Nine Sols (2024)

Nine Sols plays tight. The movement is simple yet fun and the gameplay is reminiscent of Sekiro, where random actions just lead to taking more damage and deaths. I played on the Steam Deck and never ran into any issues. The upgrade system was...fine. While I do think it helps build good habits in the player in the way that upgrades were drip fed, I do wish there was a bit more variety.

The characters and plot were both enjoyable, with a majorly fun finale! This was one of the few games were I read every piece of text from every collectable, just to find out more of the world.

All that said, I found this game hard to recommend because of the high skill floor required. I do recognize that there is a "story" mode available, but I also know there are many people who prefer just choosing the standard difficulty.

An enjoyable experience for me personally, as a causal player and as someone who can't help but collect items.

Nine Sols is a Metroidvania that does what many have failed to do within the genre and actually creates an experience that feels like an authentic, grueling, atmospheric and unique 2D Souls game. Artistically, it's hard to find any fault with it as the blend of Tao Tradition and Cyberpunk dystopia is captivating.

The narrative is gritty, mature and uncompromising, which leads to an engaging story from start to end, and the gameplay is a refined showcase of combat, platforming and puzzle-solving. The difficulty settings may be a little askew, and some may feel that the central themes are too graphic and unsettling at times. But all in all, Nine Sols, in a stacked year, as far as Metroidvanias are concerned, does more than enough to force itself into the conversation.

As a fairly rationalist person myself, I admit this one got me.

In terms of gameplay, art, and world exploration, this game delivers everything you’d expect from a top-tier metroidvania, up there with Hollow Knight and the like.

I’d highlight two aspects that make it stand out, so intricately woven together that their very intertwining could be considered a third: combat gameplay and narrative theme.

As Yi, the protagonist, pushes forward on his vengeful quest, his narrow vision gradually expands into a much broader understanding not only of his own purpose in life but also of the lives of those he once tried to save.

The abilities he gains along the way physically embody the concepts he confronts narratively. You actually grow stronger through abilities that amplify the power of restraint, thus putting into practice the philosophy voiced by a key figure in the plot: Lear, a legendary scientist of the past who embraced Taoist devotion.

It is yet again a powerful demonstration of how gameplay can enhance a narrative tremendously.

Absolute masterpiece.

Bonus point is that the final boss is one of the toughest I've ever faced, but not in an unfair way.

Nine Sols is an amazing game. This game has it all - the gameplay, lore, characters, music, story, level design and art are all exceptionally great! I'm sure that it'll appeal to most people.

However, the most important thing to mention is its difficulty. Nine Sols is a brutally hard game. I love hard games, so this has been a big plus for me, but I can see how this can be a major deterrent. You will have to learn the patterns of everything that wants to hurt you, be it bosses, enemies or the environment itself. But, its difficulty isn't unfair, and it's definitely not what some people refer to as "artificial difficulty" - every single boss can be beaten without taking damage whatsoever. The key is to stay calm, focus deeply and repeat. This game won't give you checkpoints between boss phases. Your time to heal up will be extremely limited. Your parry timing will have to be superb - and yes, you will have to parry a lot (it is the main combat mechanic).

Despite my love for difficult games, there is one thing worth mentioning that I heavily disliked in this game. When a boss switches to their next phase, they will most likely start it with a new attack. You won't know how to properly dodge/parry it, and it will hit you. Well, in this game, most of these new attacks either kill you immediately, or are followed up by an attack that will finish you off- Which means you will have to go back from the nearest checkpoint, do the entire first phase again just so you can observe the new attack and possibly learn how to deal with it. After a few tries, it becomes extremely tedious. This is especially true on the last boss - and the last boss has three phases! By the time I got good with phase 3, I had nearly forgotten how to handle phase 1.

The game encompasses the topic of rationalism VS spiritualism (which is heavily inspired by ancient Chinese religions and traditions), essentially asking whether everything can be explained by science and if people should live without any spiritual guidance. The story is woven in a philosophical and apolitical manner, prompting the player to reflect on their own beliefs. I have thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish (of course, as most modern games, this one has two endings).

That's pretty much all I have to say about this game. It's one of those games that made me feel sad because I finished it. If you find it too difficult, you can always switch to story mode. I haven't played story mode, so I can't tell how much it affects the difficulty, but it should be quite easier to beat. I promise you, it's worth it.

I really wanted to like this game.

But each time I come back, I've forgotten the level layout. I die a bunch and even on easy mode I'm getting hard stuck finding the way.

