izigame.me

A very solid A tier metroidvania.
This game uses the Ender Lillies style of weapons/skills that you find as you progress and can be equipped to any of 3 possible buttons. Some are infinite melee attacks and others are more like skills that have a set number of charges that recharge at save points. I am not a huge fan of these kinds of systems. I feel like these systems are often undercooked. They generally seem to focus on variety and as a result none of the individual skills ever feel particularly well animated or fleshed out. Most of the time I find myself usually sticking a very small handful of them throughout the entire playthrough with all the rest kind of just be unused filler content. I didnt really find this to be much different in this game, but as far as games with this system goes it does it as good, if not better than any other game I've seen that uses that system.
It also has the hollow knight style of charms system to further customize your loadout which this game refers to as momentos. I found quite a few that seems pretty unnecessary. Most of the ones I felt were useful were pretty generic. This is probably not one were you are changing these up too often to specialize them for specific quests. I again stuck to pretty much the same ones throughout the game that were just broadly useful. I think the progression and/slot economy on them was also a little off. None of them that cost less than 3 slots were really of much use which made getting new slots feel kind of anti-climatic a lot of the time once you realized you need to find 2 more before it really gave you the space to do anything meaningful with it.
The drawbacks to both of these systems are smoothed out some by a system that also allows for both the momentos and skills to be upgraded for improved effects. So even when you didnt have enough slots to add a new one you could probably upgrade the ones you were using, or your weapons to get that more incremental progression feeling to fill that void.
The biomorph system was the real star of the show though that really adds the layers and depth to these other systems when they seemed underwhelming at times. This was actually one of the features of the game I was most skeptical about and figured it would just feel gimmicky and tacked on. After completing the game though my opinion on that could not be more different from what I expected. This was really well done. It adds a complete third layer to your loadout to add to your skill and memento choices and is really the part of the game where you swap around your loadout to specialize things. They each offer different combat and movement options making them useful for both combat and traversal. Finding the right biomorph for combat situations can be really fun and can give boss fights a sort of megaman-esque feel of finding the right enemy abilities to employ against that boss to change the dynamic of the fight. I do think there were some missed opportunities here. Biomorphs are rarely needed for traversal outside of the biome you generally find them in. I would have liked to see more places late game where sections required using more of the biomorph abilities from prior areas to progress. Overall this was a really fun, versatile, and well implemented mechanic though.
combat and traversal abilities are good, but not great. Again, both of these are helped a lot by the biomorph mechanic though that offers quite a bit more depth and variety over what the game offers through the other more traditional metroidvania systems. This was still fun and well done but nothing that would really make the game stand out from any other metroidvania by themselves. It really is that biomoph mechanic that makes up for what would otherwise be just a pretty average combat and traversal experience.
Story and art direction are also good. The art can feel somewhat bland at times but the overall art direction is competent and cohesive. This definitely is not my favorite art style, but it does do a good job of making the world feel like an actual world and not just a collection of platforming levels. The story too is a little quirky and irreverent at times that didnt always land for me but it wasnt too intrusive or nonsensical. The narrative is well paced and presented and serves to deliver the game well enough.
The other star of the show for this game is its quality of life features. This game probably offers the most robust set of quality of life features I have seen in any metroidvania game and it was really refreshing. It offers the map markers with screen shots features from The Lost Crown that is absolutely genius and should be a metroidvania standard going forward. It also has a in game completion checklist that tells you how many of each collectible there are and how many you have currently located. Rooms on the map will also turn gold around the border to indicate map scenes where everything has been collected to help identify where you still need to search for things. There is a robust fast travel system complete with a "return to last save point" option on the menu that can be used at anytime to help cut down on return trips when you are backtracking for previously inaccessible collectibles.
Overall this is a really solid metroidvania. The combat and traversal options are kind of mediocre. Not bad by any means, but also not really stand outs. Just perfectly serviceable. The biomorph mechanic really elevates them both though and helps fill in the gaps they might otherwise have. The quality of life is great and really cuts down any potential of the explorative backtracking for collectibles feeling like a chore that can sometimes come with the metroidvania game formula. This is an easy, solid A tier metroidvania. If youre a fan of metroidvanias definitely pick it up and give it a playthrough.