Valdis Story Abyssal City

Valdis Story Abyssal City(PC)



Setting: 7/7
The war between heaven and hell rages on and humanity is caught in between. both sides willing and eager to harvest human souls in order to try and tip the war in their favour.
The four playable characters are the leaders of small, yet powerful, resistance that declared war on both the angels and the demons.
In a fierce navel battle, they manage to catch up to one of hell's elite generals, yet because of unfortunate situation both ships sink. some unknown force protect the protagonist while sinking to the ocean floor and there, strangely enough, he find a city.
He tries to figure out what the hell happened while looking for the rest of the crew.

Characters and Story: 2/5
the game screws up a bit here. you see, technically this isn't the first game in the franchise. yet the first game wasn't ever finished. it was just a pet project that the dev used to hone his skills and released parts of it to the public as it was made. it was received pretty well, but as a simple "tech demo" it was dumped after a while.
this game tries to both please fans of the old "game" and new players. this means that although this game is meant to be stand-alone it skips some important bits of information that you can only get by playing the years old, unfinished, buggy demo.
worse yet, the dev seems to knows his characters very well, too well. at times he forgets to inform the rest of the world about inner conflicts that his character are having and only shows us the outcome resulting in pretty confusing dialogues every once in a while.
this is quite severe criticism, but I dare to say that the game still manages to be good despite this. and this is impressive on it's own.


Gameplay split into:

Exploration: 5/6
What you'd expect from a standard Metroidvania. large "castle". branching paths. hidden goodies. events showing up in previously explored areas. bosses that drop items you can use to get to new locations.
Nothing initiative, but damm good example of how it should be done. feels a bit short.. but I did sink 16 hours on the first playthrough, so it might be just my head wanting more.
the platforming itself is decent. no complaints.

Combat:  7/7
This is where the game gets initiative. the combat feels a bit like a fighting game. you can cancel attacks, block, counter, use the invincibility frames of you dash to avoid attacks and such systems you don't normally see in Platformers.
this is done very well, never getting to the crazy level of frame counting. it manages to borrow just the right elements and adapt it to the different setting of a Metroidvania game where you usually fight multiple targets.
here is an example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvbzFVma2B8


Graphics: 4/4
You seen it in the video. it's adorable!

Replayability: 1.5/3
4 different characters means 4 different playtroughs.
in addition to the mechanical difference in a new playthrough you can collect all the hidden goodies you missed and get better ranks against the bosses. (funner than it might sound).
only die hard fans will go for all the 4 playtroughs but I think most people will take at least two.

Final Score: 9/10, polarization -2
Recommended to people who love the action games or exploration / freedom of Metroidvanias.