Doomblade (2023)

• Playtime: 12 minutes

• Played: 2026

• Context: I hate Backtrackvanias with a handful of exceptions. I'm always looking for another exception.

Review

In Doomblade you attack by clicking on enemies, which moves you in their direction. The result is extremely fast and dynamic combat, which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, it's a Backtrackvania game so enemies respawn extremely fast and when you die you lose all progress since your last save. Worse, healing is limited to drops, which seem to be rare. Worse worse, i used the attack to get to an area that i think i was not supposed to go yet and got killed by invulnerable enemies while trapped. Fun.

Normally i would give this 1 star, but that combat move is really cool. If only they put that in a proper game.

This is the first Metroidvania this year (that wasn’t a surprise) that fully lived up to my hype. It is of a similar quality to Ori, but has a unique twin-stick DOOM melee gameplay and a really cool story. It is very polished and the world is dense, and is absolutely one of my GOTYs.

The game is beautiful, with each biome being very distinctive and gorgeous. The player movement is very addicting and has a similar speed and fluidity as late game Ori. The exploration is basically perfect, with a final game cleanup being the highlight of the whole experience. Great boss fights, great combat, interesting story and atmosphere.

A couple of tweaks would make this a perfect game for me.

1- there needs to be a late game item for finding missing secrets. I thoroughly swept the map at the end and still ended at 97% (22 hours) which is a very frustrating experience. There should be a way to find the rest without consulting an external guide!

2 - the final boss fight needs some tweaking. It’s easily the least fun boss battle in my opinion, it feels a bit clunky and just doesn’t have that addicting gameplay as ALL the others

But yeah, nearly a perfect game and the best semi-AA Metroidvania this year! Highly recommend!