Ghost 1.0

Ghost 1.0 is one of those games that slips under the radar, but really shouldn’t. It looks simple at first, but once you start playing, the tight controls, clever level design, and satisfying progression pull you in. Combat feels good, movement is responsive, and upgrades actually matter — you feel yourself improving without the game turning into a button-mashing power fantasy. What I appreciated most is how confident the game feels. It doesn’t overexplain, it doesn’t chase trends, and it doesn’t waste your time. Exploration is rewarding, the humor lands surprisingly well, and the soundtrack quietly supports the atmosphere instead of trying to steal the spotlight. This isn’t a flashy AAA title, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s a well-made, focused experience with personality — the kind of game you buy on sale and end up wondering why more people aren’t talking about it. If you enjoy solid gameplay, meaningful upgrades, and games with soul, Ghost 1.0 is absolutely worth your time.

I'm heavily saddened to write this since I consider UnEpic to be one of the best games ever created. Ghost 1.0 just isn't at the same level or even remotely close in stature. There are two modes, regular metroidvania mode and roguelike mode. The unfortunate thing is the game was balanced more towards the roguelike mode and as a result the metroidvania mode suffers greatly. You are forced into combat of varying difficulty levels while exploring the map. If you die, you lose everything on your person that you've collected which would lead one to think that maybe it's leaning towards some souls-like or roguelike mechanics but sadly upon retrieving your "essence" where you previously died, you only get back a miniscule amount of your previously collected items and lose ALL upgrades and weapons acquired. The only way to mitigate this is every time you upgrade or buy a new weapon / item, you need to walk all the way back to a save point to save your game to prevent loss. This encourages unnecessary backtracking and sometimes you'll be forced to backtrack into rooms with higher difficulty levels of unskippable locked room fights due to the alarms that you cannot avoid. This is absolutely unfun and terrible game design. The map itself is pretty bland. A lot of the rooms and other parts of the map look the same. There's nothing dynamic in the layout either. It's basically copy and paste the rectangle room over and over. The music is serviceable but also forgettable to me which hurts to say because I absolutely ADORED the soundtrack for UnEpic. The controls are terrible. It uses twin stick shooter controls which has been poorly implemented. You have to release aiming simply to jump. This is absolutely ridiculous. I don't know what happened here but I'll have to skip this for sure.

Juego al estilo retro y con bastante la dificultad que te mantiene entretenido

Ghost 1.0 es uno de esos juegos que no esperas que te marquen, y sin embargo, lo hacen. Tiene acción, ritmo, exploración, combates frenéticos, secretos… Todo lo que se espera de un buen metroidvania está aquí, con una ejecución sólida y sin fisuras. Pero lo que realmente lo hace brillar es el alma que transmite, esa que solo notas en juegos hechos con cariño, amor y dedicación. Fran lo ha vuelto a hacer. Con su sello inconfundible, ha creado una experiencia redonda: divertida, exigente, y con ese equilibrio entre humor y narrativa que tan bien sabe manejar. Como toda buena obra que va más allá de lo superficial, poco a poco su historia va soltando preguntas que no esperabas: identidad, conciencia, control… No quiero spoilear, pero a nivel narrativo es una pasada. Los protagonistas tienen su personalidad bien definida, con diálogos irónicos que te sacan una sonrisa en el momento menos pensado. No son protagonistas al uso, pero sí que te importan, y eso en un metroidvania es más raro de lo que parece. Gracias a ellos, la historia gana profundidad sin volverse pesada, y te quedas con ganas de saber más. La estación Nakamura es casi un personaje más. Da la sensación de estar siempre activa, con sus robots y sistemas funcionando sin parar. Además, el diseño de sus zonas refuerza esa coherencia y vida. El estilo futurista y cyberpunk está perfectamente integrado, y recorrer cada rincón se siente natural y entretenido. Nada está puesto al azar: los puzzles, las alarmas, los NPCs… todo encaja con la historia y la ambientación. Nada que añadir sobre la banda sonora: tiene tanta personalidad que acabarás tarareándola sin darte cuenta, y eso siempre es buena señal. El doblaje al español es oro puro, aunque, personalmente, creo que no llega a la misma altura que en Unepic o Unmetal, donde la calidad es claramente superior. Aún así, es muuuuy disfrutable. ¿El juego es perfecto? No. En ocasiones presenta picos de dificultad algo abruptos y momentos anticlimáticos, además de secretos tan crípticos que parece que el juego te esté tomando el pelo, pero nada de eso eclipsa el conjunto. Son detalles anecdóticos. En definitiva, Ghost 1.0 no pretende reinventar el género, pero tampoco le hace falta. Su objetivo es claro: ofrecer una aventura intensa, con humor, con desafío y ese sabor indie que solo puede nacer de la pasión. Y lo consigue con creces. Gracias, Fran, de verdad. Por seguir haciendo juegos así. Por recordarnos que aún existen desarrolladores que hacen las cosas con pasión. No puedo esperar a jugar tu próximo gran título.

