Aeterna Noctis is a Metroidvania game, that has almost everything in it. Deep lore story, insane fights, banger music, hardcore platforming, just name it. Play as Noctis, the king of Darkness, and claim back your righteous throne!
Note that this review is based on the first playthrough on Hard difficulty.



Tale as old as time, it’s a clash between Light and Darkness. And Chaos being the God of this world, they curse both Light and Darkness with immortality, fated to dance in eternity with the rights to rules as their prize. Noctis, the king of Darkness, after being ripped out of every power he has, needs to climb back, and face the Queen of Light, just like every repeated cycle before it. Is this cycle gonna be the same just like hundreds before it, or this gonna be the end of it?

The way the game told the story is beautiful. Complete with anime-esque cutscene and narrated by soothing voice, read out the tragic and poetic story that happened between the King and the Queen. Not only that, we can learn what happened in the past through NPC and monologue and such. Both the main story and side quest story equally interesting to made me want to keep playing just see what happen next.

There’s a lot to unpack here, so I just point out the most notable one. Noctis have a skill tree that you can expand your EXP with to enhance your skills. The good thing is there’s 3 main paths of skills to choose from. The bad thing is you can’t acquire all the skills in the game. It designed that way because the level is capped and all the available skills points in the game is not enough to get all the skills. But the game allows you to reset your acquired skills point and re choose what you want.

The content of the game is MASSIVE. Noctis can acquire new weapons, new abilities, new charms, even new music! But it always comes with a catch. With a massive list of things to do, even the main story, the game doesn’t really have a clear navigation to help you to get to your goal. You need to pay attention to the very detail of the dialogue to get the idea where to go next. Speaking of paying attention, you need to remember the details of what you acquired, because you can’t see the details on the Menu loadout, it only shows the legend.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3001028922
A map is a MUST. Because the map doesn’t get revealed after you going through them and it is total darkness. Only by buying a map you can see the map. While it is cheap, it can get annoying if you pass the NPC that sells them and can’t find your way in the new area.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3001028805
Now to the main course, the combat. Noctis is versatile at combat, and so are the enemies. You can build your own playstyle by choosing which charm to use and which skills you level up. Whether you like melee or range, high risk high reward, or play safely. The enemies, both bosses and minions, are exceptionally creative and aggressive. All of them are challenging with their own unique taste and rewarding when you beat them.

The platforming, is on point. Not so tight, but not too easy either. My only complaint is there are some places that easy to get in, but very hard to get out, and you end up die in that closed space area and leaving your soul behind. But other than that, you get to experience a crazy kind of platforming challenge. The game even has a special dedicated challenge for platforming with time score globally to compete with other players.

The world in Aeterna Noctis has grown on me. I didn’t really like it at first, but after seeing a vast variety of the characters, especially each area with their own unique scenery and enemies, I love it. They have a subtle feeling when you are in it. From a dark grim place, into a colorful sky, even space! But then again, here comes my little complaint. Not only do they put beautiful background, but they also put something on the foreground too, that sometimes blocking the view. It only happened a few times, but still it gets annoying when you fall or get hit by something you can’t see.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3001028900
Not many times have I encountered a Metroidvania game with full dub. Even though they use VA, I don’t know which language they use. It not stopping there, the music especially the boss music, is a total banger. It’s a little bit of enjoyment whenever I need to redo the boss fight, which is nice. The SFX overall is also clean. This is something that sometimes goes under radar until it goes bad, so I appreciate they put thoughts into this too.

• Aeterna Noctis Virtuoso (Coming soon as per writing of this review)

Final Score
8.5/10

While this game is almost perfect on paper, but I can’t help sometimes I felt the game is too much and end up tired after playing instead of satisfied. Nonetheless Aeterna Noctis is a super solid game in every aspect of it. The dev also announced 2 other new games that share the same Aeterna universe, and I will definitely be checking them out too!

