Welcome to the Kingdom of Haricot.
Years ago, the land took to the sky, becoming a mysterious series of floating islands, where the power-hungry Church of Aloe now rules with an iron fist.
Enter Vernal, A young woman bent on finding her estranged father. With the help of some abnormal martial pr...
Welcome to the Kingdom of Haricot.
Years ago, the land took to the sky, becoming a mysterious series of floating islands, where the power-hungry Church of Aloe now rules with an iron fist.
Enter Vernal, A young woman bent on finding her estranged father. With the help of some abnormal martial prowess and an amnesiac automaton named Chervil, She'll need to make her way across this mysterious land if she wants to satisfy her need for revenge, and the truth.
Take control of Vernal in this beautiful pixel art Metroidvania. Unravel the secrets of her past and the mysteries of Haricot as you battle your way through this broken kingdom.
FEATURES
A fast paced metroid-vania
Explore the floating islands of Haricot. Town or dungeon, leave no stones unturned in order to gain more powers! Jump, dash, slide your way into beautiful pixel art environments and don’t forget: secrets could be anywhere!
Dynamic and rewarding combat system
Strive for excellence as you master Vernal's many combos and spells to create the deadliest suite of attacks to destroy your enemies! The large number of options at your disposal every time you strike your foes makes Vernal Edge's battles a constantly renewed source of excitement.
Make your own way
As long as there's wind in your sail and a fire in your heart, you are free! In Vernal Edge, you can take your aircraft to any island you want, and explore them in the order you choose.
Unravel the mysteries of Haricot and Help Vernal get her revenge, once and for all.
System requirements
Minimum system requirements:
Recommended system requirements:
Recommended system requirements:
Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
I like indie games, but I cannot understand why this gets such rage reviews. There's some interesting platforming, but it could really use another round of polish. The level design is strange: they hide the map from you until you've gone really deep into the stage. It's not obvious when you need to find a new memory and then come back to a stage, or if you just need to problem solve harder. The controls are more of a challenge than the enemies in the fight sequences, which are highly curated. It's got some nice ideas, but it's not a good metroidvania. People praise the characters and story, but unless you really like Gen-Z smarm, there's not much going for it, nothing you haven't seen before. It's not bad. I'm not one-starring it. Some of the platforming was neat and satisfying. But as a metroidvania, this is mediocre at best, and disappointing at worst. I regret the purchase.
A lot of good ideas marred by subpar execution. Combat is fast and fluid, but doesn't really have enough weight behind it to feel visceral. The platforming is not bad until you require pixel-perfect accuracy to hit some of the lamps and rods once you get the situational double jump. The character design is also worthy of praise, where I actually got a laugh out of the protagonist a few times. However, ultimately, a lack of strong direction for the player at the start hurts this game a lot. I wandered around for an hour before anything interesting happened and I was about to drop the game by then. I stuck it out, but got tired of the damage spongey enemies and uninteresting platforming design. I think some of the game's platforming problems could be overcome by letting the right stick look beyond the screen. There were a few instances where I basically had to simply fall to my death a number of times to navigate a downward platforming segment. It's just tiresome when you're punished for something so simple and that has already been solved for platformers of this type. I give the game solid marks for creativity, but poor ones for the execution and overall presenation.
I hate giving this one such a low review. I would say this is a solid 2.5, but I ultimately can't recommend it which is why I'm rounding down instead of up. . This is not a "true" metroidvania, btw, because it's not a proper "action-adventure" game. This is a character action and a platform adventure game connected through the game's progression system. The character action part, frankly I think they nailed. It feels like Kingdom Hearts II but properly challenging, and this is ultimately what kept me engaged in the game until I just couldn't stand it, for the reasons I'll detail below. Combat is very responsive and works exactly they way you want it to, during which you need to think about your approach to enemies, not too dissimilar from a souls-like, but much faster. I actually liked how the combat was locked and not regenerative, I think it would have been tedious if were integrated into the world, in all honesty.
The world is huge, and doesn't immediately come with a map. Each area you need to find the map, usually deep in the level, and some don't have any. The platforming is overly precise and it's way too easy to miss your jumps, leading to tedium where I've found myself attempting the same jump for minutes at a time; it becomes exhausting to find where you're going. The semi-open world nature of the game, without it providing you any sense of direction, also sucks. I found myself meandering and trying to figure out where to go for literally hours on end. The rewards for exploration are usually lame - all the chests you find are just in-game currency, and they're about 75%-ish or so of the hidden items you'll find, and with the horrible implementation of the map, exploration is just simply not rewarded enough for the game to be fun at all.
