9 Years of Shadow is a clean and stylish metroidvania. Without spoiling too much of the story, art is a heavy theme in the game and it is done well. The design team clearly worked hard to saturate the screen with colors. The boss battles are memorable and test your skills, although this is not a soulslike. There is some pattern recognition, but with some patience you can make your way through the telegraphed moves and patterns. Since the game highly values colors I can see this being a difficult game for the colorblind. As a matter of fact the game doesn't have a colorblind mode because of how intricate the color is weaved into the game. It's innovative, and interesting with how it is implemented. Color matchups is a normal thing, but how they show the matchups is interesting in the theming. There's plenty of movement abilities, as per usual in Metroidvanias, but they rarely have helped speed through the backtracking in the game. So far the game has also seemed fairly linear but I'll see how it goes now that I'm near the end game. Overall, a pleasant game that got little fanfair when it released. It deserved this second chance and is definitely a hidden gem.
