I'm a big fan of these kinda games where you explore an area collect items/level up to fight bosses.
My favorite is Order of Ecclesia for the DS. It was just great gameplay, a decent story, and great art.
I'm kinda unfamiliar with the new games in the genre, so I'd appreciate any suggestions. And is there a community of people who design those games?
Hollow Knight
Dead Cells takes that formula and makes it a fun Roguelike
Yoku's Island Express is a fun pinball take on metroidvania
Axiom Verge
Rogue Legacy 2 is a ton of fun, similar to Dead Cells but more emphasis on exploration
Itorah
Transiruby
They Always Run
I absolutely LOVED Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
People here seemed to love Grime, but I'm not a soulslike fan so it was lost on me.
Legend of Tianding
Wuppo
Minoria
Unsighted
Cathedral is pretty old school, but might scratch that itch.
Owlboy
Tails of Iron is like Redwall meets Dark Souls, closest I've come to seriously enjoying a Soulslike.
Narita Boy
Blasphemous
Ender Lilies
A Robot Named Fight
Blue Fire is very Zelda like, but has no map, so I put it down.
The Messenger fuckin rips
Pumpkin Jack if you want something short and Halloween themed.
RiME
If they made more tables for it, or let people make their own, I'd be playing that shit all the time.
I had always hoped for a follow up, but I don't think that studio is working on a game
Wasn't it a Team 17 game? They're pretty busy, I thought, no?
I liked a lot of aspects of Control, but I just found the gameplay (like, the shooting), to be boring enough I stopped halfway through.
You're playing it wrong, sorry to tell you. Once you unlock levitating and throwing multiple objects at once you'll never use the gun again
Dark Souls games, especially Elden Ring have the most rewarding exploration in my opinion. The difficulty makes everything you find incredibly rewarding. It's the first game since the original Metroid that scratches that itch and makes playing with a notebook in hand worth it.
They also have a very similar mood to Metroid
Best Metroidvania I've played in a long time, and a very unique spin. Excellent map design, I am surprised I never got lost.
Also
AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) the best fan game I've ever played. I think it's better than Metroid Dread.
Lastly Prodeus I think is the best shooter this year, no fluff and very refined with exploration and bosses. Coolest art style this year also.
There might be an AM2R download on Internet Archive, Prodeus is on Xbox Game Pass and Carrion I think is fairly cheap. They all have been torrented.
I second Carrion. Incredibly fun to play as the monster, and the level design is great. I'm also suprised i didn't get lost lol
Environmental Station Alpha for a more traditional Metroidvania
Monster Sanctuary if you like the sound of a Metroidvania monster battler RPG
In recent years, I really enjoyed Yoku's Island Express, Iconoclasts, Bloodstained, Hollow Knight, and Metroid Dread. If you never played them, there's the Castlevania Advanced Collection (Aria of Sorrow was REALLY good).
I really like Touhou Luna Nights, it's nice and short, very bossfight-focused, beautiful animations.
My favorite is one is Azurik: Rise of Perathia for the Xbox, at the risk of doxing myself since the number of people to beat that game is probably in the double digits
Oh my God, I remember the trailer for that game you could watch in Halo CE's main menu :data-laughing:
Blue dudes before James Cameron
I think there's sort of a maximum shelf life to the genre. Once you're making a mental map of everywhere you see with "come back with the high jump" then it loses a lot of its charm. Great games if you're not yet at that point, of course, but I am, so my recs are old.
Super Metroid - I mean, I assume you've played it, but you've gotta be sure, right? It holds up, but there's a handful of poorly telegraphed moments - namely, there's a wall you can blow up with super missiles to the right of the elevator to Norfair.
Super Metroid, again - I think seeing what you can get away with once you know how to wall jump is about as cool as the game itself. This sense of meta re-exploration with knowledge gained is what actually made Super Metroid cool, and it's a shame it's missing from most of the genre.
Axiom Verge 1 - One of the upgrades was actually new enough to get past my "come back with the high jump" instincts, so I have to recommend it to people who are getting to that point.
Bunny Must Die - Has the same "replay now that you know the wall jump" thing that Super Metroid does, but it's not the wall jump, and it's actually kind of cooler. If you can't get past the main character being a bunny girl, I can't blame you.
Hollow Knight - I also assume you've played this, but it gets past the tiring parts of the genre by giving up on being a Metroidvania and opening up 90% of the map after your third upgrade.
Metroid Fusion - Is a plot-based simulation of a Metroidvania rather than the real thing. I hated it when it came out, but it grew on me. More games in this genre should do the evolving location stuff.
Axiom Verge
The lab coat, right? The disruptor and passcode both scratched that itch for me a little bit, but it's hard to forget you have them or miss when you need them. The lab coat is so brilliantly simple that I constantly forgot its obstacle wasn't an obstacle for me anymore. Just when I was really getting used to having it I also got baited hard by that one one-way entrance, you know which one.
Yeah, the lab coat. I noticed places to use it a few times throughout the game, but I was like "well that looks like I'm supposed to come back with an item, but that can't be right, because what the fuck would make that make sense."
Valdis Story is my personal hidden gem favorite. Metroidvania with tons of replayability, 4 characters with different playthroughs and multiple builds, Devil May Cry inspired combat with satisfying combo chains, and it incentivizes replaying boss fights til you learn their patterns fully (though you certainly don't have to in order to beat the game).