I just don't have the compulsion to 'get good' in a new genre. I beat metriod dread, so I'm not terrible. But this game demands a parry style which has never been my thing.

It asks for root memorisation of attack patterns and timing, over creative freestyle flow and adaption. Perhaps this builds into something special with commitment.

But for me this has created a progression wall where 3 hours has provided 1 hour of progress.

People say this game is a sekiro-like and after playing Sekiro, I have some reservations about that claim. Yes, the game is very parry-focused, but the feel of combat is very different.

Sekiro's combat is relatively slow and methodical. Attacks tend oto have long wind-ups and deflection tend to have a slow-down effect on fights, as the attacks stop and you prepare for what's next. Enemies react to your attacks, changing their patterns depending on your position and your parries create openings to attack.

Nine Sols is damn quick. Attacks are instant, like in Hollow Knight, and you can (and should) continue barraging right after parrying. Enemies barely react when you parry them, so it's more about navigating and reacting to an unflinching battlefield than creating the dance. Jumping, double jumping and attacking to reset the jump also make fights much more vertical and frantic.

If Sekiro feels like playing as a sly feline playing with its prey with precise attacks, in Nine Sols you're a chaos gremling sowing indiscriminate destruction across the screen.

But comparisons aside, I loved this game. Although it took a while to click with me, and the game itself doesn't really "git gud" until around the halfway mark. The early game suffers from the lack of skills to deal with large number of enemies and some of the first bosses (like Like Yanlao or Kanghui) are not very interesting. But after that it become amazing.

Special mention to Lady Ethereal. She's such a wonderful boss. The change of setting, the slow buildup as you talk to her and learn about her story, the music, and then the final confrontation with an insane variety of attacks and things to learn and an appropriate difficulty curve between stages. Chef's kiss.

If Lies of P introduced me to parrying as a compelling gameplay element, this is the game that absolutely sold me on it. The sounds and effects sell it incredibly well but also the mechanics. It's so satisfying to perfectly block attacks only to redirect energy back to the enemy. The timing of attacks, the slow delay when detonating a charm makes every encounter a sweet dance of death (either the enemy, or yours).

Fast and precise combat, lovely use of parry mechanics and incredibly fun and challenging bosses with lots of personality make this an absolute gem. Instant classic.

Does this happens to you? You finish completely with a game you absolutely love. No more achievements to get and no new unlocks. You can play it again but you know just know the game so much that its not the same. If you're like me, then you take everything you learn and start writing guides and even a 3000 words analysis of the plot, lore, influences and themes of the game.

Because I just did that for Nine Sols.

In case you're interested, here's that analysis in spanish (browser translators are your friends)

Ok... now what.

Not sure I'm going to finish Nine Sols... The more I played the less I enjoyed it, and the last few bosses felt like an annoying chore.

I'm right before the final boss, and I seriously don't feel like going on. I read online it took some people 4-5 hours to beat the final boss and I really don't want to waste so much time just to finish this game...

Too mysterious for mystery’s sake.

The combat is just a bit too off putting for me. The basic parry, strike combo feels unnecessarily cumbersome with the minimal parry animation that makes it hard to see the window of effect, combined with the use of a different button to activate your qi counter attack.

I didn’t bother switching to story mode since I just want digging it.

Eigong 2nd stage is pretty much mastered (well, "mastered" might be too strong, but I can reliably finish it with some healing to spare). Now onto 3rd stage, with it's massive and almost unreadable attack that can almost one-hit kill you.

Again I'm asking developers to let us skip boss stages. First stage at this point is just a formality, and second stage is starting to get stale. So now I need to go through around 4 minutes of relatively unexciting and not super challenging gameplay in order to get a few seconds of the actually interesting gameplay.

Or maybe some sort of "training" mode in which we can fight the third stage directly but any victory is not "canon"?

Nine Sols far surpasses any other Metroidvania game I’ve ever experienced, and even feels like a worthy successor to Sekiro. I can’t recommend it enough, though at first glance, it may not seem so remarkable. Nine Sols chooses the surprising tactic of saving all of its best mechanics and moments for the later half of the game, risking players losing interest early on when they might think it merely above average. Fortunately it pulled me in with an immediately compelling narrative, with a far greater emphasis on story and atmosphere than any Metroidvania I’ve ever played.

