izigame.me

I just about 99% Voidwrought recently. (missing one item on the map because of tedious collectable tracking + extremely hidden breakable walls)
A very good attempt of Hollow Knight wannable Metrodvania.
The art and map design is good overall, but there is some pacing issue + frustration in the beginning~ mid point of the game.

One core issue of this game is it's TOO OPEN in the beginning of the game. A good Metrodvania , like Hollow Knight, will start the game with a semi linear progression path , and branch out to open world AFTER they give you sufficient tools to traverse the world.
In Hollow Knight's case, the normal pathing you'd take is Green Path -> Mentus Lord , which grant you access to air dash and wall climb . Unless you do some sequence break via poggling , you're are pretty much blocked off venturing into other Biomes UNTIL you go through Green Path and Mentus Lord. Dev make sure you have means to traverse the rest of the world.

Voidwrath does not do that. Around 80% of the crucial traversal methods are either optional unlockable , or hidden at the edge of the world . I literally get Wall Climb and Double Jump after I already explored like 95% of the world already. This makes my whole exploration a tedium to get through obstacles because I simply don't have the tools to traverse the world, and lead to lots of needless backtracking. Sometimes I venture into couple biomes without any means to progress and have to just turn back multiple times.

Also bosses become too easy later on because our weapon upgrade is too op and our character has way too much health. Healing is kinda weak in this game because you can't replenish the flask easily , and they don't heal much, so in return , dev just gives you so much health you can pretty much trade blows with bosses until they die , which take away all the challenge in the game.

Some other minor issues including way too many extremely hidden breakable walls at very random spot with zero hint makes 100% completion super tedious .
Charms locking to 3 without any method to expand the slot kills the diversity of the build . We should be able to expand the charm slot later on, but given the bosses are so weak, maybe that's not very necessary, but nevertheless a wasted potential .
Relic has some balancing issues too, with around 20% very good and 80% completely pointless. Also no means to upgrade the damage of the relics too = another wasted potential.

Overall this game gives me an enjoyable 20 hrs~ adventure , but with some tweaking and polishing, it could have been so much more.