Ulasan

• gamedeal user

  Apr 26, 2023

  Just popping my review in to balance out some of the silly ones. The game's pretty, the combat feels responsive and fluid, the weapon types are neat. I'd recommend anyone who liked Ori, Dust an Elysian Tail, or Hollow Knight to try it. Positives: - Combat is fluid, responsive and fun, you can even deflect projectiles back at enemies. - Decent weapon variety and you can wield two at once like in Ori. - The map is huge, lots of places to explore. - The artstyle is gorgeous, the enemy and boss designs are neat, all around good looking game. - The music is good, it's not going to stick in your head like Ori's did but it's doing its job and it's doing it well. - The story is there, it's pretty standard for a Metroidvania plot, it works and I'm not here for plot anyway. I do have some gripes though but I don't think they take away from the experience enough to not recommend though they might detract someone from buying it: -Resource-based fast travel is pretty cumbersome, especially with how distant each "bonfire" is, these resources are limited and can't be bought, meaning you have a finite number of fast travels. UPDATE: You can buy the potions to fast-travel anywhere now! -Healing is relegated to relatively rare potions, or the innate heal your character gets from the getgo, but she only gets additional ones later on, quite a bit later on too, meaning you have whatever potions you find +1 heal and only the innate heal restores on death. You have a magic bar, but you don't get a healing spell at least as far as I've gotten. UPDATE: Mentioned above but consumables can be bought now for relatively cheap. -Some enemy animations are pretty ambiguous making you guess where or how to dodge. Not a big deal once you have mobility abilities but early it can be troublesome. -The game doesn't seem to recognise certain inputs (down+attack, jump+attack) at times it's supposed to like for extending jumps. I'm sure it's an issue that can be patched out so it's not that big a deal. UPDATE!: That was a slight translation error as I thought. -The voice acting and dialogue/translation are pretty rough in some spots, if you're like me though that doesn't matter you're in it for the gameplay. -The menu transitions and transitions to the title screen are pretty long. It takes 5 seconds or so to get back to the Load File screen, not a problem normally but if you're speedrunning it can be. On launch it takes about half a minute to get to the title screen as well. If you played any of the inspirations this game has then you kinda know what to expect, it's relatively by the numbers on that end but it's pretty good for what it is, aside from those complaints. Lol. Edit: I play games like this on my Deck which is offline most of the time to save battery so my playtime is weird. Edit 2: The latest patch fixed or cleared upmy major gripes with the game, I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 8, 2023

