Afterimage

sb跳跳乐设计，负反馈极强，引水渠那两个井盖跳跃失误你就等吧，半天降不下来。看得出来这俩井盖就是设计者的浮木，设计得极其慢的返回就宛如设计者希望自己的浮木不要那么快上天，可惜事与愿违。哦，不好意思，设计者没有浮木

I think this is a really great game, with just a few stinky things about it, some very rough edges that I can't really wrap my head around. I had low expectations at the start, but I can confidently say they were surpassed. I now regret letting it sit for several years in my library, but I'm glad I eventually got to it. I'll be listing out the pros first. First thing that's immediately apparent is the graphics. Everything is beautifully drawn, ranging from sprites, to environments, to character portraits. Despite the very picturesque artstyle most of the game uses, everything is perfectly readable on screen when it comes to foreground elements and so on (which, when it comes to this kind of stuff, is never necessarily a given). I thought it felt great to play. A lot of Renee's movement abilities mirror Hollow Knight's main character's (honestly, a ton of mechanical things in this game take direct inspiration from HK to a point where it's a little ridiculous, but I didn't mind), but she feels faster and usually more flexible to control; after unlocking a few of the core movement tools it gets extremely fun to play, traversal never felt like a chore to me, which isn't too common when I play a metroidvania. The maps are pretty big (which in my opinion is a positive) and the experience of just finding new areas very often felt like a cool surprise, though it can get overwhelming. Despite the relatively expansive environments, they never felt too confusing to navigate, and I, at least personally, found them quite satisfying to move through due to how they're designed... except for one. Combat is pretty alright, enjoyable for what it is in my opinion. It's fast-paced and grants the player a bunch of cool options since there's 5 or 6 different weapon types that all behave very different from one another and have distinct uses, while also gaining different special moves from the game's skill tree. Iron Bastion and Judgement were probably my favorite skills, getting those parries felt great every time and they were honestly a little busted, but who gives a ♥♥♥♥ it's a single player game. Speaking of which, this game is quite easy on the default difficulty; I wouldn't call that a negative nor a positive, an easy game is fine every once in a while, but I wouldn't come to this one looking for a challenge. The NG+ (which is really more of a side story and not a new play through) is especially easy as it puts you in control of an unbelievably powerful character that just shreds through everything, but it's for a very short time and I think it's just a nice power trip. While a few of the tracks are reused two or three times, I think most of the soundtrack is amazing, at least when it comes to explorable areas and such. I think the way the story is presented is neat. Things are exposed organically, so to speak, there aren't many info-dumps and the characters simply speak of worldbuilding-related matters in a casual manner, like anyone in their world would, and you're simply expected to follow along by inferring things through context; not entirely a novel way to write something, and in some cases can be a real detriment, but it's sort of rare to see and I don't think it was done too poorly here. Having RPG mechanics a la Castlevania is an okay addition, and the idea of a skill tree had potential. Thanks to a varied array of equipment and so on, there's a lot of ways to specialize into specific builds which is pretty cool. This is a bit of a neutral observation, but Afterimage is a fairly long game for the genre, especially if one wants to see all endings and so on, which is also kind of surprising. Now for things that I think actually sour the overall quality of the game. Those beautiful hand-draw graphics come with some caveats. Most of the sprite animations in game are made with some sort of live-2d style that doesn't always look the best in motion. You can also rarely spot some parts of the environment that are implemented shoddily (bad cutting or lower resolution on the image, for some reason). What also really puzzles me is how Renee and the other playable character are both drawn in a different artstyle, both sprite-wise and in their portraits, compared to the rest of the game. I do not get the logic behind this, and I can't imagine it being unintentional at all, perhaps it's something about these characters sharing the fact of feeling "alien" to the world around them? Idk I'm just bullshitting. Also while most of the game is very visually clear, an area late into the game suffers from not being so clear and is a bit of a pain to go through at first because of it. Fast travel being based on a consumable item is... certainly a choice. It's easily bought at the very start of the game for cheap, but still quite annoying to have to go back to refuel. Just make me spend money automatically each time I do the thing at that point. Or don't, just let me do the thing freely. What kind of logic even is that? One specific area in the endgame is absolute ass to go through. It's a big ass empty expanse of sky with nothing but a bunch of floating islands and exploring it is incredibly boring because most of it relies on using some wind currents and waiting as they carry you. It just sucks. The presence of consumable potions along with the classic "refillable" heals just feels sort of wrong? It's part of what makes the game really easy if you do have a skill issue, but also those other heals don't heal you to a satisfactory enough degree to even consider using much after a certain level. Weird. Sub-weapons are completely useless, never found an actual use-case for them. Any music that comes up in combat situation in this game just kind of... sucks? Really underwhelming in those moments. Honestly this could have been an exploration-only game with no combat and it would've been fine; not saying I didn't enjoy that though. This is just my hatred for these kinds of characters speaking, but Ifree is just kind of unbearable. I'll never understand the fascination for the "mascot-like rude little ♥♥♥♥" characters that audiences from this part of the world seem to suffer from. Granted this character has reasons for acting the way he does but he's still an annoying little ♥♥♥♥ and I'd like him dead. I also don't think Renee is much of a character herself, for being one with a voice of her own and her own lines. While the story does something kind of new, I do think it's a little hard to follow at times or gets confusing, in no small part due to the translation. I can at least be fairly confident that this game (unlike many other games from china that claim to have an english localization) wasn't translated through machine translation, but still wasn't exactly handled by someone whose first language is english, due to the sometimes shoddy use of grammar and typos that aren't exactly frequent but just enough to be a noticeable trend. Better than the alternative though. The skill tree is an interesting idea but also just kind of useless in the grand scheme of things. Most of the bonuses you receive from it, save for weapon abilities, are extremely minor and only really become substantial when piled up together, which takes a long while. You'll go most of the game without feeling much of an increase in power aside from survivability because leveling up automatically improves your defense and health. All in all it felt like it didn't matter. There's also a cooking/crafting system linked to some npcs for some reasons...? I just can't with that ♥♥♥♥, it kinda serves no purpose. Some other things are kind of shoddy, like black screens during cutscenes to avoid animating things and such. Despite everything though, I think I really loved this game. I believe, judging from some of the easter eggs and collectibles in it, that this was some kind of fund-raised project made by people who were passionate about it, and it shows.