Reseñas

• gamedeal user

  Dec 21, 2015

  I don't generally recommend things in a public place, because it seems a little pointless, but I hope this helps someone make a decision. I've played every 2D Metroid, I've dabbled in more recent Castlevanias, I've done a lot of platformers. ESA managed to hold my attention for over 75 hours of exploration, trying somewhat challenging things, and more exploration. This is Hempuli's first commercial release to my knowledge, but he spent about 3 years tinkering with this game and trying to make it better. This is a better-designed metroidvania than Super Metroid was. There's no arbitrarily huge amount of health that you need to recover by grinding off of little enemies spawning out of pipes. You find a save, you get your health back, you fan out in multiple directions and see if you can find anything. The only real negative I can think of when it comes to ESA's exploration is that you don't find some little missile pack buried in each room, stuffed in a wall. You don't get that momentary gratification and pointless increase to the capacity of a weapon you'll never use. Instead, when you find some health or a bonus item, you feel massively more rewarded. That's not for everyone, but it's certainly for me. I see a lot of complaints about ESA stemming from its difficulty. "This boss has too many phases", "I don't have enough health", "I don't know where to go", all that kind of deal. The boss pacing definitely feels off in a couple of places. Some of the earlier bosses are decidedly more challenging than later ones feel at the time. The reason this doesn't bother me is because each boss actually feels very unique. Each boss has its own mechanics and feels complex in its own way, aside from a couple which are designed to teach you basic mechanics and one that acts as an item progression gate. Health, and dying a lot, are also not issues. There's an easy mode available directly from the start if you can't progress on normal, and it increases your maximum health, lowers enemy damage, and starts you with more maximum health. ESA also does a great job of directing you to where you need to be if you interact with terminals you find. Similar to Zero Mission, ESA will explain where you need to go through highlighting the target square on your map for you, which continues for quite a long time to allow you to continue progressing and exploring on the way to your destinations. You can also get around the game much faster than it initially seems due to the eventual introduction of a quick travel mechanic, eliminating a lot of pointless backtracking. Save points are generally positioned well and are used to prepare you for a boss so that you have a minimal run to get back to a boss. There are very few exceptions to this. The amount of optional content in ESA is also very impressive. There are secrets hidden everywhere, optional upgrades you can find, and with the introduction of a recent patch an entirely new area to explore. On top of this, once you've beaten the main game and reached an ending, you may have some questions about things you have found in the past that seem to have had no effect. This is where your postgame starts, and there are plenty of clues about how to progress postgame that can be found simply by continuing to investigate each unfilled square on your map. The secrets of ESA are not like a missile expansion hunt you would experience in a Metroid game. They are targeted and explained if you look carefully. There are only a scarce few entirely self-contained bonus rooms having little to no indication of their existence; almost all the things you want to find have a directing point somewhere. The postgame secrets are handled in an entirely different way than the traditional metroidvania style and require a different mindset to continue delving into each step in the chain of hidden information, which is a wonderful changeup so late into the game. The soundtrack was also handled very well. Every track fits into the area it belongs in and helps set the mood particularly well. The instrumentation used in ESA's soundtrack really goes well with the style of game and manages to call up memories of old SNES titles while not being some shameless ripoff. There wasn't a single instance where I felt "Oh, this track is obviously inspired by another game". My single complaint with ESA's soundtrack is the lack of variance in boss music. There's one track used for almost every boss in the game, and it became noticeable after a while. I definitely would have appreciated a bit of variance in the boss music, even if it was just one extra track on some bosses. Luckily, this isn't a huge issue, because most bosses are intense enough or go down quick enough once you know their patterns that the music doesn't feel repetitive. The graphics are the only point where it starts to break down for me a little. For the most part, ESA functions visually, but there were definitely times where I felt that the player character was blending into the background a bit too much. The low-pixel style also impacted how enemies and environments appeared, and more than once I was a bit confused as to what I was looking at until I took a second to inspect it. This isn't a major issue, but I would personally have appreciated more pixel density for ESA so that I could better interpret what was going on in each area. It's easy enough to tell what you're looking at in 95% of the game, but that other 5% is what I wish had more to it. That said, each area in ESA is quite visually distinct and the environments never felt samey or repetitive. Each room, even, is visually memorable, which is pretty impressive. Hempuli's put a lot of time into making ESA great. Any time a bug has come up, it's been fixed as soon as possible. There's still a persistent issue with some people running the Mac version where the game runs at decreased speed or lags, but from what I understand this might be fixed soon with a change in the Wine/Wineskin wrapper and is a result of a recent Mac OS update. Linux, unfortunately, does not jive with Multimedia Fusion. At the time of this review, your best bet is going to be playing this on Windows or using a dual-boot (which I guess people might have anyway because of Linux?), and the Mac version may be improved pretty soon to have few or no issues. There's one issue in particular where the Mac version will not support a controller natively, but using Joy2Key or any other program you like is a very quick workaround for this, and the keyboard controls function totally fine on their own. As far as the content of the game itself goes, bugs that have been reported to be negative for people have been ironed out pretty quickly, and nothing currently stands out as being broken. This is a game which has been examined and improved upon consistently since its release, and I really can't recommend it enough. Hempuli knocked it out of the park and has done all that was required of him as a dev, plus a free update with an entirely new area and its own secrets. Some people seem put off by ESA because of how it looks and from the apparently intimidating difficulty, but I promise that even a little patience goes a long way. I hope those who pick this up decide to keep at it even if a boss initially feels impossible or exploration feels initially unrewarding, because it is ultimately worth it.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 27, 2015