Its a cool game with a lot of character. Platforming, shooting, it all feels good. The weapons are also interesting and unique. You can play it as punishing as you want, or just enjoy yourself. There are a few points of note: While the game is open ended on how you upgrade and play, there is certainly a "correct" way to stack your upgrades and weapons, and you are punished in the final level if you don't. I had to go back and grind to unlock a few upgrades on certain utility "weapons". Dev, if you read this, man, go back and make another go of it. Hell, do a simple "remastered" DLC. We'd pay. Even something like a mini campaign after the first one, an homage to Ghost in the shell or Venus wars. The masses are hungry, we need content! even if you never touch this one again, thanks for the fun times, and good job.

This is a really fun game to play and beat once, but only once. That one boss with the constant healing that stuns you if you deal damage too fast, is definitely not designed with NG+ in mind. I'm sure it's not outright impossible because I did beat the game the first time around, but I quickly lost patience with figuring out which upgrades to turn off and which to leave on so that I could comfortably outpace its healing without getting blown out by the rest of its poorly considered mechanics.

Enjoyed it quite a bit, but probably a somewhat niche title. Definitely more of a sale candidate if you are not in dire need of a half-serious cyberpunk metroidvania. [i]Ghost 1.0[/i] straddles a strange line, it wants to be something of a twinstick shooter, a metroidvania, a serious cyberpunk story, a tongue-in-check cyberpunk story and nostalgic all at the same time while also attempting to innovate here and there. Does not quite work out, honestly. The gameplay is solid, but also janky at times. When I recently got back into it and tried my hand at some of the extra challenges, I noticed this somewhat severely, as the regular storymode is comparatively forgiving there with all the upgrades to make your life easier. But then again, getting those can be an outright chore, as every room has a “hidden” loot that can be unlocked in the wildest ways. Shooting a specific spot, floating somewhere in ghost form, use a lift 3 times, kill enemies in less than 5 seconds, kill all enemies EXCEPT one specific type, kill ONLY a specific type… the list goes on. It often feels random and very much “just use a guide”. What I mean to say is, the gameplay is mostly solid, very much what you would expect, but it is also trying very hard to make you find secrets in very unintuitive ways that often feel like this has to be in it because of the genre and to keep you busy, rather than engaging you with intricately interconnected map design, secret passages and such. This is fine, considering that the setting is a space station which only allows so much variety, of which there is ultimately quite a lot. Bottom line is, I did not find this groundbreakingly awesome, but sufficiently enjoyable most of the time. What I will say is that I rather like the idea of the “ghost” that can possess most of the robots that populate the space station. In this sense we can get lots of variety, for instance by playing as the combat droid for a spell. But let us proceed to what actually drew me in. In a trailer, we see an early section wherein Ghost explodes a robot, is called out for what the hell this was supposed to be and gleefully goes “Stealth!”. That kind of blatant, unapologetic cringey humor felt just lighthearted enough for me to interest me. And oh boy, did the game deliver on this front. It is rather interesting, for as the plot progresses, we see lots of tongue-in-cheek humor and eye rolling, only missing a laugh track. We get traditional tropes… but we also get very different tones when it comes to them. The trio is developed somewhat thoroughly and actually interesting and relevant questions of the cyberpunk genre ala [i]Ghost in the Shell[/i] come up, alongside the tropey mentioning of “[i]Blade Runner[/i] rules” or whatever. We are told stories by and of other characters only for another to interject and correct that no, this was not an epic adventure, it was just D&D night. This game is [i]nerdy as hell[/i] and just runs with it. And I gotta say, I rather enjoy it for what it is here. It does not take itself too seriously, since it is after all a kind of silly shootey game, complete with the somewhat deliberately cringe voice acting and an episodic format where you are told “Last time on [i]Ghost 1.0[/i] . . . and now the conclusion!” whenever you reload, as if watching an endlessly ongoing TV show. Yet the writers showed themselves adept enough to keep from falling into the super ironic self-awareness trap and make it into one big laughing track. Again, while not groundbreaking or genre defining, I rather enjoyed it for what it is and how deliberately it celebrates a lot of 80s and 90s geek culture whenever it is not asking somewhat profound questions. Definitely a solid, fun cyberpunk experience for me. If a bit janky, but maybe that is just part of the deal.