Follow our curator page, OCG-Curations, if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

Aeterna Noctis is a Metroidvania game, that has almost everything in it. Deep lore story, insane fights, banger music, hardcore platforming, just name it. Play as Noctis, the king of Darkness, and claim back your righteous throne! Note that this review is based on the first playthrough on Hard difficulty. [table] [tr] [th]Difficulty level[/th] [td]Aeterna(Normal), Noctis(Hard)[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]Game length[/th] [td]30-50 Hours[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]Game mode[/th] [td]None[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]Endgame content[/th] [td]Free Roam[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]Most discount at[/th] [td]60%[/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1][u]Short Review[/u][/h1] [table] [tr] [th]Good stuff[/th] [th]Not so good stuff[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td] [list] [*] Price worth the hours. [*] Lots, LOTS of things to do in the game. [*] All characters use VA. [*] Well balance between platforming and combat. [/list] [/td] [td] [list] [*] Bad map. [*] Sometimes it felt too much. [*] Bad menu UX. [/list] [/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1][u]In-depth Review[/u][/h1] [h1]Story[/h1] Tale as old as time, it’s a clash between Light and Darkness. And Chaos being the God of this world, they curse both Light and Darkness with immortality, fated to dance in eternity with the rights to rules as their prize. Noctis, the king of Darkness, after being ripped out of every power he has, needs to climb back, and face the Queen of Light, just like every repeated cycle before it. Is this cycle gonna be the same just like hundreds before it, or this gonna be the end of it? The way the game told the story is beautiful. Complete with anime-esque cutscene and narrated by soothing voice, read out the tragic and poetic story that happened between the King and the Queen. Not only that, we can learn what happened in the past through NPC and monologue and such. Both the main story and side quest story equally interesting to made me want to keep playing just see what happen next. [h1]Gameplay Mechanic[/h1] There’s a lot to unpack here, so I just point out the most notable one. Noctis have a skill tree that you can expand your EXP with to enhance your skills. The good thing is there’s 3 main paths of skills to choose from. The bad thing is you can’t acquire all the skills in the game. It designed that way because the level is capped and all the available skills points in the game is not enough to get all the skills. But the game allows you to reset your acquired skills point and re choose what you want. The content of the game is MASSIVE. Noctis can acquire new weapons, new abilities, new charms, even new music! But it always comes with a catch. With a massive list of things to do, even the main story, the game doesn’t really have a clear navigation to help you to get to your goal. You need to pay attention to the very detail of the dialogue to get the idea where to go next. Speaking of paying attention, you need to remember the details of what you acquired, because you can’t see the details on the Menu loadout, it only shows the legend. https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3001028922 A map is a MUST. Because the map doesn’t get revealed after you going through them and it is total darkness. Only by buying a map you can see the map. While it is cheap, it can get annoying if you pass the NPC that sells them and can’t find your way in the new area. https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3001028805 Now to the main course, the combat. Noctis is versatile at combat, and so are the enemies. You can build your own playstyle by choosing which charm to use and which skills you level up. Whether you like melee or range, high risk high reward, or play safely. The enemies, both bosses and minions, are exceptionally creative and aggressive. All of them are challenging with their own unique taste and rewarding when you beat them. The platforming, is on point. Not so tight, but not too easy either. My only complaint is there are some places that easy to get in, but very hard to get out, and you end up die in that closed space area and leaving your soul behind. But other than that, you get to experience a crazy kind of platforming challenge. The game even has a special dedicated challenge for platforming with time score globally to compete with other players. [h1]Visual[/h1] The world in Aeterna Noctis has grown on me. I didn’t really like it at first, but after seeing a vast variety of the characters, especially each area with their own unique scenery and enemies, I love it. They have a subtle feeling when you are in it. From a dark grim place, into a colorful sky, even space! But then again, here comes my little complaint. Not only do they put beautiful background, but they also put something on the foreground too, that sometimes blocking the view. It only happened a few times, but still it gets annoying when you fall or get hit by something you can’t see. https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3001028900 [h1]Audio[/h1] Not many times have I encountered a Metroidvania game with full dub. Even though they use VA, I don’t know which language they use. It not stopping there, the music especially the boss music, is a total banger. It’s a little bit of enjoyment whenever I need to redo the boss fight, which is nice. The SFX overall is also clean. This is something that sometimes goes under radar until it goes bad, so I appreciate they put thoughts into this too. [h1]DLC[/h1] [list] [*]Aeterna Noctis Virtuoso (Coming soon as per writing of this review) [/list] [h1]Final Verdict[/h1] [table] [tr] [th]Story[/th] [td]9/10[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]Gameplay[/th] [td]9/10[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]Visual[/th] [td]8/10[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]Audio[/th] [td]8/10[/td] [/tr] [/table] Final Score [b]8.5/10[/b] While this game is almost perfect on paper, but I can’t help sometimes I felt the game is too much and end up tired after playing instead of satisfied. Nonetheless Aeterna Noctis is a super solid game in every aspect of it. The dev also announced 2 other new games that share the same Aeterna universe, and I will definitely be checking them out too! [url=https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/7871885/][quote]Follow our curator page, [b]OCG-Curations[/b], if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/quote][/url]