keep going, and going and going, looking at your deck constantly, buying Celestial and Arcane packs to change your cards, and just trying to reach the unholy chain that will finally get you there.

And that's why I can't give it 5 stars. I'm afraid of the person I will become if I was the type that would give this a perfect score. So I'm comfortable putting it down for now, knowing that I will probably never reach Ante 16 or 8.600e20, or 860,000,000,000,000,000,000 and envy those who do. Even if its not reaching those levels, I still think its insanely fun to fill the collection and beat Ante 8 with each deck, which unlocks new difficulties and items. That's enough to make me come back every so often, which I probably will.

I hope they continue to add new stuff to the game, though I really don't know what they could do. It is poker, after all.

Also the music slaps.

Overall, a pretty disappointing season. The Greek mythology theme never really seemed to pay off, and there wasn't enough for me personally with Avatar and the repeat of the Star Wars content was frustrating at best.

I didn't really care for the skins. Frankly, the mythological skins feel uninspired and I'll probably just vault them all. I tuned out of Nickelodeon around 2003, so I never watched Avatar the Last Airbender. I was never really hyped for the promotion and got the Korra skin just because it was there.

I was also disappointed with the Star Wars content this year, and didn't really feel motivated to play much of it, since it was largely a repeat of previous years.

Something has to change with the UI. The store has become too bloated and I'm tired of scanning 20 pages looking for what was added each day. We need hard separation for each game mode so I'm not looking through jam tracks and Lego sets when I want BR skins. Vaulting items in general is still broken. We used to be able to multi-select and vault at once. Its so bugged now I'm questioning if my vault action is working at all. I'll vault a few items but some still show until I close the screen and come back. Really frustrating for a game that makes this much money.

I'm going to keep playing. I'm excited to see what they do with the post-apocalypse content and Fallout skins next season and the core gameplay is still rock solid, but they really need some internal changes to keep the game fresh

I really like this one! A metroidvania that gets way more right than gets wrong, in fact, I don't have many complaints. A must play, just not at full price.

The story is pretty simple. You play as Sargon, a member of a group called the Immortals, tasked with protecting the Persian empire. When prince Ghassan goes missing, you go on an adventure with the group to find him. While the story goes in interesting places, it's overall pretty forgettable.

I wanted to challenge myself, so I played on Hero, which is the game's hard mode, knowing that the difficulty would be pretty front-loaded, normal for the genre. And yeah, those first few hours were sweaty. Thankfully the game really benefits from snappy controls, you can parry pretty easily, and most moves are telegraphed. I died a few times to some out-of-nowhere nonsense, but those were few and far between.

Sargon's animations are a real treat. He can Mario 64-like transition from a run to a backflip on a dime, and I really enjoyed how smoothly the game handles regular traversal mixed with some of the abilities you gain. Most of them are your standards. You get the double jump/air dash/ grapple, but you also get a cool move where you place a shadow with RB, and pressing it again, you can instantly teleport back to that point, no matter where you are in the room. Pretty good.

As for the metroidvania portions, fast travel points are decently placed and later you get an expanded fast travel, which I really appreciated. You also get the ability to take a snapshot of a puzzle you can't solve yet and places it on your map so you can see exactly what you need to progress. Overall I didn't have much difficulty with navigation, and you can buy treasure maps which will place every side quest object on the map so this feature was only used a few times in my run. However, I did play on "Guided" mode, which also places quest markers on the map, so maybe if I played on the more blank slate mode this would have been more useful.

Now to gush. I would say this is the best metroidvania I've played this year. The side quests and collectibles make item hunting and 100% completion doable. Prince of Persia also contains probably the most innovative biome I've played in years with the Raging Seas. I won't say more, but it really is a treat for the eyes and leans really hard into the time mechanics of the story. Playing on hard also made some of the bosses a real challenge, some of the best I've played since Metroid Dread, requiring tricky parries and skilled reflexes.

Overall, yeah this is what a metroidvania should feel like. Doesn't overstay its welcome, but invites you to stick around after 100% to try the boss rush and Permadeath and Speedrun modes, not to mention the even higher difficulty levels. There was a lot of talk in the beginning of the price tag. No, I don't think its worth it at $50, but I got it for $20 and I think that's the perfect price. Go play it!

Metroidvanias I played in 2024 Ranked:
1. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
2. Animal Well
3. Blasphemous 2
4. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
5. Afterimage
6. The Mummy Demastered