Aeterna however sadly not everlasting.
I’m a fiend relating to Metroidvania video games. I at all times search them out when in search of new video games to play and attempt to search each nook and cranny as soon as one will get its hooks in me. Aeterna Noctis admittingly went beneath my radar till its Nintendo Change launch, and now having performed 5-10 hours I can see why. A lot to my chagrin, I’ve discovered it to be one of the vital mundane, uninspired slogs of an expertise that works in opposition to what makes this style so gratifying.
The sport follows the lord of darkness, Chaos, after his defeat by the lord of sunshine within the opening cinematic. The world they inhabit is in an limitless loop of battle between whether or not gentle or darkish will rule, and this loop has gone on for some time. Since Chaos has misplaced this spherical he should regain his powers to problem the lord of sunshine once more. This plot line is about as primary because it will get, and the sport doesn’t actually do something attention-grabbing with it. Chaos themselves is a boring protagonist and is your typical “everyone seems to be beneath me as a result of I’m so highly effective” edgelord. In some methods, his demeanor is type of hilarious as a result of even probably the most primary enemy kind like bats and slime monsters can simply beat you in battle. It nonetheless did not make the writing any much less cringy for my tastes, and with the sport’s generic, overly darkish, and grim gothic aesthetic, I do not really feel just like the writers had been going for an ironic take.
Aeterna Noctis is making an attempt to match that specific visible type with some brutal and difficult fight, however I felt it to be very bland, with a lot of the extra attention-grabbing stuff locked approach too late into the sport to make an affect. One of many first skills you unlock is a splash that’s largely ineffective apart from shifting barely quicker throughout the environments. You possibly can solely sprint within the path you’re dealing with, so you possibly can’t actually use it in fight to nice impact. The vast majority of early encounters are actually simply ready for an enemy to assault, then closing in and mashing the assault button until they die. You begin getting some extra fight choices like a charged heavy assault and scythe that powers up your therapeutic skills, nevertheless it actually doesn’t change up the overall fight a lot as a result of a number of the enemies exterior of bosses do not actually require too many methods. You even have a talent tree that simply gives some minor upgrades like extra crucial assault harm, so even the development isn’t all that attention-grabbing.
Whereas I can let a lackluster story and the slow-to-start development methods slide, one factor that finally led to me not wanting to maintain taking part in Aeterna Noctis is one in all its primary mechanics. Whenever you die you lose your gained expertise and talent factors and want to remember it like in Souls video games; nonetheless, not like in these video games, as soon as useless you’re put right into a state the place you possibly can’t earn any extra expertise till you gather that XP once more. This implies extra time spent in an already difficult recreation the place you dedicate extra minutes and hours to backtracking to areas you had been already in relatively than attending to discover and discover new areas, the perfect a part of a Metroidvania. The true motive I come to those video games is totally hampered by this method, forcing you to backtrack both to the place you died or all the way in which again to the place you began your journey to speak to an NPC to revive you again so that you could begin getting expertise once more. Such a mechanic does not make the sport onerous; it makes it tedious.
Sadly, I did not get pleasure from my time with Aeterna Noctis and do not see myself desirous to return to it. It’s value mentioning that the Change model feels unoptimized for the system. There’s fixed loading between every display screen transition that breaks up a number of the tempo of the sport. In case you’ve performed every other Metroidvania, simply take into consideration hitting a load display screen for each single display screen transition and you’ll shortly understand why that may be an actual downer. The visuals additionally really feel like they’ve an excessive amount of movement blur on them or some type of video compression impact that simply results in a muddy look. Possibly somebody on the market can discover some enjoyment right here and have enjoyable with its edgelord protagonist and odd design selections, however this was simply not a recreation for me.
