Recent reviews by mxmox

The writing is enthralling, the setting is fascinating, the courtroom drama is high, and the yuri is toxic. I can sing its praises no higher.

Schmoovement fun, goat cute, simple as

I really want to be able to recommend this game in good conscience. It genuinely has a lot going for it! But ultimately such an endorsement would be half-hearted at best. 9 Years of Shadows has been plagued by a myriad of bugs since launch, and although many of the more serious ones have been patched, some persist. The standout one for me was a problem where the regeneration of light (which functions as both your "shields" and "mana" equivalent resource in this game) failed to function consistently near the end of the game, making the final boss's frustrating jump in difficulty even harder to deal with. I reported this issue in the bug thread here and gave it some time in the hope this would be patched, but it has not been acknowledged in the months since.

It's possible you could have a great time with this game! If you don't run into bugs, there's a lot of beautiful pixel art and impressive animations. Those alone were what sold me on this in the first place. The game's aesthetic is great, and themes of music and color play well with it. The music is beautiful, though not especially memorable. The story is just serviceable, but honestly that's fine for a game in this genre.

If you're looking for a deep metroidvania, though, this isn't it. Only a couple of items are hidden out of sequence, so there is little to no reason to revisit previous areas once you clear them, which is a shame because most of your upgrades are exclusively or primarily for traversal. Combat tends to be pretty monotonous after a while, as the elemental rock/paper/scissors is purely a question of numbers with no other difference in gameplay. Major story bosses are somewhat of an exception, with most of them having a unique gimmick that makes the fight more engaging by asking you to combine traversal techniques with combat around a large arena. Unfortunately, the endgame kind of fails to bring it all together, with the final boss relying primarily on frantic attack patterns in a lengthy endurance match that is an enormous jump in difficulty compared to anything else the game asks of you.

I missed that there even was a Kickstarter for this until it released, so I didn't come to it with any expectations from that, but I still came away disappointed. I hope that the devs take it as a learning experience and find success in the future.