Messenger review

Finished The Messenger in two days, took about 12 hours total with all power seals collected.

It's yet another retro throwback where the game includes all the most annoying things from the NES era but pretend it's okay because it's a homage. For instance: Enemies who respawn when you scroll the screen away and go back. Enemies flying in sine wave patterns, not because there is some challenge built around them in this room, just because the developers think they have to have them in the game. Fucking birds that behave like the eagles in Ninja Gaiden. The same fire-spitting enemy that seems to be in every other room in the game. Platform challenges made more difficult because you have three types of jumps and all are on the same button (they could have put the soaring on a shoulder button). Instant death traps that were offscreen, such as when you climb up a passage and suddenly there is a press there that was impossible to see because the "camera" prioritizes the bottom of the screen. A boss who takes forever to kill because you have to dodge five minutes of his attacks before you have the opportunity to strike back once, and if you die after ten minutes when they pull out an attack you've never seen before, you must restart the whole fight.

The game is often just not very well designed. It's an homage to old NES games, but the designers should have played the original 2D platformer: Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros first introduces a challenge, e.g. here are some moving platforms in a safe area. Then the game will escalate by, for example, narrowing the platforms and/or putting some turtles on them. And then it will conclude with a section of narrow platforms, turtles, the platforms moving a little faster, plus moving saw blades making the jumps more precarious. In The Messenger we jump right to the third situation right away. Of course, this game is made up of screens that you will visit several times and it wouldn't make sense to have a tutorial section at one end of them, but they could have designed it so that the first time you passed through in 8-bit mode it is easier, and then it could get harder when you returned in 16-bit mode. There was a room in the time tower where you had to hover on air currents between spikes where I died 25+ times because I hadn't used the hovering mechanism enough, aka. the game didn't require me to learn it properly before this point. When returning here and doing similar challenges later, this wasn't nearly as hard.

The checkpoints are pretty well placed so you don't have to replay a lot when you die, but when I play as a ninja it feels lame to die to unexpected events and clumsy mechanics over and over. The whole point of being a ninja is that you should be able to dodge and style yourself out of situations using your reflexes. One thing that surely killed me 100 times out of the 200 total is that the messenger will cling to walls when you didn't mean to, which messes up your timing and you get hurt or die.

It has a totally broken gaming economy; I had 5000 time shards at the end of the game and nothing to spend them on. I bought hints twice. When you get to the metroidvania section, the story progression just stops dead for hours. Shopkeeper has nothing new to say and there are no new bosses or areas until you have collected certain items to unlock them. The only collectible is the 45 power seals that are in every area, but you get this reward so late that you can't use it until in the very last area. The final boss will be much easier if you have this, but that's about it.

The very last thing I want to complain about is that this is sold as a metroidvania, but you get your last ability, the (shitty) grappling hook, after maybe two hours. (The lightfoot tabi thing I do not count since you get it late it's only usable in two sections total). The whole metroidvania section really only makes you go through the game again, checking out the same areas but in the era you were not in on first visit.

Okay, so that was a lot of bitching, but what's good in the game? Well, the audiovisual stuff. The retro graphics are really great, and areas like Quillshroom Marsh in 16-bit have gorgeous pixel art. The boss fights are mostly very fun and well-designed, except the boss I complained about earlier who is a boss stolen from Mega Man 3. Some bosses are really tricky, but there are always save points in the room before so it just takes seconds between attempts. All the bosses in the game get the blood pumping without you making you rage too hard. Oh and the music of course!

Pretty much every single song in The Messenger is great, and there are two versions of most of them, one in 8-bit and another in 16-bit style!

If I were to score the game I would probably award it 6.5/10. Decent enough for fans of the genre who can ignore the many annoyances. But I recommend to at least check out the soundtrack on Spotify.

Now it'll be nice to stress down with an easier game, Devil May Cry 3.