INAYAH - Life after Gods

It's a gorgeous metroidvania with a nice story and a really symphatetic main character. It takes a while to get a hang of the movement mechanics, but it pays off quickly as you learn to parry hop spikes and switch weapons on the fly. I knew what to expect based on the trailers alone, but the game delivers such an interesting world and fun cast it's definitely up there on par with the Shantae series as some of my favourite side scrollers. There's also a fun upgrade system you can respec freely, which is amazingly generous these days.

A pretty good game. The combat system is enjoyable, the exploration is interesting, the platforming (apart from a few areas) is at a relaxed level, there are plenty of locations to explore, which means a lot of content, an interesting story, a great atmosphere, and a great narrative. A huge plus is the voice acting and the professional and beautiful cutscenes—a rarity in metroidvanias. The graphics themselves are also very nice. The only minor drawback for me is the very infrequent teleports, which makes backtracking and exploration somewhat less engaging.

I really want to love this game because I can see they tried and it has some good ideas, but there are too many issues for me that made the game rather irritating : - The map. I hated it. Couldn't get used to it, lacks essential details (npc, poi position in global view, ...) and having to switch between detailed and zoomed view if you wanted to check the related areas was really annoying - Damage balancing : From getting 2 shotted at the beginning to invincible mid game. Most of the bosses I didn't even need to try, I could just face tank them. Not a bad things considering the next point - Traveling. The elevator system just sucks, I wish all metroidvania would stop using this mechanic. Let's us warp through checkpoints instead of making us traveling the same area 10 times for no reason. - Bug. Most importantly soft locks. Some quests are just bugged for me and I won't be able to have the achievements without restarting a new game (Big Momma despawned, The Predator consoles won't work so I can't fight him) - UI is just a pain. The questlog is unusable. Map, Implants, talents are horrible to navigate.

A decent Metroidvania with a focus on challenging combat and platforming. Offers an innovative but somewhat clunky way of using weapons for platforming. Bosses are fun but they are HP sponges and can be frustrating to figure out due to long runbacks. Player power is oddly balanced with low damage then suddenly spiking up sharply. Dialogue and story are quite poor and out-of-place which bring down the experience. [h3]Likes[/h3] + Great cinematics with high quality animations. + Multiple options provided to alleviate clunky weapon switching. + Smooth and precise movement mechanics. + High number of bosses to fight against. + Can specialise and create builds with the skill tree system. [h3]Dislikes[/h3] - Subpar dialogue which feels out-of-place and unnecessary. - Requires a lot of backtracking due to limited fast travel points. - Spongy bosses with high damage and long runbacks. - Extremely uneven player damage balancing.

Hard garbage

I wish half as much love went into the level design, combat design, and story as went into art. Prepare to do a million fetch quests through overly large and mostly empty rooms. Upgrades are super boring as 99% are variations on "+3% critical hit chance after ever 14th hit on an enemy. Lasts for 28 seconds". A minor gripe, but the main character specifically has black sclera (whites of eyes), but the sprites all have white sclera. Grade: D, finished it mostly out of boredom.