  This is pretty much your best bet if you're searching for a metriodvania game on Steam as of this review... 9/10 Just a moment of your time, if I may: Steam is filled to BURSTING with absolute garbage! I've been through nearly 5000 games on my recomendations queue, and I've only been barely interested enough in 200 of them to put on my wishlist. If you're like me, and completely jaded by misleading tags, lack of gameplay in trailers, early access games that have been abandoned, ( A flood of RPGMaker, visual novels, poorly drawn anime dating sim, choose your own destiny, point and click, simulation, "survival horror", etc.) games that you are unable to filter out!!! (seriously steam, why the **** can't I filter this trash out?!)... Then your poor brain deserves this. **Edit: Dear LORD of ALL that is HOLY and good in the universe, they've added a filter to the recommendations queue!! Thank you Lord Gaben! The point is, this game is a deep breath of fresh air in an ocean of complete excrement. +tight controls +FULL controller support, even allowing you to use the D-pad or the left thumb stick for movement. So I don't understand the "Partial controller support" on the game's features. (And you bet your *** I'm using the XBox One Controller's D-Pad) +rewarding discoveries +brilliant and appropriate music +awesome boss battles +extended end game content -there aren't enough talented people making games for Steam Buy it at FULL price, because it's already being sold short!
• gamedeal user

  Apr 26, 2015

  buy this game if you like: -metroid -exploring -challenge -really crazy puzzles/riddles don't buy this game if you don't like: -dying -getting lost -cryptic (but solvable) riddles
• gamedeal user

