8Doors: Arum's Afterlife Adventure (2021)

This is a gorgeous game and beautifully animated, but gameplay dies a death of 1000 cuts. There's a lot of little issues that add up to and overall frustrating and boring experience.

Healing items are too limited and can't be restored so exploration is constantly being cut short. And exploration is not rewarding because the game has nothing to reward you except coins, which are kind of useless and don't feel exciting to find.

Enemies are too simplistic, with one or two attacks, and can be trivially stunlocked, so they are just no fun to fight. And with the lack of healing restoration, each hit is a permanent limit on exploration, so the best strategy is not to bother with combat at all.

Bosses all have the same rhythm of attack and wait to be attacked. It's almost turn-based, except that during their second phase they almost always overuse big AoE attacks or ridiculously tracking swings with little room to retaliate. Plus they have just too much health, so fights are endless and boring.

There's a variety of weapons but they don't feel different at all. Progression is pitiful; I've upgraded my healing three times and I barely felt the difference.

I really wanted to like this game because the hand-drawn art is stunning and the overall setting is extremely charming.

The game's not clicking with me. Visuals and platforming are good. Combat is serviceable although a bit repetitive.

I think what bogs the game down the most if the healing system. Instead of Hollow Knights smart idea of getting healing from killing enemies, here you have a limited number of potions (4) which heal less than a single typical hit. Combined with the dearth of checkpoints, it means that if you're low on health and facing a particular tough spot, it's usually better to just die and try again, which is a terrible feeling.

Also, the fact that each potion heals less than one hit removes any strategy to healing. You never need to wait for get enough damage to justify taking a potion. If you get hit, you just heal.

8doors is a very high quality Metroidvania taking place in purgatory as Arum seeks out her (dead?) father. It has a great art style and top tier animation, with an addicting gameplay loop and fun exploration.

I loved the themes in the story and presentation. The upgrade systems are really good and overall combat/movement feels great. Boss fights have that Hollow Knight level difficulty, while being clearly telegraphed and just taking trial, error and memorization.

I was searching DESPERATELY for something to scratch the Silksong itch, and this definitely did the trick. If I could change anything - the characters aren’t super memorable. The story - while touching on cool themes - didn’t impact me much (never bothers me in a MV though). I think there could be a little more polish in the level design and presentation, but that’s extremely nit picky.

Overall, great hidden gem that I never see anyone talking about. If you’re a Metroidvania addict like myself, I highly recommend this one.