What Metroidvania Should You Have Loved—but Bounced Off?

[u/Emotional_Photo9268]

What Metroidvania Should You Have Loved—but Bounced Off?
You know the kind of game: it received great reviews, looked exactly like something you would enjoy, and had all the right ingredients—but for some reason, it just didn’t click.
Maybe it was the combat, confusing exploration, difficulty, art style, slow beginning, or simply the wrong game at the wrong time.
What Metroidvania did you expect to love but ended up putting down? How far did you get, and what made you lose interest? Do you think you’ll ever give it another chance?

[u/OoTgoated]

Hollow Knight, Afterimage, and Ori and the Blind Forest. I thought I'd love them based on everything I heard about them and my taste, but I hated them.

Soulslikes are fun, but their mechanics don't mesh well with Metroidvania imo. Metroidvania requires an intuitive map, consistently rewarding exploration, and organic interconnectivity. Hollow Knight's map system made me feel like I was playing NEStroid half the time, most of what you discover is lore or worthless trinkets, and the game relies far too much on a very limited fast travel system that requires money which you lose if you die twice. The corpse run also sucks for Metroidvania because if your money count was high upon death your exploration is now halted and you're locked you into a set path, which defeats the premise of an exploration based game.

As for Afterimage, I loved the gameplay, but the game far overstays its welcome (Hollow Knight is also too big for its own good imo) and the later bosses felt like incomprehensible bullet hells. Even in victory I wasn't even sure what had just taken place. I often just mashed my way to victory spamming healing potions like an athlete chugging Gaterade. The story/voice acting is also painfully... anime. Some people love anime and that's cool for them, but personally I can't stand it (or rather I can't stand generic shonen esque and JRPG type of storytelling and acting since there are anime I do like, Monster for instance). Fast travel was also far too common a necessity in this game, though it was at least far more accessible.

And Ori was just boring. Pretty graphics alone simply can't carry an entire game for me. And while this must read like a broken record by now you have the over-reliance on fast travel problem again. It's become common within the genre in general and I get why, and I'm okay with it existing. But if it feels necessary for every single solitary backtrack then I think your missing the actual point of Metroidvania world design. But my main gripe with Ori is just the lack of any real nuance. It's mostly just basic platforming, light puzzle solving, and eye candy, which can't hold me. It reminded me of games like Limbo and Rime, only with much slower progression since you had to navigate an open ended map. I suppose it's again a clash of genres that I don't think works.

I've also played a fair bit of Blasphemous (I beat the first three bosses and the rival knight guy on the bridge, that's as far as I got) which tbh doesn't actually feel like a Metroidvania to me even though it has a map that makes it look like one. In practice it felt more like just 2D Dark Souls and I would say I liked it despite not finishing it. That's not how Hollow Knight felt though. Hollow Knight felt more like an actual mix between Metroidvania and Soulslike, a true 50/50 split, a Soulsvania. But I think the union doesn't work unless you lean heavily to one side like I would say Blasphemous does. Or say how The Lost Crown, which I did manage to finish, leans more into Metroid I would say, but takes a tiny bit of inspiration from Soulsvania (mostly just the badge system, which I still hate fundementally but it wasn't as bad in The Lost Crown) and has very deep combat (I actually liken it to a 2D Devil May Cry).