  May 8, 2017

  There's some good stuff to be found in Environmental Station Alpha, but unfortunately the game ended up losing my interest a few hours in. Despite ticking many of the right Metroidvania boxes, it was mostly the smaller nuances of the moment to moment gameplay that ended up turning me off. First of all there's the art design. I'm not personally a big fan of pixel art once it starts getting too low-fi, but ESA looks pretty good regardless. I think the visual style of the game nails the ultra-retro vibe quite well. The problem comes with how this ties into gameplay. ESA doesn't do a great job of clearly deliniating different elements of the game world from one another, partially because of the lack of detail, but partially because the art direction mixes many similar shades together to the point where things that should pop out just don't. Platforms you can stand on, foreground vs background elements, and even some enemies suffer from this problem. It isn't a gamebreaker, but I found myself running into enemies I thought were background elements and falling through blocks I assumed were solid more times than I consider acceptable in a game like this. Then there's the handling of progression and exploration. Most well designed Metroidvanias reward players who remember the locations of locked doors or inaccessible paths once they obtain the upgrade required to bypass them. Generally speaking, even if these pathways require multiple upgrades to navigate, you gate them off with the most difficult to obtain one first. That way the player is always rewarded for remembering the location and returning with the required powerup. ESA, by comparison, has several instances in which backtracking across the map mid way through the game only allows you to progress one or two screens further than last time, only to plant another progression blocker in front of you that requires something else to bypass. Certain elements of exploration and backtracking are punished in this regard rather than incentivised, with no way for the player to know that they should've waited to obtain more upgrades before coming back. The controls and moment to moment gameplay in ESA are more or less good, but certainly not great. Double jumping, swinging, and shooting underwater after getting a certain upgrade can all feel pretty awkward and fiddly to execute at times. It certainly doesn't have the fluid, buttery smooth gameplay that you want out of a movement-heavy platformer, but it's not terrible either. I will commend the bosses for being very well designed around the game's control scheme, and overall I found them to be the most enjoyable part of the experience up to a point. The same can't necessarily be said for the regular enemies, however, with some of them being so bad as to simply charge at you and then stand inside your sprite until you shoot down at the floor to kill them. The adversaries with more fun movement and AI patterns are almost wholesale clones of Metroid enemies, and their stage placement sometimes feels haphazard as opposed to carefully considered. What ultimately made me decide to put the game down was the age-old problem that often kills my motivation to carry on with a title: the feeling that it was wasting my time. There were a few minor instances of this earlier on when failing jumps required me to backtrack across a screen or two largely devoid of challenge to reattempt them, but upon getting to an (otherwise very fun and memorable) boss that required me to go through two phases before getting to the part that was giving me trouble -- the first of which required me to sit around waiting until the boss revealed its weak point -- I decided I'd put enough time into ESA. I adore a good challenge, but I have little patience for games that force me to sit, wait, and repeatedly progress through trivial challenges before being allowed to reattempt the fun part. It's a shame, because up until that point I'd been happy to press on with the game on the strength of the boss battles alone. Overall, I'd give ESA a mixed recommendation if I could. It captures the retro style it's going for very well despite the issues with visual clarity. The music is fitting, the art is neat, and as far as Metroid clones go this one does a similarly good job as Axiom Verge at evoking the same kind of amtosphere. The bosses -- time-wasting issues aside -- are incredibly good, with fun designs and interesting mechanics that challenge you to master their patterns and respond appropriately. Unfortunately it just has a lot of rough edges, lacking the tightness of a truly good Metroidvania both in terms of its controls and level design. I'll admit that I probably have higher standards than most when it comes to the genre, so take that into consideration when evaluating the helpfulness of this review, but compared to many of the Metroidvanias released within the last few years ESA just didn't hit the mark for me. It's almost there, but not quite.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 8, 2019

