Get deep with this philosophical melding of Metroid and Dark Souls – Ghost Song Review
17K View2022-11-06
The Deadsuit
Quiet for many years...
On this day, something moves inside.
Something new...
After these introductory words, a robotic humanoid being awakes in a desolate setting. Behind it is a decrepit ship that appears to have crash-landed on the ground. Does it belong to this being? In any case, this ship has been there for a long time, as plants have already grown over the fuselage. Who is this being? It doesn’t seem to know, but it has a vaguely female-sounding voice. Where should it go? There's only one way to find out...
The protagonist I controlled inGhost Song has no name, but I took to calling her Blue, the nickname she gets from other people in reference to the color of her suit. Although in the subtitles, her name appears as “Deadsuit.” Is that what she is? A disembodied soul that inhabits a veritable suit of armor? Isn’t that what all we really are when you stop to think about it for a second?
Despite the philosophical underpinnings of the Deadsuit, I didn't see Blue as dead or empty—far from it. She (it?) has personality as she has traces that spring from the blank spaces of memory. Her voice is sweet; her will is strong and gentle. Her arm is a mighty cannon...much just like the very first video game action heroine, Samus Aran, whose true identity was also obscured by armor.
Ghost Song started as a tribute to the Super Nintendo classicSuper Metroid, but it morphed over time and absorbed concepts fromDark Souls to launch a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. That was in 2013, before we all realized how well the Metroidvania and Souls sub-genres blended together. Before we knew that the union known as “Soulsvania” was inevitable.
Right out of the gate, one thing that Ghost Song nails is the atmosphere. As in Metroid and the like, the progression is vertical. The adventure starts on the surface, then tunnels downwards toward the dark depths of the earth—in this case, the moon Lorian V. The graphics are hand-drawn and full of lively details. The environments are dark, contrasting with luminescent colors of lilac, blue, green, and pink. Everything has an alien aspect, a distortion of familiar shapes that made me think of the odd life-forms that lurk at the bottom of the sea.
The many backgrounds, blurred from a distance, give depth to the scenarios, enlivened by the movement of vegetation or the organic walls of a colony of insects pulsing with a sickly yellow hue. The Deadsuit gets dirty from the white goo of trampled eggs, or the green of slimy creatures, or even the blood of slain enemies. The sound design uses silence, disturbing sticky noises, and above all, the contemplative, slow, and echoing music that embraces the player with its soft synthetic strings.
Another thing that stands out to me in Ghost Song is that although there are no characters that accompany me to the bowels of the moon, I never felt as alone as in the Metroid games. NPCs are presented who converse with Blue in philosophy-tinged dialogue. They talk about languages, dreams, the past, death, changes...and deep down, they talk about who they are and what existence means to them. This dialogue is well-written and sounds quite human; I enjoyed talking to everyone I met each time the story progressed to see what else they had to say. And Blue is not a voiceless protagonist; she is on the quiet side, but she does talk. She even talked to herself when I set down the controller for a bit. To me though, the best part is that Blue doesn't know who or what she is, but she knows she cares, and that’s enough.
Another area where Ghost Song breaks from its Metroid inspiration is by offering players a little more guidance, should they decide to take it. To my surprise, an unnecessary tutorial screen appeared to explain that we should reach those points, recommending to start with a specific one.
Just as a test to see what degree of freedom the world design allowed, I decided that the initial goal I was urged toward would be the last one I would accomplish. Ghost Song passed with flying colors in this regard, allowing me a very natural progression even when I reversed its recommendation. It's not an open world; after all, there are the “locks and keys” that characterize Metroidvanias, although they are more organic than usual. Still, the freedom can have some unintended side effects, such as alternate paths that were no longer relevant by the time I discovered them because I’d already been through the areas they connected to before.
I mentioned Dark Souls a bit ago, didn't I? If hearing word of that notoriously challenging series worries you, fear not; Ghost Song is far from truly punitive, even though it adopts several mechanics associated with the FromSoftware series. For example, you drop experience points when you die and must return to the location of your death (without dying again on the way) to retrieve them. Likewise, when you die you lose a small fraction of your total life, a penalty that accumulates until you recover your experience points. Unlike Souls games, though, these mechanics were just minor annoyances here that soon ceased to have an impact, as they could be reversed at a low cost.