  First the good, then the bad, you know the drill. The game looks beautiful, from background to character, weapons, magic, enemies, NPCs, everything is quite nice to look at which helps to lessen the frustration of all the bullpoop that is thrown your way but more of that later. It has all the hallmarks a proper metroidvania should have. Vast areas, exploration of said vast areas, abilites that increase your mobility that open up different parts or entirely new areas, leveling system including a Talenttree with skills that have levels too!, a good variety of weapons and magic and gear that sometimes comes with effects like bleed and poison debuffs or dmg changes like "this weapon deals fire dmg", main and sidequests, interesting story and so on and so forth. If you think of something a metroidvania should have, you probably will find it in Afterimage in one shape or another. And that is also the crux about this game, it has everything, but it alway feels half-assed. Talenttree with skills that have sublevels ? Yes, but the increments are so small that you wouldn't notice them unless you put multiple points in the same talent at once. The Talenttree also includes attacks for your various weapons which sounds nice but mostly are attacks that should be a given. Things like being able to hit upwarts or downwards for example. The idea is nice, but the execution mostly leaves you asking yourself whether it was really necessary to do it this way. One would think it's a normal thing to be able to strike upwards while standing or downwards while midair, no ? This leads to the next problem, the combat. Aside from having difficulties to hit aerial enemies because of the aforementioned restrictions in striking directions, the enemy placement itself is in a lot of cases rather irritating. There are a lot of platforming sections in this game, as should be in a metroidvania, but more often than not you're greeted by a flying enemy right in the path of the last small platform to either hit your without being able to dodge or simply bump into you so that you fall all the way down just to do the whole segment again. I understand that games need a certain level of difficulty to be interesting but man, nobody wants that level of buttholery for every damn platforming section. Another problem with the fighting is the telegraphing and dodging. You can dash back and forth but every enemy has contactdmg followed by a healthy knockback. Combined with the lack of telegraphing attacks from basically every enemy and you'll find yourself in a weird overly precautious fighting style of barely getting a hit in and then dashing away twice to see what happens next. This als extends to the bossfights. Big monsters with even bigger hitboxes, no telegraphed attacks with no visible ways to dodge in very small rooms. You'll always just tank whatever attack comes next, heal through it and try to dmg race the foe to death. It's very unsatisfying. Pair that with the fact that after most of those fights you don't get any loot of any significance and you'll very quickly lose any interest fighting or beating any boss unless it's absolutely necessary. The variety of weaons is nice, several close and mid range combat weapons are available early on in the game. Some are slower, some are faster with the usual pros and cons and through the talenttree you'll also get ideas for possible pairings of weapons (you're allowed to equip 2 weapons and 1 spell) for further increase your dmg output. However, it does feel as if weaponupgrades are quite sparse so you'll end up feeling constantly weaker than everybody else so that it's always n uphill battle, some might like that but i would find an even playing field more enjoyable. The third point I want to mention in more detail is the size of the map. It is truly humongous, which on first glance is great. You can run around for hours simply exploring the areas and you'll have plenty to find and look it. However, you'll also get lost, often. You do have a map but other than Area names and a couple markers you can set yourself that thing only shows you rooms and that's about it. Telporters and resting points are shown as well but nothing else. No npcs, no cities, no doors, no elevators (although those are mostly selfexplained but massive "tubes on the map but still) no nothing. With maps as massive as in this game a couple markers (even if it was only names for subterritories in a given area) would greatly help. There's a bunch of other things noteworthy, some of them are: -you pick up money but have nothing truly interesting to spend it on -the mainquest you get in the beginning is so far out in the map that it's kind of hilarious that the devs bothered in the first place to even show you where to go :D -the movement abilities you can get are scattered so far from each other that you can easily look for multiple hours and not find anything which is quite demotivating -resting points are sometimes weirdly positioned so that corpse runs are quite tedious -there's sidequests but doing them feels more like happenstance than an actual part of the game The basic construct for a great game is there, it just needs more full-assing of all the half-assed stuff the devs alrdy put in. I hope for a lot of changes in the future because I'd like to finish the game sooner or later.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 14, 2023

  This game has a lot going for it, but it ultimately drops the ball. This game tries to have challenging, but fair boss fights like Dark Souls, but bad hitboxes, enemies with auto-homing that hit you after you dodge, and some literally undodgeable attacks kill any satisfaction that could be had from winning. It wasn't you that won. It was just luck. The game is so bad at hitboxes, that the game can't even keep its own rules straight. Sometimes enemies deal contact damage, while other times, you HAVE to stand on top of the enemy to avoid its attacks, with no indication whatsoever that contact damage has inexplicably disappeared. Even worse, there's no difficulty curve. The regular enemies are brain-dead the whole way through, and the bosses are curbstomp fights up until a certain point, when all of a sudden they turn into brick walls with no chance to prepare. The other systems are half-baked too. It has a convoluted talent tree, but it's false complexity. Level restrictions stop you from actually specializing in one stat or another, so fans of in-depth character customization won't like it. Those who just want to get into the game won't like it either because you have to hunt and peck for which nodes you can put points into. (You can't tell at a glance). This pleases no one, and I honestly can't think of a worse way to design a talent tree. The talent tree's special attacks you unlock are almost all garbage. Worse to have than not. With greatswords, for example, there's a diving sword thrust where the moment your sword makes contact with the enemy, YOU take damage, and not them. Did the designers never actually use that move?? The rest just lock you in place for a long time and do less damage than animation-cancelling your regular attacks by spamming the jump button. Weapons are similarly half-baked. Each new weapon is always superior to the last, and the cool side-stats or special abilities are never enough to keep an old weapon, which is a massive disappointment. Weapon upgrade potions never get used because the damage boost they give is insignificant, and they're non-renewable. Magic costs such an absurd amount of mp that you can only use it twice at best, so I just forgot about it entirely. On the plus side, the secrets are fun to find, and the movement controls well. Unfortunately, the key hallmark of metroidvanias - secret shortcuts that connect previously far away zones, is lacking because of how spread out everything is.
• gamedeal user

  May 2, 2023

  Easily one of the best metroidvanias together with Aeterna Noctis and Hollow Knight.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 2, 2023

