Chasm

I got this on steam a year ago. I have never played Metrovania style games (besides actually Metroid and Castlevania), so it was new to me and I quickly added it to my favorites. I get that the Metrovania game style has flooded the market and there was a lot of criticism on this game, but I really enjoyed it.

I should've loved this game. I love the genre, I like tactical rogue-lites. I loved the graphics from the beginning. But the gameplay is quite frustrating. Fights are really boring because your character freezes for a split second after every attack. That means you can almost never get really good at fighting the enemies, instead you just have to hit them once and then wait out their attack cycle. You can dash, but only backward, and it is very prone to being hit by an enemy if you get the range slightly wrong. So the game feels very slow, and it punishes you a lot for trying anything but wait longer. The platforming is quite bad. The controls just aren't good enough for some of the platform puzzles, resulting in frustrating falls into lava, take damage, try again, fall again, 3-5 times just to get up to a save room. Healing is very difficult, save rooms are sparse, and enemies respawn upon re-entering a level - a deadly combination of frustration. Because almost every fight is a trading of hit points, eventually you just die by a thousand cuts on your way to get some healing or a save room. It's most frustrating how good this game could've been. If the combat was just a dash more dynamic like Dead Cells, and if the platform designs were a little better, it would be an awesome game. But I just re-played the same boring section 4-5 times just because it's impossible to get through without some control input failing, sending you back to the beginning, take some damage, start over, try it too much and reload from save.. As others mentioned the backtracking is annoying. No map markers, confusing rooms that all look the same, it's not as fun as in other metroidvania games, it's a chore. Oh what could've been.

Love the game and the soundtrack.

I bought this game on the sale, missed it the first times around. Didn’t really read that much about it beforehand and thought it would be more of an RPG. At the very beginning of the game, I still thought that...But as soon as you enter the mines it becomes clear: This game is a Metroidvania. Very,very close to Symphony of the Night and later titles in the Castlevania franchise, even down to aestetic quirks like how the map looks, how the save symbols look…and yes,it does have an equivalent to the medusa heads. And it plays well. Controls are very tight, layout seems a bit generic, challenge is fair, on the easy side(which I like). At first I thought the monster designs to be very generic, but that changes throughout the game and they get more interesting (the player sprite,sadly, does not..) The game isn’t too long, but due to a slightly random layout of the game each time you start a new game, it doesn’t seem as well designed as it could be and a lot of annoying backtracking is involved, more than usual for these kind of games. The puzzles can therefore also be a bit obtuse, but nothing to difficult and out of the ordinary. Overall, the game also isn’t too long. So far, I’d say-average Castlevania, from a time were these came out everywhere. Decent challenge, good, but not perfectly designed. What sells it for me, are music,look,and feel of the game. Garphics are nice-cool pixel art somewhere in between 16 and 32 bit 2D games, phallanx scrolling, and the locations really get interesting as the game progresses. Good atmosphere, a good bit of world building as well. And yes,the tight controls also help. All in all, on sale, I’d surely recommend it to people who like Metroidvanias, but don’t expect anything out of the ordinary. All in all, it tends to be well made, but a bit generic and annoying wth the backtracking at times. Still, it renewed my interest in the genre.

maybe i just overrate aria of sorrow in my memory, but if i compare my memories of aria of sorrow to chasm, chasm can´t keep up with aria of sorrow(actually every castlevania, but it´s the closest to aria of sorrow from the ones i have played). i don´t know why, but despite looking good and having suitalbe musik, chasm doesn´t manage to create an interesting atmosphere for me. most of the time chasm doesn´t feel like a believable world, but just like some nice looking levels. maybe the boring "you coincidentally get sent on a mission to single-handedly defeat the ultimate evil and save the world"-stoy played a big part in why this game couldn´t keep me interested, maybe another reason was, that the obstacles, that are put in your way to justify needing new abilities, like in every metroidvania, feel just too forced in this game. for example diving, you wear a heavy amor and are loaded with weapons, but you can´t stay underwater without diving gear? i could ignore a bad story and obstacles that seemed too artificial in other games and still enjoy them for their looks and musik and it´s not like i was bored when playing chasm, but somehow this game seem to stay far behind its potencial. i´d still recommend the game to people who liked aria of sorrow or people who just like the look of pixel games.