The metroidvania format was no the right choice for the game. There is an amazing game somewhere here, but the implementation of the exploration is excruciating, and sucked out all the fun of the otherwise fine game.
I almost gave it 5 stars. Would probably be 4.5 if I could.
The atmosphere of the game is great. The game has a solid story (not amazing, we've seen it before, but very competently executed), good level design, good characters (the protagonist annoyed me at first and then grew on me as the story progressed... she's a flawed but touching character), a pretty good soothing soundtrack (they should sell it, I'd buy it) and very nice retro graphics to complement it all. If you enjoyed the esthetics of the SNES fantasy classics, you'll be right at home here.
Both the combat and platforming are solid and will require you to adapt and evolve your style (and you'll need to master both). Your character will gain various boosts as you progress, but equally importantly, you'll get better at managing your characters' abilities and read cues during combat to know which ability you should use when. I've seen games that go deeper into this, but overall, this games tends toward complexity in this regard.
One grippe I had with combat and platforming is that it felt at times that controls could be bit crisper. Your characters has longish telegraphed motions that have follow through and at times you'll swear when you see a situation coming, you'll press the correct button to react, but your character won't react, because she's still following through her previous motion.
Pacing is also a little uneven. Most platforming and combat situations are easy and fairly relaxing even, but some are fairly brutal. If you're either an adrenaline junkie or a very casual player, this game may not be a good fit.
Also, this game has very open-ended exploration. You'll need to backtrack a lot and figure out where to go with very few cues. I finished the game in 24 hours (94% completion) and if I had known where to go, it would probably have been under 10. Overall though, I enjoyed the exploration.
So, with the above caveats in mind, this is a solid game for the right audience that I recommend.
One of those games that has been gingerly described as "DMC inspired" instead of just calling it a character action. (How many games need to be inspired by DMC and go on to inspire other games themselves before we can acknowledge a legitimate new genre has emerged??)
And I think I take some issue with. Merging of character action and metroidvania. Have you noticed what's wrong with this picture?
Character action focuses on rich combat, metroidvania focuses on rich movement and exploration. How do you combine those two things? Generally combat means you stop and stay in one place for a while! What even could that combination be like, some sort of Sonic-esque game perhaps?
And sure enough, Vernal Edge has some of the most rich and satisfying combat I have played in years. Some excellent and wonderful bosses also.
But in order to get to that combat, you have to do a bunch of platforming and exploring! The only way to play this game with a focus on its combat and have that nice flow between combat encounters is to learn to speedrun it.
I want to take my time looking around and poking at the little game world. But I also feel like every time I beat an enemy, they didn't live long enough and I just want to bring them back!
I feel like some kind of combat focused post game would have really helped scratch my itch. Maybe something like DMC's own Bloody Palace. Vernal Edge remains firmly a metroidvania, and simply an excellent one at that.
Is this helpful to you?
Something went wrong. Try refresh page.
This game is waiting for a review. Take the first shot!
{{ item.rating }}
{{ item.percentage }}%
Awaiting more reviews
An error occurred. Please try again later.
Other ratings
Awaiting more reviews
Add a review
Edit a review
Your rating:
Stars and all fields are required
Not sure what to say? Start with this:
What kept you playing?
What kind of gamer would enjoy this?
Was the game fair, tough, or just right?
What’s one feature that really stood out?
Did the game run well on your setup?
Inappropriate content. Your reviews contain bad language.
Inappropriate content. Links are not allowed.
Inappropriate content. Content contains gibberish.
Review title is too short.
Review title is too long.
Review description is too short.
Review description is too long.
Not sure what to write?
You cannot save your review due to the following reasons:
You need to select star rating
You need to enter review title
You need to enter the content of your review
Show:
5 on page
15 on page
30 on page
60 on page
Order by:
Most helpful
Most positive
Most critical
Most recent
Filters:
No reviews matching your criteria
Written in
English
Deutsch
polski
français
русский
中文(简体)
Others
Written by
Verified ownersOthers
Added
Last 30 daysLast 90 daysLast 6 monthsWheneverAfter releaseDuring Early Access
Your review should focus on your in-game experience only. Let the game stand entirely on its own merits.
Avoid noise
To discuss topics such as news, pricing, or community, use our forums. To request new games and website or GOG GALAXY features, use the community wishlist. To get technical support for your game contact our support team.
Critique responsibly
To keep our review sections clean and helpful, we will remove any reviews that break these guidelines or our terms of use.
Ok, got it
GOG Patrons who helped preserve this game
{{controller.patronsCount}} GOG Patrons
Error loading patrons. Please refresh the page and try again.