  Afterimage is a massive metroidvania and one of the longest and biggest ones out there. It's full of beautiful maps, very free exploration, and a large number of items and upgrades to find. The movement and combat are similar to the Castlevania games, and I found them quite enjoyable. There are two problems holding this back from being as good as it could've been, though. The first is that the music is rather lacklustre; most of the game's music is completely forgettable, and the Field of Hydro is one of the most surprising and striking areas of the game precisely because it actually has a strong BGM supporting it, so it's a shame the rest of the game doesn't match up. The other, bigger problem is the translation. It's an obvious ESL job full of grammatical mistakes and awkward phrasing all throughout the game, which is frankly bizarre when they went to the trouble of giving it an English dub. The game's story is extremely convoluted, told in many piecemeal fragments spread throughout the game before culminating in large plot dumps towards the end, but because of how the story is told in combination with the rough translation, it's extremely difficult to follow and understand any more than the bare basics of what's going on in the story. I can very much recommend Afterimage for the great aesthetics, the exploration, and the combat all being solid, so it's just a shame that a few elements hold it back from being a true masterpiece.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 25, 2023

  I am just getting started with the game, but I am liking it quite a lot so I am giving it a thumbs up from the get-go. Edit: if the game seems to have low review score is becase for some reason people in asia are leaving negative reviews. It is a mistery to me why they are doing that, the game is good, if you like metroidvanias you will like this one. Good - The art is amazing. - The music is great. - So far combat is good, the controls are good, and you get a forward dash early on, i liked that. - There is a bit of weapon variety, I have now a sword, a whip, a great sword and a scythe. I am a bit hammer fan, i doubt i will find one in this game, be nice though. - You have a selection of 3 languages for the voicing, English, Japanese and Chinese. - This is a huge plus for me: Renee does not talk stupid crap every time you press a button, I wholeheartedly loathe that recent practice in games to make characters talk your ears off with regarded, cringy voice lines. Thanks a lot Aurogon for not doing that crap. - UltraWide support out of the box! Bad: - Talent tree is a bit confusing, takes a while to get used to it. - I have a bunch of items that their descriptions are just lore, not what they actually do if I use them
• gamedeal user

  May 19, 2023

  _Afterimage_ 8/10. Perfect Fit. This game is long. It’s really long. But the game has fast travel unlocked from the start (after the first patch) and traversing areas is satisfying. You have map pins available at the very start and I would recommend using them heavily. I think the game is very pretty although I wouldn’t go so far as “beautiful”. The music is appropriate albeit sometimes a bit generic sounding. None of the tracks ever really stood out to me but they were by no means bad. I think the biggest detractor here is the story. It isn’t bad but it isn’t particularly interesting and sometimes people talk a bit too long. Also, I definitely think the writing suffers from translation quality at times. The good: Finding weapons is exciting. There are five main weapon types plus sub-weapons which are your magic slot. Weapons can have unique skills and/or damage types which can make for fun weapon sets. Side quests, while largely either fetch quests or find-the-npc-again-in-a-different-area add to the game’s pacing, help build out the world, and usually end in “good stuff” and/or cute little stories. They rarely, if ever feel time-waste-y. Exploration is satisfying and rewarding. Platforming segments tend to lead to new gear rather than currency caches. Enemy design is quite varied. There are a few pallet-swap types but even then they will have unique (enough) attacks. I never felt the need to grind for money or xp but also never felt too over powered or underpowered in whatever area felt like progress. The acceptable: The buildcraft in this game is close to being really fun. Each weapon type has unique attacks and unlockable skills through skill trees. You can have two main weapons equipped at a time plus one sub-weapon. Experimenting with different weapons and abilities and combo-ing in and out of skills can be really satisfying. My main issue here is how the game handles stats. Increases are largely through gear and usually in small numbers or percentages that stack. It works, and you _can_ min-max to a degree. But if you want to try out, say a poison whip build, you’re going to scroll through every piece of gear for each slot. Boss fights are fine. I beat most bosses on my first or second try with some exception to end game bosses. My biggest issue here is bosses tend to have a fairly limited attack roster to rotate through. Bosses, largely, felt fairly distinct from one another and some were even pretty cool to fight. There are few boss fights that go on, what I would consider, too long. But I could see this being a downside for some. There is not a “traditional” NG+, 100% the game is intended (and required) to complete in a single save slot. The meh: As far as progression blocking through abilities, it’s pretty straightforward. You’ll see something and either very quickly figure out a way to get to it or know exactly the ability you’ll need to progress. Some abilities really only come up once.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 26, 2023

