In any other universe, I would balk at Nine Sols’ difficulty. Yet, I gave it a chance, and it more than rewarded me for giving it a moment of my time. Over 20 hours later, I came out of it bruised, battered, and wanting more Taopunk goodness.
This game is incredible.
The visual and map design of every area is absolutely stunning, and completely immersive. Every aspect of the self-declared Taopunk world is fleshed out and displayed in all its disgusting and beautiful glory. The characters are all real, fleshed out and solid, having complete arcs based in chinese myth and philosophy, and is a beautiful execution of the principles of taoism. Every interaction stirs joy, adoration, terror or sadness, and the revealing of past and future moments keeps an immensely strong emotional core throughout the game. The smooth combat and the parry/talisman system is innovative, fast, and incredible. The final boss is the best boss I've ever fought in a metroidvania to date, yes even more than Silksong. The quality of life features and conveniences seamlessly fit into the harrowingly difficult gameplay loop, and demands constant attention, both during the softest and the roughest moments. An utter masterpiece that stays engaging throughout its playtime, and leaves you with a lot to think about.
Of course, horror as reflection of the social and psychological is what we've grown to expect from Red Candle. That it couples here with such a confident step into pastures new, though, means we're keener than ever to see what's next. [Issue#400, p.114]
Nine Sols offers a metroidvania experience that may not be entirely unique, but it remains an excellent choice for fans of the genre. Kudos to the developers for successfully differentiating it from other metroidvanias through its combat system, employing challenging but fair use of parries, not unlike Sekiro.
I am not a fan of metroidvania games, not a fan of hard game neither. I still loved this game so much. First time of my life tryharding several hours on a boss to beat it.This game is a masterpiece : beautifull graphics, strong emotional story, good musics, pleasing combat system and crazy boss fight !This game needs so much more visibility !
if you want to terrorise yourself, play this. If you like bosses with knives, ghost, electric balls swarming at you irregularly, ,this is for you. you have to watch the cutscene for the boss fight every time, and walk through difficult terrain to get there. You need to hold down buttons and release it at the same time as you power up for a heavy hit. You don't get better, sometime you parry the knives sometimes you don't. I was thinking after next boss the game will get better, but its getting more irritating. more distractions in the boss rooms, more weird useless Jades upgrades. The world is confusing, lifts and elevators takes you no longer than you can jump, the map for the area is always found when you already found everything. Jiequan was a good boss, though, his laugh was good, perfect villain, hard but a man to man fight without distractions. It could have been a good game. I liked the characters you meet, the poison guy, the way he ate the food. the way they talked, one word with emotion to describe a whole sentence.
2d dark souls daha doğrusu sekiro tarzı oyun severler için harika oyun. Ben bu tarzı 2d halde çok sevmediğim, bir yerden bir yere gitmek ve keşif zor geldiği için yarım bırakıyorum oyunu. Ama seveni için güzel mekanikler var.
Nine sols is a great game with great combat and good story, why 4/10? Because it has the worst boss ever existed with the most poor design and most glitched move set ever, defeating this boss is purely on luck weather he's gonna glitch this time or no, gotta give it to the devs I have never seen a less devoleped boss in my life, great game with a strong weak point, fuxi
Perfect example of a badly polished release. - bad pacing : the game just insists on interrupting gameplay to dump some sub-par story. The beginning is too slow too which doesn't help. - map design : serviceable but not impressive in the slightest. Nothing stands out but the furnace level which slows down the game making you wait til the blaze goes off... - Combat : worst part of this game. Specially bosses.
Hitboxes are so poorly designed, damage detection all over the place. Combined with overlaying attacks coming from blind spots. Leaving you often taking damage in the cheapest ways. Bosses also mouvement is all over the place, they track your mouvement as well as well as their attacks making footsies out of the question.
Cheap environment hazards on boss arenas just feel added nonsense for the hell of it.
Also hits stuns so you get chained quite easily into a fatal combo out of nowhere..
Not that you need a lot of hits to die. Healing and HP a irrelevant on boss fights because they kill you in 2 or 3 hits max.
Just a sluggish effort to go through all this.. - Progression : most progression isn't that interesting. Asmentioned earlier, hp increases doesn't matter when you get killed in a couple of hits. Art direction and music are quite nice even. This game shows how good tram cherry are.
Polishing the game before release is everything because of how important first impressions are.
SummaryNine Sols is a lore rich, hand-drawn 2D action-platformer featuring Sekiro-inspired deflection focused combat. Embark on a journey of eastern fantasy, explore the land once home to an ancient alien race, and follow a vengeful hero’s quest to slay the 9 Sols, formidable rulers of this forsaken realm.