Chasm

2023-09-04
It's a perfectly fine metroidvania. Which in a world where there are a bunch of really good metroidvanias is kind of damning. The story is whatever, the music is solid, the art is solid as well. But then it has weird choices like randomized level layouts. Except they're randomized in an incredibly minor way. I question why you would even randomize a metroidvania. Isn't half the fun the slow exploration and memorization of level layouts that perfectly polished to be as fun as possible? Well you're not getting that. And if you get stuck you have to look at someone else's slightly different map to figure out where stuff is.

Combat is reasonably fun and tight but then it has these minor RPG elements. Another weird choice. You slowly level up but not in any really significant way. And it ends up fostering grinding which feels weird in this type of game. And there are some enemies in the game that are just pure frustration (the spider enemies that run on the ceiling where you can't easily hit you and then shoot webs that stun you from range...).

Platforming is really solid actually. It's no Ori but it was definitely tight enought to be fun when there were some trickier platforming challenges.

In the end I could really get through the game after turning it on Easy difficulty. On Normal it was just too much work to keep dying and restarting at their arbitrarily distant save points. They were going for some "old school difficulty" but they didn't do it in such a way that it remained fun. It just felt like they made it difficult to make it difficult. A classic design failure. It's fine but ultimately that's not a recommendation I'd make "Hey, go play this just fine game."