  Environmental Station Alpha is a criminally unnoticed game, and on the surface it's not that surprising why. When people think of indie sci-fi styled metroidvanias nowadays they'd probably think of Axiom Verge, which has a far flashier pixelart aesthetic and introduces a novel 'glitching' mechanic. ESA plays it far closer to home on the metroidvania side of things, but nails certain aspects of the genre that many other games do not. What truly sets ESA apart however is that it is actually a game of two genres, where the gameplay in both genres is realised almost to their full potential; only a few crucial steps from being a true masterpiece. It's a game that delivers long after you think you're done with it, and transitions between genres so drastically that by the end you're playing a completely different game than from what you started with. The premise of ESA is simple: explore an abandoned space station to find out what happened. Exploration starts at a slow pace, in no small part to the fairly slow movement speed and lack of a dash for a considerable part of the game. Thankfully each area and individual room feels unique and keeps exploration engaging, and the wonderfully made soundtrack adds to the atmospheric experience. The game is also challenging and refuses to hold your hand - your low health pool combined with the abundance of enemies and the lack of health recovery apart from specific save or healing points means that exploration is often tense and cautious. Many of the upgrades common to the metroidvania genre are present - a dash, grappling hook, charge shot, and so on - but to the game's credit these do feel well-designed and well-utilised. The dash, for example, has invincibility frames built in which enables greater versatility in combat and later has application in platforming, while the grappling hook takes momentum into account which feels satisfying to use and is utilised to great advantage by the game. Even something like the Rough Map was useful for mapping out those remaining hidden rooms scattered across at the end of the game[spoiler], yet also gave a false sense of the amount of content in the game and how much was still to come[/spoiler]. Particular praise goes towards the boss design; a surprisingly strong point of ESA. Bosses are quite abundant, blocking access to significant upgrades or at suitable events in the story. They are also surprisingly difficult compared to other metroidvanias, yet are always fair and never frustrating. Many bosses follow the archetype of being invincible with short vulnerable phases in between; however this never becomes tedious as each bosses' attack patterns are varied and challenging. The best part of their design is that they test you on how well you understand the upgrades to movement and combat that you have accumulated so far - [spoiler]the Overgrowth forces you to use your recently-acquired grappling hook to escape damage, while the Robed Statue has attacks that require the usage of the dash i-frames to navigate through them safely[/spoiler]. Your limited health pool is another factor as it means that no bosses can simply be tanked without needing to learn their patterns, and keeps the tension of the battle high as you are always only a few mistakes from death. I do wish that there was more than one boss theme though; as much as that theme seriously bangs. The main issue I took with the metroidvania aspect of the game was that much of it actually felt quite linear. Areas are explicitly gated off, stating outright that certain upgrades are required to reach them. There's a nearly fixed order of bosses you defeat and items you acquire all the way to the end of the game. The exception to this is the vast number of secret areas, but early on many of these appear to have no purpose whatsoever. Additionally, these secrets fall into the trap of having little to no indication of their existence other than the map, and often require blindly shooting the walls of surrounding rooms in the hopes of finding a hidden path. Perhaps the problem of linearity is due to the lack of mechanics present in similar games, such as currency, weapon upgrades, or alternate forms of damage entirely; and in turn there is no need to justify the existence of side paths to facilitate these. However, the metroidvania is only one half of the game. After defeating the main boss, you'll almost certainly have a number of uncollected cartridges, an incomplete map, and unresolved questions when piecing the terminal dialogue together. This all hints at the post-game content, which is an extremely deep rabbit hole that is altogether rewarding, mind-melting and perhaps a little disturbing. Here ESA almost shifts genre into a puzzle game[spoiler]; most prominently indicated by a cipher that masks much of the dialogue, and a large number of environmental riddles. I found deciphering the text to be great fun and encouraging the use of a pen and paper, and the riddles that close off the next part of the game were challenging to figure out, yet not obtuse enough to be frustrating for the most part. In between these are multiple new areas and a few more extremely well-made and challenging bosses - the true final boss deserves special mention for bringing many gameplay mechanics together. To cap it off is a prevailing atmosphere of horror that culminates at the very end of the game in a satisfying fashion. The complaints I have with the individual puzzles are quite brief. I wish there was a way to bookmark rooms or view them in greater detail from the map, so that I wouldn't need to blindly revisit every room in the hopes that I could stumble upon the one I thought was vaguely relevant. I felt the partial cipher given at the start might have the whole thing a bit too trivial, although that may be an unpopular opinion. I wish there was feedback in bypassing the laser in the final area of the game - there is no visual difference when you have the solution compared to anything else. Perhaps the greatest issue is how the metroidvania and puzzle aspects feel so separate from each other, and never interact in any significant way. Hours may be spent retreading the station in order to solve environmental puzzles in the post-game, only for the next step to be to solve even more such puzzles. Conversely, the sections featuring combat or exploring new areas are fairly infrequent. Even the story feels like it's told in separate parts; while it's serviceable as a whole there is very little connection between the virus in the main game and the supernatural elements of the post-game. As much content the game has, it still feels like it could benefit from [i]even more[/i] content such that the pacing between the two aspects feel more balanced. Maybe some enemies or bosses could be added to the final area so that it isn't solely focused on puzzles. Maybe the game would benefit from more dialogue to tie the two main story elements together; this could also be in the alien language so that there is enough information to go by without requiring the need for a partial cipher. While I appreciated the horror atmosphere, the game never quite took full advantage of it and the end was all too brief; expanding the last area to be a full-on horror experience would make it truly memorable.[/spoiler] Regardless, none of these complaints take away from my recommendation. Metroidvania fans will find enjoyment particularly in the boss design, while puzzle fans will appreciate the depth of the post-game. It should be said however that both of these aspects are quite challenging, and you'll certainly need a degree of skill in both genres in order to have a less frustrating time. With that in mind, and at twenty plus hours on average in order to fully complete the game, Environmental Station Alpha is very much worth the asking price. It's surprising how much this unassuming game lingered in my mind for such a long time after completing it.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 16, 2019

