9 Years of Shadows Review

I grew up on both the original Metroid and the original Castlevania. They’re the games that ignited my Iove for the “you got your chocolate in my peanut butter” combination of the two that we now call Metroidvania’s. So it’ll be no surprise to some people that I jumped at the chance to play and review 9 Years of Shadows.

In 9 Years of Shadows, you play as Europa, a warrior on a quest to uncover the dark truth behind the curse that plagues Talos castle. You’ll enter the colossal automaton/castle in your quest to restore color to the land and to end the nightmare that is this curse. Spoiler alert: your underpowered self quickly gets whooped and you meet a floating teddy bear ghost named Apino that not only heals you, but somehow restores color to your world too.

Once you meet Apino you’ve completed the prologue and now have the freedom to explore the castle. In this side-scrolling adventure, you’ll see some familiar hallmarks of a Metroidvania: doors or obstacles that are progression-gated by abilities you don’t have yet, save rooms near dangerous enemies, fast travel points for quickly getting around, and returning to areas with your newfound abilities. Unfortunately, you might also notice the absence of some quality of life improvements found in newer games like map indicators showing you where to go next, automatic tracking of items you’ve seen but haven’t collected, or indicators of where that door you couldn’t open before was located.

In your exploration you’ll find elemental armors that allow you to enter areas that were previously inaccessible and also allow you to do improved damage to like-colored enemies. Each armor can be upgraded to do more damage and to gain a unique charged attack. For example, the flame armor will launch a fireball that circles Europa while the water armor will create a large plume of water that does damage in a vertical column. You’ll also find movement abilities like a double jump and a morph-ball-like ability to travel through pipes.

As for combat, the game takes its inspiration from the Nintendo DS run of Castlevania games. Your melee weapon is a halberd (we see what you did there, Halberd Studios) and it can be swung for a series of quick attacks with the X button or a heavy attack with the Y button. As mentioned before, enemies are often outlined in certain colors and take more damage from you when you are outfitted in like-colored armor. You can cycle through your armors with the shoulder buttons so there’s no need to go into a menu in the middle of combat.

Often times Metroidvanias will attempt to incorporate a new mechanic that helps their game to stand out from the pack. In 9 Years of Shadows that mechanic is their active-reload healing. Before long you’ll collect a powerup that displays a Gears of War-like active-reload prompt above your character when your shield meter is depleted. In theory this active-reload allows you to play more aggressively as you can very quickly get back a large portion of your shield energy instead of having to find a break in the action to get a heal from Apino. More on this later.

The game and environments are gorgeous 16-bit graphics and the few animated cut scenes like the intro are very well done. The music is also well done and there’s a bit of a musical theme running through the game’s story. The collectibles you use to upgrade your health and shield bar are musical notes.  In keeping with this theme you’ll also come across stranded musicians that, once found, will further the story through dialogue and offer you a quest to kill a miniboss. Speaking of minibosses, the game has plenty, and there’s a decent amount of variety to their attack patterns.

However, the boss fights are where the game seems to break down for me. Some were trivial while others were a huge spike in difficulty that required dozens of attempts. There are no accessibility options to make this easier. There is also no way to overlevel your character besides upgrading each armor one time. Instead, you need to learn the attack patterns in order to minimize the damage you take, but more importantly, to learn when you can pull off a bear hug to refill your shield meter or an active-reload heal.

I think the developers intended players to become experts at the active-reload healing but I found it to be very spotty and frequently my button clicks wouldn’t register. This is also true of interaction points for save rooms, elevators, and fast travel points. I would be standing in front of these interaction points and the on-screen prompt to push up would display, but it often wouldn’t register until I left and re-entered the interaction spot. If the active-reload had been more reliable I think I would have enjoyed the challenge of some of the tougher boss fights but they had me wanting to throw my controller in frustration instead.

One last design decision I kept thinking about was why there’s even money in the game. I guess there’s the unwritten contract between game developers and players that when you kill a monster, you need to pick up whatever shiny thing it drops. But in 9 Years of Shadows you use money for three things: to pay for upgrades (along with the required type of collectible), to unlock fast travel points, and for some inexplicable reason you have to cough up 10 currency every time you use the fast travel points.

Conclusion

I think that the active-reload healing mechanic in 9 Years of Shadows had potential to make them stand out in a crowd of other action platformers. Unfortunately, the difficulty spikes, lack of signposting, and frequent dropping of button presses wore me out and I would not recommend this game to anyone but the most hardcore fans that must absolutely play every game in this genre.