izigame.me

My review page.
Follow me on twitch!

The gist of it:

Aeterna Noctis, wow, I have a lot to say about this one, but suffice to say, it's certainly one of the best metroidvania/platformers out there but with a huge caveat. Read below/conclusion.
👍 The good parts:
+Incredibly difficult
+High quality in regards to everything(atmosphere, content, etc.) despite being an indie.
+Longest metroidvania on the market.

👎The bad parts:
-Frustratingly difficult
-Needs some quality of life changes if it wants to capture a higher user base, more details are below.
-The endgame

Story

You play as the King of Darkness in a world where you and the Queen of Light are fighting for eternity, each time one or the other winning and becoming the ruler of Aeterna. Obviously, it's a bit more complicated than that but I do want to keep things to a minimum to avoid any spoilers but the gist is, you have a plan to stop this cycle of neverending war that Chaos, which is similar to God in our world, put them through.
Naturally, for gameplay's sake, each time a ruler gets defeated he or she loses their power so you'll be starting from almost scratch with none of your king-like abilities. As you progress, you unlock pieces of your past and the story becomes slightly clearer and why you have to do what you set out to do. On the way, you'll meet some unique characters that sorta add to the whole lore of the game.
Then as you reach the end, you are treated to a cinematic and then a to be continued. I mentioned the endgame in the negatives and this applies to both gameplay and story. The story in particular because it ends on a cliffhanger and I hate that. For big games, it's not a big issue but for an indie, chances are always extremely minimal, that we will see the continuation of the story. I mean look at Hollow Knight, it's been 6 years and still counting. What's worse the ending cinematic was very, cryptic, you can pretty much interpret it in a lot of ways. I just did not feel satisfied after 55hours in regards to the story. It's not bad, not at all, the cinematics and storytelling are clearly of high quality but it just wasn't enough.
Story rating: 7.5/10

Gameplay

Oh boy, where to even start...Aeterna Noctis in the entire 55 hours of gameplay, I went through huge amounts of hate but huge amounts of love as well. I'll be blunt, if you have not read any other reviews or if you have, most are correct, even the negative ones. Aeterna Noctis is the hardest game I ever played, or at the very least one of the hardest ones and I have finished Supermeatboy and Celeste and did the true ending for Hollow Knight which included going through the White Palace so trust me on this. It's a metroidvania at heart but it's a platformer on the surface.
The game starts as you expect, easy enough but then it ramps up to higher and higher difficulties until it reaches the ceiling and just punches through it and keeps going. Don't let that keep you away from the game, as it does offer an easy mode, though I am not sure in what shape as I have not touched it. If you played Hollow Knight, you'll feel right at home with this and you'll know what to expect. You traverse the environment finding secrets, leveling up your character, backtracking after unlocking movement skills, and just pushing through slowly towards the endgame.
It's all pretty basic here, the skills are kinda meh but you can also find gems that alter some of your abilities to help in combat, specifically bosses. You find secrets and collectibles that can also help you on your journey but overall for everything you get, the game will double in its challenge. You will never, ever, feel overpowered which kinda destroys the idea behind "metroidvanias". If you play melee only, well, good luck, you will probably never finish the game. Luckily you can reset your skills at east and just place points in the ranged damage.
Now let me talk quickly about the quality of life things and the caveat I mentioned. Some of the collectibles, specifically the soul mirror parts, are just plain dumb as sh#t. These collectibles once touched by your character do not get picked, instead, they float until you reach a "safe" place. Yes, even if you are in a no danger place, the mirror still floats until you reach where the devs decided it was safe, that means, you have to do the insane platforming challenge AGAIN, and if you fail you reset without it, not where you picked it up but where you began. Yes, you read that right. There are also a lot of shortcuts that are not actually shortcuts, you unlock a door and it just closes back and you are forced to redo it all over again if you missed something. Keep in mind this is a 50+ hour game. You'll have to rely on teleporting over and over again or having to do the same annoying platforming sections instead of, you know, giving real shortcuts.
There's other stuff but I have limited space, suffice to say, the gameplay is a mix of frustration from bosses having tons of hp for no reason other than annoy you to having to redo platforming sections over and over AND a mix of incredible love with so much stuff to explore and secrets to find, great combat encounters, challenging bosses, fair platforming sections, all quality stuff.
Gameplay rating: 7.5/10

Audio

The audio department has no issues whatsoever, the soundtrack is great, from diverse songs playing throughout each zone to nice boss fight songs. The English narrator voice acting is good and the rest of the weird language spoken is okay, I guess, but nothing distracting. The sound effects are all really good, especially the background stuff being unique for each zone and whatnot.
Audio rating: 8/10

Graphics, performance and tech analysis

The amount of work that went into the backgrounds, atmosphere, and most importantly the level design is incredible. Huge props to the people who worked on these things. My biggest issue with indies, especially metroidvania ones, is that they all look boring, but Aeterna Noctis just like Hollow Knight goes above and beyond in these regards. The amount of content and the way the levels are crafted, it's nuts.
There are some bugs and the controls in the toughest platforming sections that will fail you, such as double jump triggering for no reason or jump just not working but they are rare cases. The game also has some frame drops when there are a ton of effects but manageable as 99% of the game runs perfectly.
Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 9/10

Conclusion

I don't think an easy mode that just nerfs stuff was the way to handle the criticism of the difficulty spikes however some changes in how you collect some stuff and maybe adding some actual shortcuts that removes the need to backtrack through annoying platforming challenges, as well as nerfing some of the bosses hp can go a long way. That being said, Aeterna Noctis should be played as it was intended and if you're new to the genre, I would be extremely wary of the difficulty the game offers however if you've played platformers or games like Hollow Knight, I highly recommend the game. As I said, I hated and loved the game at the same time, but Aeterna Noctis is surely one of the best in its genre and if there ever is a sequel I will gladly buy it.

Final score: 8/10