  The layout of a metroidvania can have a huge impact on how it feels to play. Just look at the GameBoy Advance Castlevanias for evidence of that, the more twisting and sectioned off they were, the less people liked them. Environmental Station Alpha is going to feel like that for the first few hours, blocking your paths with a dizzying array of barriers and gaps to usher you along the intended route. It’s pervasive enough that it might seriously frustrate your efforts to explore, and that’s not the only aggravation I ran into in my journey. But if your threshold for that is high, I must admit you’ll get a creative and surprisingly challenging entry in the genre here. Environmental Station Alpha was a research base carved out of an asteroid to aid scientists in studying alien biomes. It was a wildly successful venture until a sudden catastrophe somehow killed the entire crew without explanation. The powers that be were content to just leave the place floating derelict, at least until recently when they started picking up a new signal from its spooky halls. To finally get to the bottom of this mystery, they send you, a survey robot, to check it out. Nothing about this mission is routine, of course, and you end up plunged into the very bowels of an abandoned station overrun with loads of inhospitable critters. If you can survive long enough, you might just be able to uncover what happened to the long departed crew, and it may not be at all what you’re expecting. That’s a bigass if, though. ESA kicks you right into the action with a pair of bosses in the opening minutes of the game, and only ratchets things up from there. Your bot starts with only a few points of health and a very short-range blaster, so until you rack up several upgrades combat is going to be risky and punishing. You don’t even get anything from fighting besides relief and the occasional barrier opening, either. Bosses tend to have long life bars and intense patterns you can hardly be expected to handle the first time you see them. And if that wasn’t enough, the game is rife with traps and hazards you have to brave to progress, like the volcanic zone that slowly kills you that you HAVE to enter more than once before getting the item that mitigates it. The direct threats are bad enough, but ESA contains some design decisions that can exacerbate that in a big way. The worst of these are the many, many dead-ends you’re going to encounter in the first few hours of the game, gated off by powers you don’t have, mechanics yet unexplained, or just red herrings that let you see into rooms you can’t access yet. Some can be ludicrously frustrating, like the sealed door I backtracked to after getting the item to open it, only to find another door sealed with a different item right behind it. ESA is more than happy to let you battle through tough rooms and overcome brutal platforming challenges for absolutely no gain, discouraging exploration through a combination of high difficulty and poorly-signposted gates. I won’t lie, this game felt like it hated me for the first few hours, and I still find myself getting heated from time to time in ways that most platformers don’t affect me. But I kept going, buoyed by the many things ESA gets right. The mystery is meted out to you on terminals and takes several surprising turns, especially as you learn just how varied the biomes on the station are. Several of the upgrades like the hookshot and dash can (and must) be used in very creative ways, giving you unprecedented mobility if you can master them. I also found the atmosphere very compelling, even if it does lift from classic Metroid to a hilarious degree and the pixel art tends to be so lo-res it can be hard to tell exactly what you’re looking at. I’m a little hesitant to give this one any sort of strong recommendation, but ultimately I’ve found Environmental Station Alpha to be one of the more compelling metroidvanias in my library. It won’t be compelling for everyone, owing to the steep difficulty curve and how obnoxiously it pushes it. But even as painful as some of those challenges are, I can see they’re smartly designed and make finding your way in this game more gratifying than in most. You’ll need to overlook a lot of shortcomings here, make no mistake, but the highs tend to be a lot higher than the lows are low, and for the creepy sci-fi adventure being offered here that’s good enough for me. Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/11322459/]curation page[/url]!
• gamedeal user

