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Aeterna Noctis begins with you roaming the Wasteland of the Fallen. You are the King of Darkness, and you have just been knocked back to earth by the Queen of Light, as shown in a lovingly hand-animated cutscene. As an immortal, this is the cycle you have been cursed to inhabit, and so you set out once again to reclaim your lost powers and take revenge on your killer. The story is mostly an excuse to move you from place to place. It's serviceable, but I found the world itself more interesting than the narrative. There is some really excellent background art that gives a strong sense of place to every biome you visit. Amongst my favourites were a crimson sunset set against a sky filled with flying whales; an abyss filled with raining blood and deformed humanoid statues; and a tower filled with divine light that pulses energy from its centre.
First and foremost, above all else, Aeterna Noctis is a precision platformer. It has a Metroidvania exoskeleton, but the heart and soul of the game lies in its platforming. If you don't like that genre, this game is not for you. With that said, some of the negative opinions I've heard about AN make it sound like it's a troll game that is excessively hostile to the player. That is not the case at all. It's clear that AN is a labour of love for its developers, and they very much want people to play and enjoy their game. Checkpoints are generous in quantity and appropriately placed; power-ups trivialise re-traversing once-challenging sections as they are acquired; and there are optional build elements that provide extremely helpful handicaps like a laser sight for arrows, slow motion, and an infinitely regenerating blood pool (used for healing and activating special abilities). I suspect that a lot of people who gave up on the game never found those handicaps, and I think this represents a design flaw. While players are getting their bearings, they need all the assistance they can get. These shouldn't be squirreled away in some unmarked area of the map. Giving players these handicaps by default, but providing build options that allow them to turn them off in exchange for other benefits, would make much more sense.
Mechanically, AN does not bring much new to the table. Build options don't amount to much more than deciding whether you want your sword or arrow to do more damage, and the passive power-ups are mostly bog standard fare - dash, double-jump, wall-hug and shoot a projectile. The lone exception is the teleport arrow. This is a contentious mechanic and for most people will represent a big speed bump in the game. It does not organically build upon the previous skills the player has been learning; it is something entirely new. Suddenly you will need to learn how to aim quickly and accurately, then observe the arrow's position to teleport to it at the correct moment. This is much more cumbersome than it needs to be. Aiming could easily have been mapped to the completely unused right stick, but was instead assigned to Y + left stick. This makes it very difficult to aim independent of your movement direction. By default, time will slow down for a second or two while you aim, but that's all. Once you've loosed the arrow, you have to react in real time. The aforementioned handicaps must be found if you wish to use laser sights and extend slow motion. It took me about an hour to get used to these mechanics, though I initially doubted I ever would. However, contrary to the claims of a popular negative review, the teleport arrow does not constitute all, or even a majority of the remaining game, nor does it need to be used with absolute perfection when it is required. There are in fact multiple sections which actually disable the use of arrows to re-test more traditional platformer skills, because with practice the arrows can become more of a crutch than a challenge.
As a platformer, AN is excellent. 99% of the time its controls are fluid and responsive. Jump height is dependent on the length of the button push; jump direction can be altered mid-air; wall-hugging occurs instantly and gives a brief window before you slide downwards. The other 1% of the time occurs during the sections that demand a perfectly executed series of lightning-fast inputs across several dozen seconds. The stress induced by these demands can lead many players, myself included, to be less precise with the thumbstick than they would be under other circumstances, and perhaps exert some slight downward pressure on it. This would not be an issue, were it not for a longstanding bug that prevents your character from double-jumping if the thumbstick is pressed down. These sections are very few in number - you could count them on one hand - but god is it frustrating to die over and over because of dropped inputs. There is also the issue of foreground images occasionally obscuring the screen, which is again rare, but is not an aesthetic choice that belongs in a precision platformer.
As a metroidvania, AN is mediocre. Were it not for its platformer core, the MV elements would not be close to strong enough to hold the game up. There are many biomes, all of which feel unique to explore, but the combat is shallow and repetitive, and puzzles are mostly absent. Combat mostly consists of mashing the attack button, then retreating to avoid a corpse explosion. I have to assume that the puzzles described on the store page consist of working out the order of inputs to get through a platforming section, which by necessity cannot be too cerebral, as you generally have a fraction of a second to work them out. There are two exceptions to these shortcomings: the boss fights, and the Dream Kingdom. The boss fights are excellent. They consist of forcing the player through a series of reaction-based challenges, then giving a brief window in which the boss is vulnerable, rinse and repeat. This elevates the mediocre combat by intertwining it with the excellent platforming in a way that none of the regular enemies do, and allows the player to express themselves through their strategy. Meanwhile, the Dream Kingdom has puzzles that actually require some brainpower. This biome is themed around illusion and requires the players to shoot arrows to discern what is and isn't real. It features traversal puzzles which challenge the player to work out the links between teleporters; pattern puzzles, based around hitting switches in an order congruous with an advancing threat; and stealth puzzles, using illusory scenery to hide from an omniscient eye. This was by far my favourite biome. It was the only one that felt more Metroid than Vania.
As a bang for your buck value proposition, it's hard to do better than this. AN delights the player with a near endless string of new environments with new challenges and optional quests. It took me just under 70 hours to 100%. If played on Aeterna mode, I would estimate that completion could be achieved in half that time, as it is a lot easier. I would encourage any new player to attempt to rise to the challenge of its original and intended difficulty - Noctis mode. When I checked out Aeterna mode for the purposes of this review, the world felt comparatively empty and dead, as enemies and environmental hazards had all been reduced by a factor of at least three. Nonetheless, many players find Aeterna mode to present a satisfying challenge, and its inclusion is testament to the developers' desire for people to enjoy their work.
There are no doubt rough edges and questionable design choices in AN. This did not stop it from being an utterly enchanting experience. I have not been as thoroughly absorbed by a game in years. From the hand-animated characters, to the enormous world, to the lengthy (albeit few) cutscenes, it is clear that this is a passion project from a team that deeply believes in what they're doing. Aeterna Noctis represents an outstanding debut effort from a promising new studio.