I know… I have multiple metroidvanias in my never ending collection of entertainment that I meed to finish. But after watching a friend play this one evening I KNEW I had to give it a go! The game is called “9 Years Of Shadows”. A tale about a land and its people who are cursed into shadow. You play as a young woman named Europa, who befriends a ghostly teddy bear and proceeds to kick all kinds of ass throughout the castle holding three elements you have to find in order to dispel the curse and return the land to all of its colorful glory… or something.
As you play through the game, you find different relics and armors that will help you move about the castle a bit easier. So far I’ve only unlocked The Grace of Zeus and the Poseidon Armor. Then I found a relic that could be used with the latter armor I found that allows me to assume a siren form, granting me the ability to swim about the underwater mazes. You can also use the armor to swim up waterfalls!
My adventure started off a bit rocky. I played on my desktop and for whatever reason the camera refused to follow Europa. To make sure I wasn’t missing anything I launched the game on my Steam Deck where everything worked just fine. Then after quitting I started it again on my desktop and everything was peachy. I’m not sure if it had something to do with my screen resolution, or that I had a high frame rate. At a glance I had read that this game does have some bugs. Hopefully I don’t have to run into anymore of them. My friend who is much further into it hasn’t run into any issues with it yet, so fingers crossed.
Despite some off the issues I mentioned above I really like the game so far. The visuals have a retro-ish touch to them, the music is beautiful, and the cutscenes are not only well done, but do a good job of telling the overall story. So far I’m impressed with what I’ve seen!