Valdis Story: Abyssal City

I feel like most of the negative reviews were by people, who only relied on gog/steam recommendations and didn't really know what they're getting into when buying the game. So I thought I'd give my 2 cents. Valdis Story: Abyssal City is not a game where you button-mash your way to the end or a game where you can switch your brain off. It's closer to Devil May Cry and Darksiders 2 - there's a style meter and combos, but also crafting, a skill tree and magic. A lot of info is provided as dialogue or item descriptions and after stage 1 you find a training dummy you can beat up to your heart's content and learn combo attacks. In the beginning you need to take some time to learn the ropes. Because dare to do something stupid or not pay attention and you will get punished! So it's not a walk-in-the-park-game. However if you're willing to learn, you'll be able quickly to do some pretty cool moves like combo locking enemies etc. Sound, music, art and animations are well made. Be sure to watch some gameplay to make sure they suit your taste before buying tho. There's not much to the story. There is a lot of lore however, which you can unlock from side quests. Unlockable lore is different depending on the character you play as. Each of the 4 characters has different strengths, builds and play style and slight changes in dialogue. There is a fair amount of backtracking, but rewards are worth it and either make your character stronger or let you explore different play styles. Controls are tight. I did runs with a keyboard, a noname gamepad and a xbox 360 controller. Had no issues, so I'm baffled that so many people complain about the controls. Tho I guess every setup is different. All in all it's a unique mix of genres and one of the few platformers with good combat and dynamic action - a polished high quality gem. And ultimately fun! Also a lot of player feedback has made it to the patches after release, so shout out to the devs for that.

An amazing metroidvania, quite deep and very entertaining. There's a good grade of freedom and optional bosses, four completely different characters, each has different spells and combat tactics, and for each character there are several unique weapons that completely change the way each character work. It's been a while since I've been so addicted to a game, so for me, this is easily a 10/10, and I strongly recommend this game to anyone who likes 2D arcades and enjoys searching for optimal character builds/gameplays. While there is a lot of achievements for achievement hunters, this game rewards you for playing well - depending on how well you have fought against a boss, you get a permanent stats upgrade, which makes a better reward than just an achievement. Difficulty is something that a lot of other reviewers mention, sayig that it's excessive, and that even stopped me from buying the game for several months, but I was pleasantly surprised by it - difficulty in this game is completely fair, for almost every boss there is a tactic that allows you to beat it even if you're not very good at games like these. And getting an S rank with majority of the bossess on "hard" difficulty setting isn't anything special, as long as you understand game mechanics and learn how to parry. Combat system is amazingly well done - there are dodges, air dashes, parry's blocks, combos, 5 unique weapons per character, a well done skill tree unique for every character with different builds, and plenty of awesome and interesting skills. I've beaten this game for every character on every difficulty and had a blast. The replayability value is amazing for a metroidvania. Deffinitelly worth its price.

Valdis Story could be a great Metroidvania despite of the uninspired story and lacking interest in the characters. Graphics and music are nice, it has smooth scrolling, good movement controls and is not as unforgiving as La-Mulana. There is an automatic savepoint in each room, so you can retry instantly when you failed. It has RPG elements, different weapon/armor sets and loot to collect to upgrade weapons, armor etc. Then again, the armors/weapons don't affect your look and the scrolling areas are small. Worst of all the game has serious design flaws. E.g. you run into bosses without any warning, most of the time without any chance of winning. As the automatic savepoint is the boss battle, you need to reload the save game from the main menu and lose all progress you made from there. The game also locks you in areas without telling you when and why. Usually you need to kill the boss which can leave you in the same situation of reloading and losing progress. If you saved your game inside the locked area and can't kill the boss, you're stuck. If there was any kind of savegame management, you could at least reload another one, yet there isn't. The level map is somewhat pointless and there is no world map or quest log. Fast travel is only possible between the three villages. So you run around the same rooms quite a lot. All puzzles are based on timed switches. Some involve wall jumping, moving platforms or cascaded switches. Ranges from tiresome to annoying. The level design is boring to terrible, some areas seem unfinished, there are very frustrating moments when you fall down three floors and have to traverse like 20 rooms with ultra-annoying time-triggered doors. Boss fights tend to be exhausting. Especially the final one. Also the combination of Metroidvania and RPG doesn't really work well. To level up you run through the same rooms and kill the same crabs. If you're too weak for a boss, you need to reload the last save game and kill more crabs. Meh.

It is actually pretty good Metroidvania with a Devil May Cry-like combat. Map is not very big, but you have 4 different characters with 3 skill trees each plus multiple difficulty levels and arena mode. I've completed it 5 times and it's still fun.

I really want to love this game. I read a lot of very good reviews about it (and the most of time, I agreed with it). It is a very good looking game, with lots of good ideas... but I tried to play with a keyboard or a gamepad, and I found the gameplay awful, very imprecise. I think gameplay is the most important think in a game and this one is prettty unconfortable. So, be advised and try the demo first.