After finishing my piece about “Nine Sols”, I thought it would be interesting to do a short form article where I talk about different Metroidvanias, in order to kind of give a survey of where my opinions lie. But one of the games I was writing about I was in the midst of finishing, so as a result I ended up writing way more about “Dark Devotion” than the rest of them
I had considered just doing a longer piece on just “Dark Devotion” but the game wound up not rewarding that level of scrutiny. I decided this piece will just be a longer blurb about “Dark Devotion” and then quick two paragraph summaries of the other games that are more distant in my mind.
These are games that I mostly have positive thoughts on so by no means complete, just a few different metroidvanias I think that people should check out.
I did want to comment on a factor I see in many of the “underrated” titles. Both Metroidvania and Souls fans tend to be genre purists and love to police what falls in their specific genres, so many of the games that use roguelike elements and are classified as Metroidvanias tend to be avoided by a lot of fans of these genres.
While I definitely understand the roguelike fatigue, I think we should consider more whether the game uses roguelike elements in a way that makes it a unique experience instead of dismissing these titles outright. I would definitely be excited for a new soulslike that has crafted level design but when you can’t really tell, it becomes a preference for a more expensive product like only drinking organic coffee or something. I also prefer the thought that each level is not the result of procedural generation but am skeptical whether one can always tell the difference.
Dark Devotion
To explain my mixed feelings about “Dark Devotion”, the contrived metaphor that comes to mind is one of those pointillist paintings by Georges Seurat. At first, you’re astonished that a realistic scene could come out of these hundreds of paint daubs. However after staring at the resulting scene for too long, all you see are the brushstrokes.
I was initially turned off by the game as it appears to be another “Dead Cells” clone. This appearance is deceptive in that the levels are not randomly generated but the hub is similar to “Dead Cells”.
The game starts out rough. Your character, a woman forced as punishment to become a templar warrior, is seriously underpowered at the beginning of the game. Among other issues, her stamina is comically restrictive, often forcing you to rely on a lot of hit and run techniques to survive. While a gradual power curve is great at the start of a game, “Dark Devotion’ starts out too far down in the particular curve. But as I got over the initial difficulty, I found the game had a uniquely dour and oppressive atmosphere that captured what I liked in my dark fantasy.
Part of this was an authentic feeling of dungeoneering, not only are traps a factor in the oppressive darkness that define the early part of the game, but diseases which act as debuffs. These diseases can pile up and your character removes them by praying at altars which as well will sometimes grant consumables. These mechanics and the emphasis in combat on doing more damage through crits made the game feel closer to a classic action rpg than a newer soulslike.
Another thing that appealed to me was the combat which felt closer to earlier Fromsoft titles. Not only is it unusually strategic, but there’s a refreshing slowness and needing to choose the correct moment to strike instead relying solely on reflexes. This leads to some great boss design particularly in one optional boss.
Elemiah, the crow lady has to be one of the more inspired bosses I have seen in a 2d soulslike game. Elemiah wields a katana and looks like a bloodborne npc so the expectation might be a frenetic and busy move set. Instead Elemiah fights with supernatural stillness, staring you down and then, with light ferocity piercing you with flicks of her oversized katana. The rhythm of the fight is like that of a classic samurai film with hypnotic pauses and sudden bursts of deadly violence.
The fight reminds me of the lost sinner one of the most interesting Fromsoft bosses who fought with weird and off-kilter rhythms instead of frenetic combos. The one disappointment of the boss fight was that when I got her weapon it fell into the games pattern of giving out slow 2-handed weapons instead of letting me attack with her speed. This actually fits into a classic pattern of Fromsoft enemies dropping inferior versions of their weapons.
Most of the bosses don’t go anywhere near this level of quality but a majority have tricky and unusual rhythms. Another 2d soulslike which had a similar level of quality in boss design would be the black and white “Unworthy” although Dark Devotion never maintains as long of periods of consistent quality as that game.
I was not only impressed by the boss fights but how “Dark Devotion” pulls off a change in tone reminiscent of the original “Dark Souls”. In the original “Dark Souls” there’s an exciting change in atmosphere as your character progresses to the sunny and white cathedrals of Anor Londo after the drab and grey early levels of the game. “Dark Devotion” pulls off a similar change of pace by having you enter a cathedral and follow a jester who narrates and embellishes your actions as you progress through a gauntlet of individual combat encounters. These prove that you’re worthy of being invited into a second hub which is for the greatest champions of the church.
The fact that the change in atmosphere was accomplished with well-done but fairly simplistic pixel art impressed me about the game and had me considering the game in a more serious light but playing through the endgame made me realize that “Dark Devotion” deserves better than a mixed score on Steam but is a deeply flawed game on many levels.
One of the biggest flaws is its use of roguelite mechanics for unlocking starting gear and powering up. Although this doesn’t ruin the rest of the game, it adds very little. “Dark Devotion” has a slightly annoying structure where you choose starting gear that unlocks very slowly and feels very unbalanced. For instance, I had unlocked a ton of slow two-handed weapons and didn’t unlock a decent sword and board combo until almost the endgame. The focus on strategic combat might have been the reason for this. However, many times I felt hobbled fighting enemies with such deliberate speed, as they would interrupt my colossal swings and stunlock me .
