Give this Metroidvania a Try — Axiom Verge Review

This nicely sized adventure through a glitch ridden world perfectly encapsulates some of the best the genre has to offer.

This nicely sized adventure through a glitch ridden world perfectly encapsulates some of the best the genre has to offer.

Axiom Verge is an excellent metroidvania in just about every way. It tells a light story, and introduces mystery and intrigue through it and its gameplay that will keep you curiously engaged until you’ve seen the finale.

I played Axiom Verge because I realized my experience with Metroidvanias was quite narrow and focused almost exclusively to the Metroid series. So, I didn’t quite know what to expect, but overall came out of it pleasantly surprised! The collectible weapons and items were fun to use and interesting, the areas were unique in theme and design, and the environmental storytelling was perfectly coated in a veil of mystery. This all played greatly into the genre’s staple of visiting old areas and discovering new things.

Something particularly impressive is the “glitch” mechanics… which can, for example, corrupt enemies making them into some unique variant. Seeing a new reaction was cool every time and made for a great way to spice up areas of the game I had already traversed to. I also think the game glitching out every so often just in general was a nice touch, it was making me feel like I was playing something forbidden to our reality. Really cool stuff! Sounds a little confusing, but if you pick it up, you’ll know exactly what I mean by all of this.

The story is serviceable, I think more than anything it paves the way for interesting world building exposition, which gets continually built on with little lore notes and small cutscenes throughout the game. I didn’t find myself particularly attached to the main character, and while I’m pretty sure the odd way of speaking the machines do is intentionally done, it comes off more so like I’m playing a game with a bad translation. Middle of the road overall, I’d say.

Movement in Axiom Verge feels good, which is important because you’ll be traversing the world a lot and creating mind maps from place to place. You’ll get new tools which will help you optimize your route and give you opportunities to get a bit quicker with each pass through. That said, there were several points where I got “lost”, which made me do the classic annoying Metroidvania loop, where I scoured every room in every part of the map over and over and over again just to find the one *single* point of entry to the next area that I missed. It’s a staple of the genre and ultimately helped me (I did find a lot of power-ups and upgrades because I got lost), but it added a few practically meaningless hours onto my playtime. I hate to say this, but had there been a marker of some kind that could have shown me the right direction (not even necessarily the exact location) to go, it would have incentivized curious exploration of the game world, rather than forced exploration. The relief from knowing I was finally going the right way was great, but the dread of being lost is not worth that for me. That is my one major critique of this game.

Here are a few other minor critiques: Some of the bosses I beat without issue on the first try, because they were pretty simple. Which is a weird contrast with how some basic enemy attacks feel absolutely unfair and unavoidable, even with a complete arsenal and knowledge of their attack patterns. It felt unbalanced in this way. One other thing, from reading reviews, I was expecting the game to really impress me. To its credit, Axiom Verge has a unique aesthetic, cool powers, and fun abilities that set it apart. But I never did get wow’d in a way that fulfilled the praises of the other reviews. Don’t get me wrong, overall this is a great game, I just think tempering your expectations may benefit your overall experience.

Overall, I really liked playing Axiom Verge. I think it’s a perfect embodiment of the stereotypical metroidvania formula, and I am happy to recommend it to anyone who may be itching for that kind of fix. It doesn’t break the bank both monetarily and temporally, and with its options to randomize, become more difficult, and beat your best time, I think it definitely has its fair share of value under the hood. If that sounds good to you, I definitely recommend picking it up.

Originally published at https://backloggd.com.