Alwa's Awakening (2017)

This one is hard to rate. I did enjoy it quite a bit, but I accidentally played the sequel first which makes this pale in comparison for many reasons.

The pixel art is very NES style and not as lush and detailed as Alwa’s Awakening’s more SNES look. The map is much smaller, the character moves much slower, and secrets are hidden behind random fake walls with zero in-game assistance upgrades. Alwa’s Legacy has an amazing map/secret upgrade, a huge world, 3x the character upgrades, and just feels so much more fun.

The level design is still good in this one. It’s a very promising start to the series, and probably would be rated higher if I had began with it. But, it’s living in its own shadow

I bought the sequel not knowing it was a sequel, so downloaded and finished this one first. It's alright, a decent, if a bit slow and boring, intentionally retro metroidvania. Graphics and sound are serviceable but nothing special or memorable at all.

Puzzles and gameplay were fine. I wish I knew the eye of the beholder was a thing earlier, because I spent way too much time attempting crazy platforming that was intended to be saved until you got that. I liked bits that blended your abilities, those were the best created puzzles that incorporated the spell cooldown with using different combinations of the three spells to navigate a particular section.

I will say, I turned on assist mode almost immediately, backtracking from save points was just too much of a pain in the ass otherwise.

The ending was really disappointing, just literally broadcasting "hey there's a 16 bit sequel coming up!"

If you're REALLY starved for old school -vanias, give this a look, otherwise, an easy pass.

An action platformer for players who enjoy the 8-bit experience, made with notable passion. You play as the titular character, who seeks out the ornaments and has to overcome the tyrant that has claimed the land once peaceful. The neat thing is that this game allows free-roaming in the world, allowing you to explore to find collectibles and usable objects. Besides, you can find ways to fight bosses in different order.

Nearly every soundtrack is catchy and don't wear out, which is somewhat critical to keep the player entertained in its retro environment. However, although I got lucky finding collectibles, this game would have served better giving players an option to locate the remaining ones, avoiding going on a search in areas that might not be so obvious as they seemed.

There are challenges abound with some intricate level designs for this platformer but the 8-bit nostalgists are in for a treat with Alwa's Awakening.

There's a lot that this game does right. It's an 8-bit Metroidvania that feels like an NES game without the sprite limitations. The core of the game is upgrading your magic. You will be able to make blocks to guard yourself and solve puzzles, then make bubbles to provide a platform that moves up. There are upgrades to the two of these that allow the blocks to float and the bubbles to never pop. Combining these two abilities, you will use your magic to reach new areas. There's also a lightning bolt upgrade that allows you to fire a projectile for attacking.

Special note must be made on the soundtrack. I found myself humming these tunes all day after playing.

Unfortunately, for everything this game does right, there's a small annoyance that keeps it from greatness. In no particular order: Enemies go through a lengthy flinch animation before they die, so you never know if they take one more hit or not. Hit detection can be a bit wonky. The movement is just a hair sluggish, and you never get used to it. There is an over-reliance on one-hit-death spikes and bottomless pits that artificially ramp up the difficulty. The warp points and save points aren't in helpful places, so backtracking is a chore. The bubbles float up very slowly, and on multi-screen vertical puzzles, you have no way of knowing where they should be aligned, so you have to drop back down just to move them over one tile. There are secret passages that go nowhere. There are 1-way gates that punish you for exploration.

There are also 2 more egregious downpoints to this game. The first is that you must use a "sequence-breaking" trick in order to progress. This involves jumping off of a bubble while creating a second bubble in the same frame. It is, as far as I know, the only way to get the bubble upgrade. Finally, and I may get some flak for saying this, the game is incomplete. When you beat the final boss, the game just... stops. There's no ending. This, combined with the "missing" lightning upgrade, has sparked some lively debate on whether there's a good ending/bad ending. There's not; the game just isn't finished. It was a slap in the face after 8-9 hours of investment.

So is this game good? Yes. You'll enjoy it if you have it. However, it doesn't achieve greatness. With so many games available, I can't think of any reason to recommend this one over dozens of others.