A lot of the best weapons can be found by exploring but most of these are not available to unlocked in your central hub. This is because while the game gives you the option of fast traveling back to the point closest to the boss, you’re encouraged to try to build up an advantage by repeatedly exploring the levels which are fixed and recurrent.
This brings up two separate issues, one as Iron Pineapple brought up in his review linked here, that because the game isn’t a true roguelite, it becomes tedious to explore the same levels over and over again. However, my issues were different.
Perhaps out of my need to “git gud”. I usually would arrive at the boss ragged, having escaped some of the traps by the skin of my teeth. The game’s tougher enemies share the boss’s habits of mixups and oddly timed attacks and one monstrosity with a burning halberd would consistently marr my runs. This is also in a game where taking damage not only saps your health bar but multiplies your debuffs. It was because of this that I usually preferred to fight the boss with one of underwhelming opening weapons and a fresh health bar.
The endgame was where the game’s focus on tricky and difficult bosses began to exhaust me. The problem is when every boss starts to rely on a tricky and strategic combat timing, the lack of variety in the design becomes obvious. Thus, by the time I got to a dual boss fight much like Ornstein and Smough, I started to lose interest in the game.
“Dark Devotion” is greater than the sum of its parts but ends up being lacking. Nevertheless, considering how much more I got out of it than much more polished attempts at 2d soulslikes, I think it’s quite an achievement.
Interestingly the developer Hibernian Workshop just released a game last year that, while still being a roguelite, is the polar opposite of “Dark Devotion”. I haven’t checked out the bright and colorful “Astral Ascent” but it looks very interesting.
Other Interesting Metroidvanias
Chasm
This SNES styled Metroidvania does an interesting thing with roguelike mechanics, making each new game a separate seed, with the intention that Chasm could be played multiple times as each world has a randomized layout. Of course, the backlash against the glut of indie roguelikes leads a lot of people to mistakenly bash this game but Chasm is a well-designed and charming Metroidvania.
Despite not being a soulslike, Chasm actually has much more interesting combat encounters than most soulslikes. Whenever you encounter a new enemy, it’s a challenge to understand and respond to their moveset. There is a bit of blandness in the randomized world design but Chasm is a much better and more distinctive game than its critics would give it credit for.
Shadow Complex
Shadow Complex can feel comically bland with its very early 2000’s story of a military badass trying to rescue his girlfriend from a non-specific terrorist cell hidden in a national park but the game actually is a sneakily great Metroidvania.
Similar to Half-Life 2, each set piece is a problem that subtly guides you to a solution and leaves you feeling ingenious in your inevitable discovery. While the game seems to be more of a cinematic action game of its era done in the style of a 2d Metroidvania, there’s a lot to enjoy here especially if the cliched central story is ignored.
Astalon: Tears of the Earth
A game that always comes up on underrated metroidvania lists Astalon is probably the best metroidvania on this list. What this game nails that so few other metroidvanias do right, is the sense of wonder and discovery of secrets. The feeling in Astalon where you discover a whole new area by jumping through some blocks which seemed solid, sparked a nostalgic joy in me that I haven’t felt since I played the original Zelda and would hear the memorable sting when you found a secret.
Astalon actually has similar problems with “Dark Devotion” where the power curve in the beginning is challenging. The game ties even the speed your character moves with your progression. This makes the game’s protagonists much less fun to control than they eventually become. This is always a bad idea in a game, because how a character controls at the beginning of the game is how I make my initial impressions of whether a game is worth playing. But if you get past this point in the game, the game is one of the best old-school Metroidvanias in my opinion.
A Robot called Fight
Another “Roguevania” (an abbreviation that started with “Dead Cells” but hasn’t caught on) is “A Robot Called Fight” which captures the atmosphere of “Super Metroid” better than any other new metroidvania game I’ve played. Unfortunately, because the world is procedurally generated, it feels a lot less likely to catch on with the Metroidvania crowd which seems to prize genre purity.
HAAK
A lot of times feel is enough to get one hooked on a new Metroidvania, and “Haak” a 2022 Chinese entry has a slick and enjoyable feel to the controls. Your character is kind of an enigmatic superhero exploring a ruined post-apocalyptic city.
I’ve only played about two hours of the game as of writing this but so far it seems promising. As I criticized “Nine Sols”, the developers of Haak don’t seem to understand the chill vibes of a Metroidvania. I’m not sure if it’s a generational divide but it seems many newer metroidvanias never want to let you just explore a world, you’re instead being hustled to checkpoints and through platforming puzzles or worst of all combat gauntlets. “Death’s Door” was a isometric Soulslike that was made annoying by an absurd amount of these gauntlets. Here’s hoping Haak chills out a bit so I can enjoy the great controls and rain-soaked cyberpunk world.