Good 挑戦しがいがある多くのコンテンツが用意されている（本編とは別に用意されているミッションモードは特に歯ごたえがある） ジョークなどもきっちり翻訳されている高品質なローカライズ 目的が明確に示され、マップの構造がシンプルなために迷うことが無い（欠点でもある） Bad 建築物内で話が展開するために、景観の変化に乏しい 微妙にクセがある操作の仕様やレスポンスのため、キャラクターを動かす楽しさに若干欠ける 自キャラは探索ではあまり強化されず、お店での購入やストーリー進行によるスキル振りがメイン強化ソースとなるため、探索するほど強くなるというメトロイドヴァニア的な楽しさは薄め。 実績について 本編は2周で全実績を取得可能。とはいえ、サバイバルモードのノーデスやハードモードは難しめなため、同時にスキル無しなどの縛り系実績を取るとなるとかなり大変。時限実績がそれなりにあるため、3,4周で余裕を持って回収する気構えでゆったり遊ぶことをおすすめ。 メトロイドヴァニアとして見ずに、大きなマップを自由に行き来可能なステージクリア型のゲームとして見れば、長時間遊べる良作だと思います。

The game itself may be fine, but I ran into a very basic controller issue that should have been handled by the developers. If your controller disconnects, turns off, runs out of battery, or gets reconnected while the game is already running, the game does not detect it again. Steam still sees the controller, the Steam overlay shows that it is connected, Windows sees it, but the game itself refuses to pick it back up. The only real fix is to close and restart the game with the controller already connected. That is a terrible user experience, especially in a game where losing progress or being forced to quit just because a controller briefly disconnected should not be a thing. This is basic hotplug support, and it should have been implemented. People’s controllers can disconnect. Batteries die. Bluetooth drops. USB cables get bumped. The game should be able to handle that without forcing a restart. Until this is fixed, I cannot recommend it.

-Utterly broken zipline controls in an area you are forced to do after the first boss. Who thought these controls made sense? -Game drops to 22fps at random, alt tabbing fixes it, absolutely destroys your abililty to play when it happens in the middle of combat. I'm on a 4070 TI this game should run at 6000fps -Cringe-inducing DND guy making references like a peanut gallery, should have an option to entirely remove these conversations from the game perhaps having no one talk ever honestly I would have had more fun that way -"Previously on Ghost 1.0" your game is like 15 hours long it doesn't need recaps fool -Infinitely respawning enemies that respawn while you're trying to platform through a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ room with the broken zipline controls -The devs don't really understand the exploratory nature of this type of game. The game is too focused on collecting money to buy skills and abilities rather than finding skills and abilities as you explore. This changes the gameplay loop from going to new areas and looking around exploring, to exploring for a bit, getting money, then backtracking again and again to a shop to buy stuff over and over. Every room has a "secret" in it, but it's often nonsensical what you must do to unlock it. Yeah, we get it, metroidvanias sometimes required you to shoot some random block to open a passage unexpectedly. However in these games there is a limited, known set of secrets that can exist. Usually shoot a hidden box, go to a hard to reach area. It's limited because typically the game shows you really simple to find ones via all those methods early on, so you will look for them in harder to find places later. It's not the game just trying to confuse you stupidly by having secrets unlocked by crouching in a corner for 5 seconds in a random room or running back and forth a bunch in a specific spot. These are stupid secrets that are only found by looking them up online. Not interesting or engaging. -The devs of course needed to add pointless missions no one will ever do because it was the mid 2010s and adding a pointless mission mode had to be in every game at this time. These missions make me want to put a bullet in my head. The very first mission has an achievement to only break 20 boxes, but your drones will automatically shoot boxes without you being able to do anything about it when trying to kill enemies, so it's basically impossible to get this one. It's like they want to piss off the player as much as possible.