Possessor(s)
Main game
3.33 average rating based on 3 ratings
- Developers
- Heart Machine
- Publishers
- Devolver Digital
- Events
- BitSummit The 13th Summer of Yokai, Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest 2025 Edition, +1 moreBitSummit The 13th Summer of Yokai, Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest 2025 Edition, Devolver Direct 2024 less
- Platforms
- Nintendo Switch 2, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5
- Genres
- Adventure, Indie, Platform
- Themes
- Action
- Steam
- View on Steam
Release Dates
User Stats
How Long Is Possessor(s)?
How do we talk about new metroidvanias in a post-silksong world
I really like Possessor(s). Character designs are amazing, the plot is very good and I appreciate its anger against greedy corporations and dehumanization for profit. Combat is fun, the map is big and fun and full of secrets... and its nothing new. I feel that Silksong put the bar so high for the genre that I think all new metroidvanias are going to be overshadow by the Team Cherry masterpiece.
But I still think this is a good game and deserves success (please be a success. Heart Machine needs a win right now)
Here's my full review in spanish.
I think it’s safe to say this game is unfinished. There are just too many bugs, and since Heart Machine was forced to let devs go before it was done, I suspect they aren’t going to address the issues.
The platforming was already bad considering the whip won’t attached to grapple points unless you are the precise distance away, yet grapple points are spaced too close together so the whip will often miss them. But now I have the air dash, and it’s about the worst I’ve ever encountered. To air dash you don’t press jump then the dash, you press jump then dash twice. This is because the dash button is your air evade, so you need to press circle or B to mid-air evade and then press that button again to dash. It’s cumbersome and could easily have been rectified by making the air dash also an evade. There’s rarely a time you don’t just want to air evade after get the dash so I don’t really understand the thoughts process. I bet they would have patched a fix if they still had devs on staff.
What a sad state of affairs for a studio I really quite …
I think it’s safe to say this game is unfinished. There are just too many bugs, and since Heart Machine was forced to let devs go before it was done, I suspect they aren’t going to address the issues.
The platforming was already bad considering the whip won’t attached to grapple points unless you are the precise distance away, yet grapple points are spaced too close together so the whip will often miss them. But now I have the air dash, and it’s about the worst I’ve ever encountered. To air dash you don’t press jump then the dash, you press jump then dash twice. This is because the dash button is your air evade, so you need to press circle or B to mid-air evade and then press that button again to dash. It’s cumbersome and could easily have been rectified by making the air dash also an evade. There’s rarely a time you don’t just want to air evade after get the dash so I don’t really understand the thoughts process. I bet they would have patched a fix if they still had devs on staff.
What a sad state of affairs for a studio I really quite like.
@Sir_Laguna how do I use the painkiller potency? I know how to gain more painkiller bottles by trading in painkiller samples, but none of the shops offer a way to upgrade the potency, not even
P.S. the hockey stick probably is the best. It’s fast enough that I don’t feel too slow compared to the knives, and it hits harder. The bat and the guitar definitely seem like the worst weapons.
Sometimes this game is very bad, especially the way you can get stunlocked for an infinite amount of time if you get attacked by a gang of enemies. It also has a problem with off screen enemies and enemies that block doorways making it impossible to pass through, and also impossible to see the enemy through the door to attack it.
When you have no idea why you died about 20% of the time, it’s not great.
I don’t know folks, I love Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash but Possessor(s) feels more irksome than enjoyable. I even quite liked Hyper Light Breaker before Heart Machine ended development. Posessor(s) looks great and sounds great, but it doesn’t feel great and it also seems to do all the things every other Metroidvania does, but without quite as much panache. I don’t think I have the desire to push though all the low points to access the few highs the game seems to possess.
Truly not the end for heart Machine that I had hoped or imagined.
I really want to like this game but movement feels sluggish, and for a game that really demands the use of parry, the parry is kind of…terrible. I also don’t love the button layout but I can’t find something that makes better sense.
Also I like a corpse run when my character can zip through a level at top speed and get in and out quickly. This game does not have a character that feels that way, and having just play Islets which had both snappier movement and no corpse run, I kind of feel like this game didn’t need one either.
Amazing character art with relatively bland level design. Combat is fluid but also somewhat clunky, as the hand-drawn animation can sometimes be too jerky. The demo was alright, although it's hard to say how many metroidvaina-style backtracking the full game might have.
Still, I might be sold on the colours alone.