izigame.me

Strider is a game that certainly has that 'energy' which gaming had in a different era, where things were less serious. It also definately has that over the top anime feel but that makes the game very fast paced and action packed. Indeed there's never a dull moment in strider, with a constant flow forward. At least until you decide to go for 100% because the backtracking in this is quite painfull. However if you just wanna see the game to the credits there's not much reason not to play. Combat and platforming is fast and responsive which is always a joy in any metroidvania! It really nails the 'being an unstoppable ninja' power fantasy, although i should mention that i played the game on easy. I chose this difficulty level after seeing that the achievement for beating the game on normal only had a 10% completion rate... I think that worked to my benefit though as this allowed me to keep moving forward because even at this difficulty a handfull of encounters were still challenging enough.
Roadblocks and difficulty aside going for the main story is very satisfying due to great level design and flow on your first pass through. You are moving through the areas at great speeds and a generous quest marker system always makes it clear where to go next. The map is much bigger than i thought and the only reason this game can be beat this quickly is because of the aforementioned fast paced nature of it. In this way it really reminded me of 2008's shadow complex which is also a very fun and noteworthy metroidvania of a similar era of gaming. Strider also shares the impressively detailed backgrounds and coherent world of that game with incredible depth and scale realized with clever use of 2.5D visuals. There's an odd filter overlaid on top of it but it makes the whole art style pop in a nice manner. Music is decent enough and so is voice acting for most characters with some being a bit over the top.
Story is corny anime stuff though with things seemingly coming out of nowhere like that final boss true form???. As a whole though the game is fun although some things could've been better like a nicer fast travel system or more enemy variety. Bosses were also very hard to read and i could see them feeling very unfair on higher difficulties but on normal they were ok. On a technical level it runs very well, and i don't think i encountered any major bug. It's also from 2014 and should run on most if not all modern machines. The base asking price is fair but it goes on a deep sale often which is also where i picked it up. For 4 and a half bucks i cannot complain as the game entertained me throughout the 9 or so hours i had with it. It's not a must play MV but if you like the genre like me, and are looking for a cheap and fast one this might be it. Because despite being published by a gaming giant the game actually has a lot of heart and attention to detail.