  Jan 16, 2020

  [h1]Simplistic visuals camouflage deep layers of complexity[/h1] This is going to be cautionary Positive review warning about many gameplay caveats. I got close to writing a Negative and highlighting positive elements but yesterdays patch, after years of hiatus, convinced me otherwise. Rewarding a good deed with another kinda deal. Made by a Hempuli, with help from Noby in music and Joonas & Niilo in sound FX department, an all Finnish team. He is the creator of recent and more known Baby is You and co-creator of more famous Noita. ESA, as his first commercial release is an aesthetically charming metroidvania telling a familiar story of [i]things gone wrong[/i] in a huge but now abandoned research station and events leading up to that. Artistically and mechanically it could be described as a mix between Hero Core (amazing free indie game) and Super Metroid, although HC is even more pixelated and uses only 2 colors. Noticed an influence from Nifflas, who received a special thanks in the credits, a well known indie developer who specializes in huge 2D exploration platformers with emphasis on story and hidden Easter eggs. Something ESA has in abundance. Although the pixelization may turn many people off it's actually very well made. Each element (scenery, enemies, pickups, UI) is instantly recognizable owes to simplistic but very functional and clean design. You'll never find yourself struggling with supporting elements often seen in this genre. Map screen has two layers of detail. Simple one offers great overview of general room distribution and type, their interconnections and layout; while detailed one features information about collectibles. Save points and teleporters are plentiful and well spaced apart while sole penalty for death is a quick respawn at previous save point. Map is gigantic, consisting of some 10 distinctly different but familiar biomes: high-tech, rock and sand, jungle, underwater, ancient temple, lava, etc. Many, many rooms lie hidden behind destructible walls, most often containing seemingly useless collectibles but occasionally an upgrade too. Speaking of upgrades there are 14 of them and each one enables more freedom in movement or increased firepower. There are so many you will get overwhelmed at certain point, that's a given. And I haven't even mentioned Puzzles yet. Ah yes the Puzzles. They broaden the game quite significantly. Beating the lengthy main plot while exploring roughly 90% of the map will result in you experiencing only ~50% of the game. The optional Puzzles is where things get more interesting and much more harder, both in decrypting (figuratively and later literary) mysteriously written text and punishing increase of combat difficulty. This is also where the game takes a turn for the worse I'm afraid. * * * Leading up to the main boss fight, after already defeating a dozen well designed bosses, things are relatively straight forward with terminals guiding you to the next area. There were two occasions where despite being guided I got hopelessly stuck because either unused, hence unknown, mechanic was required (hookshot into ceiling opening) or finding a secret room through a fake wall (upper left shaft in Temple area) was needed. Had to resort to a guide that reads like a book (only one available) and I hated it. The other thing you need to worry about is very high difficulty in later boss fights (still man plot). Requires mastery of movement which consists of double-jump, swinging on a rope, and dashing - all executed in perfect harmony just to survive unforgiving boss attack patterns. It's more than a fingerful constantly executing 3 different techniques on a cue. More famous recent game, Celeste, has same problem but that was its appeal. In here it comes down like a lightning bolt. Expect lots of repetitive demoralizing trial and error while your fingers get twisted in knots. Luckily, regular enemies do not pose a threat especially with save points around the corner to refill your