That’ll likely be a point of contention for those players who want their games to shut up and just let them play, but I found the game well written enough that I was always happy to slow down and explore the interactions of its characters. The story is centered around an unconventional sort of mystery. Protagonist Yi is probably the 2nd most knowledgeable character in the entire plot, and understands almost everything from the word go. But he has no interest in explaining it to the player or the other characters, leaving you as player to slowly piece together the state of the world and plot bit by bit, all the way up until the 11th hour.

The story is what really kept me focused and motivated to keep going in the early game, when the mechanics are simple and the less interesting environments are available. I usually find Metroidvanias a bit lacking in any real hook to keep going, especially as the enjoyment of exploration is somewhat hindered by the environments being constrained to 2D boxes and corridors. Scouring the map to find gifts to bring back to the hub and unlock more conversations was a strong incentive for that exploration.

But as the game goes on, the combat and traversal mechanics start to go wild and really take center stage. I really think I enjoy the late game combat of Nine Sols even MORE than the game that inspired, Sekiro, which is one of my favorite games of all time. It starts very simple: parry attacks to avoid damage and grant yourself Qi, use Qi to put explosive talismans on enemies, use wimpy slash combo for minor additional damage. As you gain more and more abilities and enemies develop more and more unblockable attacks that need to be countered in a variety of ways, the battles—particularly the boss fights—become a mad dance of juggling half a dozen different actions and keeping up a constant stream of both aggression and assertive defense. In particular, mobility goes from barely there to intense. In the late game, you can double jump up to a flying enemy, air dash to dodge an attack, hit them with a basic combo, talisman dash to reset your mobility, hit em with another combo, double jump away, and air dash again through another unblockable attack, keeping you in the air and actively fighting for a good 4 seconds.

The bosses in the late game are some of the best I’ve experienced in games from a mechanical standpoint. I finished the game with a 38 hour save file, and I spent probably around 20 of those hours fighting bosses, of which there aren’t really all that many. Of the late game bosses, I spent about 5 hours on one, 4 on another, and roughly 8 full hours on the final boss. What’s insane about that is I legitimately had fun the entire time and was almost never frustrated by it. The boss presentation goes higher and higher as the game goes on as well, with some really great use of the background and effects to hammer home the bosses story themes as you fight. Early game bosses can be a bit dull in both presentation and gameplay, but it doesn’t take long to get to the great stuff, and the early bosses perform a vital role in easing you into the game’s combat depth. In terms of criticisms, the biggest one is simply a matter of limited budget/resources. The writing is great and builds to a really strong conclusion to Yi and various side character arcs, but probably would have hit harder if the game had been fully voiced by a talented cast, instead of just a sprinkling of voice acting here and there. Considering Nine Sols was a Crowdfunded game from a studio of only around a dozen main staff, I think that’s pretty understandable. There the slightly underwhelming manner in which you unlock key new abilities for traversal and combat. Rather than finding them in the game world in some contextual way, at specific points in the story/location you will rest at a standard save point and just be suddenly drawn into a spiritual plane where you are given a tutorial on how to use the new ability Yi just… realized he could do? There are certain power-ups you can find and bring back to a mechanic in the hub to be unlocked, as well as passive upgrade jades that are similar to Hollow Knight’s pin system, but to my recollection none of these abilities are ever used to reach new areas in the Metroidvania manner. Just a bit odd, but not particularly problematic.

Nine Sols is a crazy good achievement for any indie studio, let alone one that up until now made story/atmosphere centric horror games with little to no emphasis on gameplay (from what I’ve heard, I haven’t played Detention or Devotion myself). I’d recommend it to anyone who even slightly likes Metroidvanias, as well as anyone who enjoyed Sekiro, with the slight caveat that there is a lot of talking and cutscenes compared to other games in the genre. That’s a plus to me, but I’m certain there are a lot of people who’d rather the game keep quiet. But that’s really not Red Candle’s style. Even going just off their reputation, they make games that have something to say, and Nine Sols is no different.

Everything tries to be a "souls" these days. But where do you go from the hype conjured by mentioning two of the greatest games of all time? This is not hollow knight. this is NOT Sekiro. It doesn't have the majestic and endless beauty and design of hollow knight. The world, the sound, the visuals, don't live up. don't create the same experience. It doesn't have the deep impactful combat and memorable boss fights of Sekiro. but it doesn't have to. and it does do it's own thing that crafts a very memorable experience.

