Environmental Station Alpha

unskippable boss fights

I enjoyed the first few hours. The pixel art is nice, if a bit -too- chunky for my taste. The music is great. I reached an area where some plant-looking monsters were shooting at me while I was trying to swing multiple times with the hookshot. I didn't have any tools that could hurt them, so I just had to try over and over. Between the plant monsters and the wonky hookshot mechanics, it took awhile, but I eventually made it across. Instead of feeling good about it, however, I just sighed. I filtered the Steam reviews to the negative ones to see what people were saying about the difficulty as the game goes on, and learned that of course it gets worse. It's a bit of a shame that I won't see the rest of the game.

Environmental Station Alpha is a game that I've been holding off playing for quite a while for god knows why, it has been hailed as one of the better games in its genre, but I've come off the game feeling just "ehh". It's an excellent Metroid-like with a charming, minimalistic art style, wonderful athmosphere and a fitting soundtrack, I respect how it also subverts many expectations the genre has laid bare (such as making you force your way through an area that you think you need a Varia suit upgrade for in order to progress), sadly the game is plagued by some frustrating design choices that at the end of my two playthroughs just left a bad taste in my mouth The biggest flaw with the game is it's combat which sucks, because there is so much of it, you can't heal other than at save stations and health stations (yup enemies drop no pickups and you don't have any way to heal during exploration), this choice is apparently supposed to make the few health upgrades you get feel more significant and I guess it does to an extent but the game has diminishing returns with the health upgrades (first you get +4 then +3 and so on) that it really does not make exploration feel that much more rewarding as it definitely doesn't make the combat any more fun. This choice basically renders most of the combat without incentive and it makes fighting against harder enemies all the more frustrating, this is made even worse by the fact that enemies respawn when you leave the room and come back, greaaat. Bosses are enjoyable to fight but I find that they deal too much damage to actually be tolerable. One thing I will say that this game does better than any metroidvania I've played is its grappling hook, it's incredible, who knew that just making the hook physics based would make it so much smoother when comparing it to the games in the same subgenre, the game clearly knows this from the abundance of grappling hook based platforming puzzles, it becomes the crux of this games movement, sadly most of the upgrades don't really feel all that exciting, you get your classic dash, double jump and charge shot but apart from that most of the upgrades don't really feel meaningful (hell some of them are just straight up keycards with no use in gameplay at all.). The game's map suits it's minimalistic style, but it is way too simple when compared to just how complex the game world actually is, there is a ♥♥♥♥-ton of secrets to find, so many things that you will miss. The game doesn't let you make any sorts of markings into the map to remind yourself later on (antithetical design in a metroidvania imo) you'll have to rely on your memory if you wanna come back to look for obscure secrets, and trust me you will want to come back for obscure secrets because of how extensive the post game is, it's basically a whole another game. even worse is how many secrets there are behind invisible doorways, in super metroid you always had a way to know if you could interact with a piece of terrain except for that one wall in lower norfair iykyk, well here those sorts of walls are all over the place, it made me really paranoid in the post game to have to basically jump at every single wall like I'm trying to be spiderman or something. If the base game is a metroid-like then the post game is basically a cryptic puzzle game, the game wants you to translate an entire alien language from a few clues and trusts the player to fill in the blanks for the rest of the letters, this was thrilling, I don't remember when I last picked up a physical piece of paper for a game in order to decipher a fictional set of glyphs corresponding to letters. Translating the alien language took some time and I had fun doing it but I'm not sure if it was worth it considering how the next parts send you on the most cryptic secret hunt of all time (seriously I have no idea how the first players figured this out, I certainly would never have found these locations on my own) the game wants you to find like 12 different locations on the map and type a code ON YOUR KEYBOARD MIND YOU I WAS PLAYING ON MY CONTROLLER ALL THE WAY THROUGH UNTIL THIS PART AND THEN I LEARN THAT THE ONLY WAY TO TYPE THE CODE IS TO RETURN TO KEYBOARD NO WONDER THIS GAME NEVER MADE IT TO CONSOLE RELEASES I HAD TO FIND OUT SECOND HAND THAT YOU NEEDED A KEYBOARD FOR THIS ♥♥♥♥- anyway you need to stand in a very specific spot on a very specific room for the code to work and then you need to return to the room above a cryptic ass clock room in order to spawn a ghost and then you must find a very specific room with a smiley face (no one would have this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ room in mind I swear) thats engraved in bubbles in the background in some sort of hidden underwater area (WHO EVEN REMEMBERS THIS STUFF OR REMEMBERS TO MAKE A NOTE OF THIS???) and you need to lure the ghost there in order to kill it and then you must traverse some sort of monochrome cosmic horror maze straight out of yume nikki in order to reach a secret ending. The ending was perplexing but I did not hate it, I found the general lore of the game extremely intriguing because the very generic scifi story set up takes a surprising cosmic horror turn, and I hate that there isn't a bigger fanbase around this game so I won't get to talk about the plot with others in more detail because I feel like there was so much more I missed. I feel like the post game was more trouble than it was worth, but I can totally see why some people would think this game does it better than anything else, if you're a fan of cryptic puzzles and scouring the world in search of even more cryptic solutions then this game is definitely for you. I feel like this review has come off very very harsh, but I want to assure you I did enjoy my time with this game in the end and I don't regret playing it, I'd say its one of the better torchbearers of the Metroid spirit, I feel like too many metroidvanias nowadays lean way too much into Castlevania so it was refreshing to see a game inspired this heavily by Metroid. Especially for the amount of content Environmental Station Alpha has for its price point the game is a must play for any fans of Metroid.