health. It's the Boss fights that get you. Sadly there is one more element that further worsens them: you main and only weapon. It's probably the most whimpy weapon ever designed. It fires a weak beam in one of 4 directions a short length in front of you. You'll have to explore to upgrade it so it can charge up to deal more damage, explore far more to get a wide triple beam, and use a guide level of exploration to permanently fire charged beams. Unfortunately, its strongest variant still feels weak and clunky against bosses. * * * After defeating the ludicrously difficult final Boss consider the early game completed. What is left it to collect those useless items I mentioned before, only they are not useless at all. In fact some unlocks super overpowered movement technique except it's not OP because it's essential for the bosses you are yet to encounter. Naturally most are hidden behind unmarked fake walls for which the max upgraded weapon is of critical time saving importance. At least the holes in map screen do a good job at revealing potential undiscovered rooms, but forget about those on outside border. Then there are the Puzzles, conveyed via numerous terminals scattered about. They vaguely explain locations you have to visit and actions to perform to reveal a secret. So vague you'll need to observe every sprite carefully in each of the ~500 map tiles in hopes to recognize what the puzzle you memorized was telling about, in a completely other area of the map. Memorized by yourself because there is no in-game feature to review puzzles or any kind of manual map notes available to you. Now consider there are multiple concurrent puzzles running in parallel and you have a recipe for mental chaos. Relax, worst is yet to come. Later puzzles are written in ancient alien alphabet you must decipher on your own! The decipher key requires OP movement, which requires guide. And it's only the beginning. After decoding it (manually every time because out of 14 upgrades translator isn't one of them) you get involved into more in-depth set of cryptic puzzles that'll make your skin dry out. Only to be rewarded by even more difficult Boss fights. The only real reward for all your efforts (even with a guide) is you get to see a new ending with few small variations thrown in for good measure. It's telling that the latest content update from four years ago still hasn't been incorporated into the "complete" guides. Only one Japanese dude dared to investigated enough mention it. Google translate FTW or I'd still be stuck @ 102% completion (out of max 203%). I myself pieced info from 3 different guides, it's that convoluted. * * * It's not as bad as I make it sound, is just my own nitpicking nature sees all the little cracks instantly and they grow in size with time. Can't help it. A bit frustrating to see same mistakes being repeated over and over by different developers not learning from mistakes of their older colleges. It could have been perfect with slight adjustments to map traversal, lower end-game boss difficulty, translator item, in-game puzzle tracker, and good main weapon. First 1/3 of the game is enjoyable and almost perfectly paced. Traversing early areas can get a bit repetitive because of poorly placed teleporters and one-way passages. After that Boss fights get more difficult and guides become a must, ruining immersion and sense of accomplishment. It's completable on your own if you invest the time but the rewards make it a questionable endeavor. Now that you are aware game is difficult, half action half puzzle, requires manually written notes, needs great deal of time, patience, persistence and tedium tolerance then you are in great luck if you fit the bill. It will be your Heaven of Earth and I must say I envy you a little bit. In the meantime I will hold hope that ESA 2, which I learned yesterday is in development for some time, shall bring the much needed gameplay improvements.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 24, 2020