The combat might not be sekiro but it does demand you learn it's mechanics to perfection and yes parrying is a big part of that, like sekiro, but it doesn't feel like a sekiro parry and it doesn't just ask that of you. The boss fights are punishing, inconsistently at times. each asks you to master a slightly different way to use the skillset the game gives you to overcome them. and you will want to overcome them,

because one thing this game does that distinguishes it from other souls likes is the story and more importantly the characters. Yi is not your silent undead/ninja/tarnished. he has a dense personality and story you will unravel. he can be stoic but he doesn't silently dispatch your foes but take out his rage and vengeance spitefully and efficiently. Your main set of bosses, the titular Sols, are a varied set of nemeses that will have an active hand in your journey, tormenting you and frustrating you, raising questions. Each is hateable and sympathetic in their way (on defeat you learn their wicked style backstory that explains but does not excuse their actions). You will feel satisfied when you finally destroy them, and the game will not give up that satisfaction gently.

the level design is good enough. not terrible but not special. as I said, far from Hollow Knight. but you're not here for that. you're here for a story heavy unforgiving journey. The narrative is not the souls like mystery that can be ambiguously debated and woven into youtube video speculation. you are in the dark about what is happening for some time but every question does have a right answer.

With understanding of what it is, and what it is not, this is an exceptional offering in the spirit of the masterpieces it is compared to.

What are the chances of a game having a profound science fiction story and the closest thing to Sekiro's combat? Pretty small. In fact, I doubt there's another game like it out there.

It was really surprising to stumble upon a metroidvania with a high-concept science fiction story. Nowadays, we are getting at least a competent metroidvania every week, but their narratives are usually cringy mumbo-jumbo. At first, Nine Sols seems to be no exception, but it soon becomes clear that there's a lot more than meets the eye. The quite original "taopunk" setting leads to some spiritual ideas being sprinkled here and there, which doesn't imply any kind of supernatural element (Taoism is not dualist, anyway), should you be in search of this type of fiction.

Equally surprising was to find a cast of very interesting characters and well-written dialogue.

Combat takes a while to get used to, but, when you do get used to it, it's just amazing. My favorite combat in a metroidvania and probably the closest thing you'll get to Sekiro's parry-based combat. For the most part, the game is not particularly hard, but a few bosses are also Sekiro-worthy, especially the last one. If it proves too much for you, don't worry, you have sliders for the damage you take and receive.

Outside combat, it is your standard, competent metroidvania.

Lastly, the game looks pretty good. Its hand-drawn art is exquisite in the outside areas and maybe less impressive in the more technologically advanced sections.

Overall, Nine Sols is an extraordinary little game with an unexpectedly good story.

Caveat, I'm only about quarter way through it and I have a bad habit of losing interest in art that doesn't like speak to me... I feel like this is speaking to me though. If you're looking for something to hold you over through the Silksong wait, this is it. I don't want to just belittle this as 'Hollow knight at home' but this is the closest metroidvania I've played to Team Cherry's level of quality. It's that good!!!

I have heard people refer to this as Hollowknight + Sekiro, and though I haven't played any Soulslike I can't help but approve, the fighting mechanics in this are brilliant. It's a parry system that manages to be challenging with it's timing but generous aswell, as variety is emphasised on in the enemy types and not the enemies themselves. So each enemy is simple enough for you to memorize and master so you're never frustrated, but there's such a large number of them that you never feel bored.

I am in love with their approach to tutorials cause it feels like literally every move is given enough of a walk through that it feels weighty to use. And then the whole thing manages to have this Tunic level obscurity in tone and story so it feels like you're really discovering parts of Yi's kit and back story and world. I could go on and on but alls I'm saying is this is an absolutely brilliant game. Highly recommend. ....

Finally finished it. Good Game. Got abit too hard in the middle there but the accessibility options saved me from just dropping the whole thing. Still highly recommend

I have pretty mixed feelings on this. I was a big fan of the previous Red Candle games, since they were horror devs before diving into the Metroidvania genre. I was really enjoying this game quite a bit in the first 25%, but then hit some serious walls with it.

The good - great art style, fun exploration, pretty good combat system. The typical Metroidvania specific elements are solid in this.

But soon, the souls-like aspects became much more apparent (which is not a genre I enjoy). The parry heavy combat becomes absolutely insanely difficult, so I had to switch over to story mode just to get through the game.

The story… I just couldn’t get into it. The amount of lore dumping, dialogue, etc quickly became skippable for me. Nearing the second half, I just really wanted the game to end.

But the exploration was a lot of fun and the unique map system was great. It was at its best when you are just running around hunting for secrets. I don’t think I will revisit this one anytime, but if you are more into that soulsy combat then you probably would like this.