poor boss design given the way the character moves, unreliable hookshot that will punish you if it does not attach, weird i-frames where you can get hit multiple times from different sources and where both you and a boss can die and force you to redo the fight game has not aged well, go play any other metroidvania

Don't listen to the crybabies. It's hard but fair, and tightly designed.

It is a bad game in many meanings: 1) Tons of backtracking. 2) Weird platforming. 3) Obligatory secrets that force you permanently hunt pixels. 4) Unclear where to go next. You can go through platforming part only to see that your next path is blocked by blocks you cannot pass right now. It is a bad level design, sorry. I like metroidvanias but when you have to make many circles to get what exactly you have to find it is disgusting.

La grafica è pessima, ma è compensata dal gameplay. Nel complesso è un buon Metroidvania ed è piuttosto impegnativo, ma richiede precisione e i comandi sono un po' macchinosi, tanto da renderlo a volte più frustrante che divertente. Per questo la mia recensione non è positiva. The graphics are terrible, but the gameplay makes up for it. Overall, it's a good Metroidvania and is a challenging game, but it requires precision and the controls are a bit clunky, making it sometimes more frustrating than fun, so my review is not positive.

It's okay, I guess. A very average game that does nothing particularly great. I dropped it when I realized that I was going through the motions more than I was enjoying myself. If you want a pixel metroidvania platformer with a grappling hook, you'd be much better off with Rusted Moss or something.

It's a great metroidvania.

just beat the game and progressing through the postgame and i can say this game is a gem dont let the mixed reviews fool you the combat and platforming feels very good and fun and starts to only really be somewhat challenging in the postgame and all the bosses are fair and fun to learn despite what other reviews are saying they really arent as hard as people say they are the only somewhat hard bosses are the final boss, the pink parasite, and the secret boss (who i havent beat yet) also none of the bosses are entirely rng lmao the only one that may take a little bit of luck is prolly the final boss but even then its still completely doable if youre skilled enough its just a skill issue if youre dying a lot the exploring is also pretty fun and requires a good bit of thinking to get through however in the late game things can be somewhat cryptic and easy to miss as certain breakable blocks are either blending in with the background and easy to miss or just forgettable especially for certain upgrades and a lot of puzzles and clues on where to progress involve deciphering an alien language that can be annoying to decipher but those are the only complaints about it and might not even affect you if you pay super close attention and are patient 8/10 so far would highly recommend if you like metroidvanias you will like this game