Valdis Story: Abyssal City

Valdis Story: Abyssal City is a metroidvania style game; you get new power-ups/ablities which help you progress further in the game. While the game appears to have the icing on the cake, it is missing some key ingredients. I was taken by the game's graphics, art, music and gameplay. Good designs of enemies, some pretty cool bosses and a decent character level-up tree. But, it ends there. The main problem with the game is there is no over-world map and story log. It's really difficult to navigate around the large areas and it's easy to get lost. I hope you like to write things down while playing a game because after someone tells you what you should do next, they don't tell you again. So, if you save and comeback later, the NPC won't tell you where to go next. You'll be lost at what you should do or where you should go. That may not be a big problem with some people, but it will annoy most. The next annoyance is the "cancel" or "dash" ability. You'll have to press down and then right or left, or diagonal right or left. This creates a problem when you are jumping around in high areas and fighting a boss. You will accidently dash when you don't want to which could cause an unnecessary death. Next, the timed puzzles. I got bored continuously doing these that I stopped playing. You need to hit some switches to open doors and get past them before they close and you'll need to do that annoying "cancel/dash" move which may cause you to f*** up! Lastly, the boring story. I was so bored of the story and didn't care about the characters. Sometimes I didn't bother reading the dialog of the chracters because the characters where just undeveloped and uninteresting. The story progresses in such an unnatural way. Valdis Story:AB is not the worst game in the world. It's playable and some may enjoy it, but for the rest of us, we would rather spend our precious time playing something more impressive.

This game has about everything I could want from a Metroid / Castlevania style game. Novel backdrop. Plenty of optional backtracking, but with a 'warp zone' style mechanic that keeps you from being more than five minutes from any given spot you've been before. However, there's an extremely annoying mini-boss well over halfway through the game. It combines an area attack (instant stun effect, hits well beyond it's animation, no interrupt window, unblockable) with throwing the player into big holes in the area, sending them back several screens to a point full of low-damage, high juggling enemies and a time-based 'puzzle' needing to be completed to get back to the fight. It's a luck-based fight with a long-term (walk away from the computer, read the paper for a while, get a cup of coffee) reset delay while you wait for your character to die and respawn in the mini-boss's room. This is a new miniboss though, and the game is under constant development. I can not imagine they won't fix this game breaker fairly soon... but until they do I wouldn't advise it to anyone.

Wow this game blew me away with the epic battles and platforming adventure! I grew up in the original NES generation and have played more games than I can count on numerous systems. For me this is a wonderful excursion down the wonderful lane of Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night... mixed with Devil May Cry fighting dynamics. It's a love letter to the genre and boy does it deliver! It comes with it's issues and frustrations (and I mean rage inducing madness at times!) but in the end the journey was worth it and the control you master over your character is a quest in itself. Amazing music, sound design, graphics, art design, story and controls make it one bad-ass trip! Do yourself a favor and support the independent developer... I can't wait for part 2.... and even the expansions for this version. Bravo! I feel like a kid during the challenging NES days again :D

Ok, I just finished the game on hard mode and I need to leave my thoughts on it. I'll start with the positives first. The game is beautiful! I enjoyed all of the sprite animations and the environment. It takes place in an underwater city surrounded by a mana field. I thought this setting was very unique, considering how many games I've played in my life. I also enjoyed the combat! It plays almost like a 2D Devil May Cry, where chaining larger combos together grants better experience rewards against normal enemies and increases your ranks against bosses. Getting an A or S rank against a boss is great because it gives you bonus experience, as well as stat upgrades. So that's all the things I liked about the game, unfortunately everything else was problematic, which is why I will not replay it. Here is a list of my cons: - The level cap is too low. Only 20?! - The enemies level up with you! I hate that in any RPG!! - The main character, Wyatt, is annoying. He doesn't go though any character development to become more likable. - The enemies are heavily recycled throughout the game. It gets boring to fight them after a while and none of the areas are memorable because of this. - There is no currency in the game, you have to barter with items that enemies drop. Major dislike! - You will need to respec your character to beat some tough optional bosses. Unfortunately, respecing requires you to farm some rare items from enemies. That's annoying!! - Some items needed to craft the best gear are extremely rare and limited per playthrough, such as ancient coins. There is no way to craft every weapon or armor in a single playthrough, which would not be a problem if the game had new game plus!! Why isn't there New Game Plus!? I don't want to farm all over again! - Exploration is NOT satisfying. This is the biggest problem. The treasure chests only contain craftable items, which you can usually get from item drops anyway. LAME!! So overall, it sucked.

If you like Castlevania, and i'm talking about the psx/gameboy advance/nintendo ds era, get this game. Really a nice world, fantastic gameplay, and like the castlevania series you can play the game again with variants and try to complete more and find new secrets.