  I have very mixed feelings on this game after finally 100% it. The intial playthrough is 10/10 great. The extra post-game content and bosses are great. HOWEVER-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The map is kind of ugly and hard to use There is 1 "optional" powerup in the game that should absolutely not be optional and is hidden way too well. Some of the post-game content is hidden behind insanely elaborate and stupid puzzles. Its the type of puzzles where maybe it would have been cool to be a part of the Initial group that was solving them together. But attempting to do it solo is just a massive exercise in futility and wouldn't suggest anyone even bother attempting to 100% this game without a guide. Edit: Just to clarify I'm not saying these end-game "puzzles" are impossible or even "difficult" tbh. But they require a MASSIVE time investment and tons of backtracking through the entire map. I'm talking hours upon hours. By all means feel free to try, but it is highly doubtful you will feel like it was worth the effort in the end. I certainly value my limited free time much more. IN SUMMARY------------------------------------------------------------------- I would strongly suggest if you buy this game to do the following. Play the game through to the first ending and credits. Maybe spend 1-2 hours MAX looking for all the stuff you missed. Then just give up and look up a guide, fight the extra bosses, and call it quits. Do not get overly invested in trying to 100% the game all by yourself, trust me, save yourself the time. I spent way too many hours running and shooting walls, backtracking, screenshotting pictures and taking literal notes in a notepad, trying to 100% the game all by myself, and 6-10 hours later I gave up and used a guide. And after finding out where/what i missed. I definitely wish I would have just given up way sooner.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 6, 2019

  Pros: +Great soundtrack +Map changes as you progress through the game +Simple controls +Nice art style +Huge map +Immersive Marathon-esque storytelling (you get bits and pieces of the story via computers around the map) Cons: -Num keys can't be used due to engine limitations -The graphics are so low res, that it can be hard to see certain things This game is very well-made, considering it was developed by only 2 people. I recommend this, especially to metroidvania fans.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 23, 2017

  I feel bad for not recommending this game, but I just didn't have as much fun with it as I wanted. Metroidvania is my favorite genre, and after having played Ori and the Blind forest and Axiom Verge this month, my thirst for them still was not satiated. Up next on my list was ESA, so I fired it up and had at it. At first, I was really thrown off by the graphics. Text is really hard to read (W and H look almost identical) and nothing has much detail. As I went on though, I started forgiving the graphics. They're still not what I would call good though, but it's the style the developer wanted. Combat is a bit strange. Your gun shoots a tiny little beam that almost acts more like stabbing with a long sword, and there are a total of three gun upgrades, one of which is at the very end of the game, and another is very well hidden and you will likely miss it until, again, the end of the game. The other one sits at roughly the halfway point, so for the majority of the game, you feel very weak and never upgrade your combat prowress. Where this game falls apart for me though is with the level design. Like any Metroidvania, you gain new skills that open up new pathways for you. Unlike good Metroidvanias though, ESA has some very flawed thinking. Usually, when you reach a dead end and a new powerup, the game tells you where to go next for the next upgrade. Being the explorer I am though, I like to make my own path. I just got the blue block destroying upgrade, and I remember some blue blocks on another path. I go that way, destroy the blue blocks, and on the other side is... red blocks. Great, I don't have the red block destroying upgrade yet. It works that way every time. You get a new upgrade, want to use it elsewhere, only to find out that going that way is entirely pointless and unrewarding. It makes the game feel much more linear than it should be. The game does open up a lot at the very end, but that's another thing I don't like about this game. This game has a huge postgame. The first ending you get is very underwhelming. It actually has multiple stages. First you collect some extremely hard to find disks, then you get the second ending. Then you're supposed to find four even harder to find pillars to kill a new boss. Then you're suposed to fight off some new enemies and collect three orbs (they're easy to get, except one you're supposed to know that numbers mean map coordinates. I didn't know they existed until I looked). Then you're supposed to DECRYPT AN ALIEN CIPHER, FIND A HIDDEN AREA, SOLVE 14 RIDDLES SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, AND TRAVERSE A CONFUSING MAZE. Once I got to this part, I said screw it. I was already using a guide at this point because of the disks, and I wondered why I was bothering. I'm pretty sure there's even more postgame after all of that, but I seriously couldn't care less. So, to summarize, ugly art style, poor level design, poor progression of powerups, and a very pretentious postgame that essentialy requires a guide for anybody that's not into cryptic riddles or deciphering a made up language. I'm not saying the game is terrible though. These are just the things I hated about the game. I obviously liked the game enough to get this far, but there was too much disappointing in the game to recommend it to others. There are so many other games like this now, and this one did not bring me anywhere near the satisfaction the other ones have.