  It's alright but falls short of expectations

  Chinese people bombing it with negative reviews for no reason to be honest. Yes. There are no iframes, meaning the dodge is basically useless outside of keeping your distance and travelling faster. But not every Metroidvania game has / had a dodge that let you phase through targets. It's a vibrant looking game that functions well, just gotta get used to the inability to dash through enemies like you have been accustom to with recent titles. It's annoying that's about it. 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" called a resting potion. 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. I and a lot of other people have given up trying to put up with this feature. The further you progress into the game, the more monotone the game becomes, the more boring the bosses become. It's so unrewarding and tedious. There are plenty of better games.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 11, 2023

  A hard no, the game is big and the static images and backgrounds look nice but that's about it. The animations are stiff, the story is complete nonsense, enemies are braindead and a lot of the world feels slapped together more than actually designed. It's an absolute pain to get from point A to point B even once you have all the traversal upgrades. Not that you'd really want to, this has been by far the least rewarding Metroidvania I've played my entire life. Most chests have absolutely nothing of value or gear that can randomly drop from enemies but they still require skills from 2/3+ zones further ahead by which point you've already gotten a better weapon. Backtracking is just not rewarding. Enemies as mentioned above are completely braindead and that works in their favor as this game has both contact damage and ridiculous damage buffs to enemies who are higher level than you which you have no way of knowing without getting hit and watching your healthbar disappear. There's something fundamentally wrong when I'd rather take a boss' death laser than touch his pinky. The skill tree is mostly static buffs like the .5 and 1.5% damage or defense you'd see in a Ubisoft game. There are 2 skills for each weapon but some of them are so useless they're downright a debuff. They usually lock you in an animation you can't get out of for a good second or two after the skill stops dealing damage but some of them such as the parry/perfect parry on the greatsword actually still make you take damage even if used correctly. And then there's the daggers which just melt entire bosses in 5 seconds..... Overall I'd recommend avoiding even on sale, the devs need to hire a designer who's actually played a decent metroidvania and reword most of their systems before this game should be considered.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 19, 2023

  The 80% positive rate on this is almost criminal - no this game isn't perfect, but it's still so much better than review scores suggest. 

  Pros

  Starting with the good side of things, the Gameplay is really solid all around. Especially once you get a few abilities, the movement is crisp, and the builds actually felt pretty impactful and were fun to play around with! (Seriously, this is one of the few games I tried out basically every new weapon I picked up to see how its unique skill worked).  Also, the world is massive. Like seriously I don't remember the last time I played a Metroidvania and just kept wandering and wandering for that long with just an endless pouring in of fresh content. And what's really remarkable is that despite this game's size, the enemies never felt like basic reskins of earlier foes. Honestly, in this genre, for that alone Afterimage should be more positively reviewed :P But seriously, this world is massive and absolutely gorgeous. I never got sick of the backtracking parts because the world was always just a treat to look at and wander through. Really solid Metroidvania stage design all around imo.

  Cons

  That said, there's absolutely room for criticism and improvement here, and I do think I understand people's complaints. For one, the first couple areas are kinda mediocre. I get they wanted to keep it simple to introduce the game, but having played a ton of other Metroidvanias, I found the opening areas here to be really lacking. It's almost like around the midpoint of the game, the designers finally were given freedom to make what they wanted to, and it stays pretty much an absolute banger of a game after that.  It's also worth noting in many aspects, this game does re-tread old ground in terms of gameplay - pretty sure every movement upgrade could be found in some other games that I've played just within the past 6 months. However, the execution is still clean - it's fun just to move around the world by the end of it! Also, a lot of the bosses hit me with new and interesting patterns - especially getting into the mid and late game. Definitely the biggest things holding this game back are the writing and soundtrack. Most of the songs are admittedly kinda mediocre, although there are some absolutely phenomenal ones hidden among them. Also, the translation wasn't done all that well for the English version, and I suspect quite a bit was lost along the way. I was still able to piece together the story by the end of the game - and I actually ended up enjoying the story aspect by the end - but wow is it hard to follow for most of the game. 

  Conclusion

  But in spite of all of that, this game is still a really solid recommended from me, especially for people who've played a couple other Metroidvanias before. Sure, Hollow Knight and so on are "better" games overall, but once you've exhausted the ones everyone knows already, this is seriously one to not sleep on. Give it a go!

  Oh btw

  (Also, NG+ is a complete misnaming. You're not replaying the whole map at all - it's literally just a continuation of the story. Unlocking NG+ is NOT the end of the game. I can totally see how people would feel left with a sour taste in their mouth if they missed this.)