Mortal Manor

[i]---see where this game landed on my metroidvania tier list beneath this review!---[/i] I really enjoyed it despite its shortcomings. A retro, raw and punishing Afterimage might be the closest comparison I could draw: A tough as nails (at least initially) retro Castlevania style (even more retro than that) metroidvania with different spells, weapons, levelling up and one of the largest maps comparable to a retro Afterimage.. and it has ..a whopping 18 Steam reviews! What went wrong!? Well, aside from probably having no advertising, there is some real jank (which I'll get into) and it is a very unforgiving game. Very niche title actually, and many that would enjoy it as much as I did will never hear about it due to its obscurity. Like Afterimage, I always had a millions ways that I could choose to go, which then led to another million ways to go. I loved this. On top of that, the punishing nature of the game made the exploration more tense than is in your typical metroidvania. That same tension I'd feel playing something like Dark Souls or EverQuest (back in the corpse run days..). I also want to mention that this game has a randomizer mode (I haven't tried this yet, but intend …

Had to get a refund on this one, because of some serious game design flaws, bland artwork, bland music, sloppy controls, etc.. You die immediately but enemies take 20 hits to kill. Main character moves like a sloth. If the game had tighter controls, more enemies/enemy types that you could run through (quick/quicker kills), a better soundtrack, etc, then you might actually have fun playing an action platformer/metroidvania. Basically every type of game like this should be taking lessons from Iga/Igavania, if you know what I mean. Unless we're looking for a cure for insomnia, we don't want to stand in one spot for 5 minutes at a time, killing a enemy at the beginning of the game already. Yeah your weak at the beginning, I get that, but ffs the enemies take forever to kill when you start playing. Also there are spots that are impossible to get by without losing 3/4 of your life. I have said enough. Long story short, this is castlevania if castlevania went from being a handsome, popular, armani suit wearing billionaire wearing the finest macys colognes, to a guy living in a sewer with rats and roaches that smells so bad, he'll start to make paint melt off your walls.

This game is SO close to being a recommend from me. Some people may like it. It's basically a "demake" of Symphony of the Night. Explore the world, collect new weapons, get upgrades, unlock new areas. Each new weapon behaves slightly different, just like SotN. You can find stat upgrades and level up after killing enough enemies. The problem with this game is that it's too hard for all the wrong reasons. Getting hit by an enemy will knock you back 10 feet into spikes that instakill you. Combat is insanely one dimensional and most enemies have too much health. Early game, taking a whopping 2-3 hits will kill you. By mid game I was running past every enemy I saw because I didn't want to stand there wacking enemies 6-7 times each waiting for them to die. Often damage is totally unavoidable. There's an enemy that shoots out a wave of green bullets. Unless you're standing right next to it and jump over it right before they shoot, you literally can't get past the wave of shots without taking hits. Late game the game throws tons of enemies at you that can barely get knocked back and you have pretty much no chance of avoiding damage. It really feels like you were intended to either grind…

If you're hungry for a hardcore retro Metroidvania from NES era, this game is fantastic with crunchy exploration but be forewarn this game is brutally difficult particularly at the beginning.

I played this game during queue using multiple steam accounts, my hours do not reflect my total play time. While I enjoyed playing the game a lot at first, it quickly dwindled when I realized what kind of game this was. Still, I continued and explored the whole map and beat the game with best ending with no guide. I played on the hardest difficulty, so early game combat was pretty difficult. Then it turned grindy as you literally need EXP to level up to do more damage. I pooled all my stats into STR. Combat seemed good at first but then it was just ass. A lot of enemy types repeat themselves. The "dragon" type monster was basically impossible to kill without face tanking it and doing as much damage as possible before it kills you. I managed to kill it once. It probably drops the best weapon in the game (guess) All weapons have EXP levels that get EXP if you get the last hit to a monster and have various upgrades whether it means adding a special ability or stat bonuses. Exploration gets you stat point bonuses, weapons, trinkets mostly. You're not rewarded too much other than finding some better trinkets. In fact, I was almost punished into starting a new game file several hou…

I love this game. It accomplished what it set out to do very well. My favorite Metroidvania of 2018 by far.