Blue prefers to talk, but she has to fight. Combat in Ghost Song is good and has some interesting nuances. Her blaster attacks deal more damage based on proximity to the opponent, as do headshots. Shoot too much and her cannon will overheat and reduce the rate of fire, but with the weapon red and smoldering, it offers up greater damage for melee attacks. The game balances each disadvantage with an advantage for a different approach, encouraging alternating attacks and taking an active stance in combat.
There are several melee weapons and also blaster modules that give special attacks and serve to vary the gameplay, adjusting to your taste. These consume the energy bar, which automatically recovers little by little, promoting a strategic use of this type of ammunition.
However, I must say that some mini-bosses (read: unique enemies with their own names) disappointed me with their limited movement; I even consider them disposable. There are those that run away from you and then run back to unload their attacks before running away again, creating a weird fight-or-flight cycle. I sometimes ended up turning that very strategy back around to use against these bosses. What’s good for the goose is exceedingly good for the gander, right?
I also encountered a handful of interesting bosses, such as a huge, powerful ogress that spawned in certain rooms as I traversed one area, creating a good sense of pursuit and impending danger. The bosses are acceptable, but when compared to other examples in the Soulsvania genre, most of them are underwhelming. Again, though, there's a lot of freedom in this regard, in the sense that most mini-bosses could be avoided if I just blew right by them.
At the outset of Ghost Song, two difficulty options are offered. Explorer is the easiest, minimizing death penalties and applying other unspecified tweaks. I was intimidated by the warning that the difficulty cannot be changed over the course of the game, but I still opted for Original difficulty. I died a good many times in the first hour, but once I got the hang of it, deaths became uncommon.
Aside from practice, the biggest reason for the smoothing of the difficulty curve is probably the system of accumulating experience to spend on leveling up, which is done at specific locations. Therefore, the evolution of health points, energy, resistance, and even weapon damage does not depend on finding items through exploration as is common in this genre.
As long as I stuck to vaporizing all the nasties that came my way, I leveled at a reasonable frequency. Each level-up is devoted to advancement in one of three areas: GunPower boosts the damage of firearms; Stamina increases the health and physical damage of Blue’s hits; and Resolve increases health (HP), energy, and stamina. It’s not an elaborate system, but it works better than a predetermined evolution in my opinion because it gives a little room for adaptation. Are you dying too fast? Increase Stamina. Use a lot of module weapons? Increase Resolve. Want to try a glass cannon run? Invest everything in GunPower and ignore the rest.
I finished Ghost Song in approximately thirteen hours. The game doesn’t present any completion statistics, and I felt as though I had done pretty much everything I could. In truth, though, I only earned 52% of the game’s trophies, and apparently there’s still a good amount to discover on Lorian V, from items to NPCs, story elements, and at least one optional boss battle.
I have to say that my personal experience with Ghost Song was something greater than the sum of its parts and the star rating I’m about to bestow on it. It's a great Metroidvania in terms of its exploration, atmosphere, but it also highlights the charm of human warmth behind each NPC encounter. This is a poetic and memorable title within one of my favorite genres, and it’s certainly a game that I’d like to come back to in the future.
SCORE: 4 STARS OUT OF 5
PLAY IF YOU LIKE:
• The Metroid series. I think this almost goes without saying, but if you dig any of the Metroid games, you’ll probably dig Ghost Song.
• Narita Boy. Metroidvanias do not get much better (or cooler) than Studio Koba’s poignant love letter to all things cool in the ’80s. Ghost Song comes close to achieving Narita Boy’s greatness, though.
💬 Do you enjoy games that have a philosophical bent, that challenge your mind as well as your reflexes? Let me know down in the comments what YOU think some of those games are!
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I don't know...when is your Fortnite? Maybe it's tomorrow...😏
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