THE BEST METROIDVANIA/INDIE GAME PERIOD!

i cant say much without spoiling the game. but once you progress and got the controls down, man... it makes you feel like a real ninja!

ive played 283 hours on pc and another 100+ on playstation and it is just addicting. it makes you wanna get all the trophies (which i have)

A reluctant thumbs up.

This game is hard as hell and I took a gazillion breaks and watched a ton of youtube videos and read guides and even cheats to get through the 2nd half of the game.

The first half of this game is crazy hard but I loved the gameplay, the world and the pleasing retro aesthetics. It was incredibly rewarding and achieving completion on certain sections of the game made me feel like a million bucks.

The second-half would have been equally fantastic if it wasn't for the insane padding and backtracking required -- yes required -- in this game. You're talking about a gamer who legit beat Metroid and Super Metroid back in the day and loved every minute. Here, I was ready for this game to end and end quickly.

The latter half of the game requires so much backtracking that I literally had forgotten where I was in the storyline after spending 2 hours straight bouncing back and forth on already completed stages to find lost villagers and hidden items. The Messenger relies way, way too much on padding its length by forcing the player to revisit extremely hard platforms up to 5-10x to gather essential items to finish the game.

People say this is difficult but fair. I'll agree that they are most likely right but I am in the camp of pulling my hair out every 20 minutes while playing this insanely difficult game. I thought I loved platforms, I thought I loved ninjas, and I thought I loved pixel graphics --- this game makes me question all of that.

This game is fun, hilarious, and extremely smooth. I rarely had any technical issues and the controls are precise and easy to get the hang of quickly. That said, I really wish the developers just cut the game shorter and avoided padding the 2nd half of the game where it enters 16-bit graphics.

The backtracking gets so annoying. You never get the ability to warp to checkpoints so even for a tiny thing you gotta clear entire levels again and again and again and again and again and again.