Games worth discovering

A rather mid approach to Metroidvania

836 View2023-04-27

Afterimage (Full Review)

Developer: Aurogon Shanghai

Publisher: Modus Games

Released: 25 APR, 2023

Price: $22 USD

Afterimage is a graphically spectacular and musically calming disappointing effort at a Metroidvania genre, with several faults centered on how you control your character in combat versus increasingly simple boss and monster fights.

The game takes place years after the "Razing" cataclysm nearly ended all of human civilization, while the remaining colonies come under attack.

You play as Renee, a young girl with a loss of memory that returns home to a burnt hamlet. Setting off on her adventure to uncover the truth accompanied by her companion Ifreet. Determined to find uncover the fate of the new world.

Story

Lacking

While the game is primarily a Metroidvania, they attempt to incorporate some story and character development here and there, but it falls so very short.

I understand. The world is virtually in ruins due to the calamity, and humanity's final hope has collapsed; now it's up to you and your friend to figure out why this is all occurring and ultimately help put a stop to it all once and for all.

It's quite straightforward and to the point, so there's not much to anticipate here. While the tale isn't great, it serves as filler, providing you with the information you need to comprehend why you're here and why you're doing what you're doing.

Boss Fights

Unfun

This is all I have to say about the game and the bosses you will face, as well as the optional bosses. They don't feel difficult at all, they get progressively boring.

They appear to be dumbed-down versions of the typical creatures dispersed throughout the various biomes. You'll continually take damage as a result of your inability to dodge their strikes efficiently, and you'll leave the fight wondering if you should feel like you did anything or whether you just wasted your time.

In the above scenario, you can observe a boss encounter in which you must kill a bomber. The movement is generic, and the skills are identical to earlier enemies in the mushroom biome, with a few minor differences, most notably mobility.

I spend the majority of my time trying not to take damage while using the whip's special strike to deflect his explosives back at him and hit him numerous times, and that's it, no phases, no difficulty, just mediocre monotonous gameplay.

It makes no difference which boss fight. They are all ultimately the same. Wait till they jump over you or move around you, then dash through them, deflect their projectiles, and repeat. It's monotonous and lacks entertainment value.

Travelling

Infuriating and a waste of time

We, the players, have unlocked the sites. We should be able to teleport from one location to another at will, without the need for this inconvenient "mechanic."

If you enjoy running through areas for up to 20 minutes and more to get to NPCs to complete quests and doing the same thing over and over as you progress deeper and further through the game with even longer gaps in how far you need to travel to backtrack to town, then this game is for you.

"Do you have the resting potion?"

Potion? I do not, I used the last one that I found earlier in the game.

"The potion you can't craft or buy, but rather find every now and again?"

That's the one!

"Then start walking."

What...? But that would take 20 minutes of backtracking and another 20 minutes to get back to where I currently am. Why is this even a feature? It's punishing.

Level Differentiation

There are some odd connections

Personally, at this stage in the game (5 hours), I'm incapable of revisiting prior spots because I'd presume I'd require an upgrade for stuff like wall climbing or, worse, the teleporting potion. However, I recall the player being able to reach a level 45 zone at the very low level of 10 at some point early in the early stages.

Normally, I am all for a challenge, but you can meander into this region unaware of the danger and be one shot out of nowhere with no chance of counterattack.

I will say that it's nice to have areas with a flashing label telling you the current zone threat, but something a little more threatening would have been much more appropriate to fully showcase how dangerous the area you are entering is.

Example:

A skull and a red lettering. Literally anything, however in this case, the game tosses sparkles at you while you enter a dangerous zone.

You can even enter the dangerous area where you will be one shot you for no reason, no warning even if the area in question is a very low level area. Why?

You'd better hope you saved at a near spirit tree, which are few and far between. Because if you didn't, then it's time to do some long tedious backtracking.

Conclusion

There are better games out there

After the first two hours of playing this game, you get a sense that it doesn't have much else to offer in terms of better gameplay or improvements.

The later game made it quite evident that there was nothing amazing or exciting going on. In fact, the opposite occurred. The game became increasingly tedious as time passed. I was fatigued from spending hours trekking and backtracking back to town to turn in tasks that would allow me to advance farther.

While discussing the depth of the game beyond the two-hour mark, I chatted with numerous players who felt the same way. The bulk of them desired a refund, which most could not obtain due to their excessive time put in the game.

In my honest opinion, play it for an hour and skip a lot of the dialogue, then progress as far as you can and quickly through the first bosses. When the game grows less and less rewarding, you will comprehend how tedious it becomes.

This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

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- Pawkt

Afterimage - A Breathtaking Experience Without Any Guidance

Afterimage is a visually stunning metroidvania set in a massive world full of interesting areas to explore and many secrets to uncover. The story is honestly pretty hard to follow sometimes, but to summarize it, a lot has happened in the past, like conflicts between Goliaths and humans and eventually a huge explosion that wiped out almost everyone. You play as Renee, the only survivor of the attack on her village and her mission to find her lost mentor could change the fate of this broken world. This game has multiple endings, so you can imagine you will only unlock the real ending if you have explored the whole map, but good luck with that, because this world is overwhelmingly massive and finding the right way is going to be a challenge.

Gaming with Joy4K2023-04-28