Ghost Song is an interesting rendition of the metroidvania genre.
Part of the game takes inspiration from Metroid, the other part from Dark Souls.
It has some questionable design choices, but nothing that makes it annoying to play.
The graphics are very nice. There is this eerie atmosphere that fits the game mood, although the enviroments are similar to each other.
Gameplay is very fluid, your average twin-stick shooting mechanics. There is a great variation of weapons to choose (after you find them, that is), although I kept using only the regular blaster due one of the annoyances I had with the game.
The story is confusing. Well, not the story that you play, but the overall universe.
It tries to do what FromSoft games does, throwing you in the middle of a set universe and then feeding you snips of lore here and there.
Your objective is to wander around, then help the crew of the crashed ship. Your past and creation is unknown (there is some lore that hints at who you were before, but that's it)
The setting is a futuristic space age with orcs, androids, multicolored elves, a godworm spirit that rests inside the sun, a guy that splits himself into 3 concepts, ghosts, sentient AI ships and sentient bug people that can talk but never had any reason to.
The game wanting to be a souls-like, brings your usual bits: souls to level, different stats, lose everything on death, recover souls from death spot, focus on dodging, stamina system, estus, bonfire, all that jazz.
This is what brings a few problems I had this the game.
First of, stamina system. There are 3 kinds of "stamina".
Your regular gun overheats with time and loses effectiveness.
Your alt attack uses energy and also overheats your gun.
Your melee attacks drain stamina and get stronger if your gun is hot. You also use stamina to run and dodge.
The leveling system has 3 different stats, but they don't feel like they do much.
I leveled the gun stat to 30 and I barely noticed any damage increase. So I just dumped everything on the Resolve stat that increases health, energy and stamina instead.
The costs are exponential, so you might get to level 35 on a regular run without farming experience. After that, it gets incredibly expensive and takes hours for one level.
With every level, you also get mod capacity for passive skills.
Its like the Hollow Knight brooch system.
Some passives are very hidden and some drop from enemies in fixed parts of the map at a random chance. You have no idea they drop unless you read a guide.
Talking about guides, the game has several sidequests that are completely missable.
They are all basically "be here at this part of the game or miss it forever"
I missed ONE conversation, that blocked me from getting two achievements because I didn't backtrack to one particular empty room I already had explored.
Other than that, the game doesn't has much backtracking.
The exploration is quite linear and upgrades always open one specific way forward.
Sometimes they also let you pick an upgrade on a previous part, but nothing aside that.
One problem I had are these green doors you find.
I tried attacking them, they retreat and nothing happens.
I tried several times and nothing happened again. So I just assumed I get a key or something to bypass them and unlock a shortcut.
Well, no. I was supposed to just attack them harder.
The game itself isn't hard.
Most deaths I had were due one single problem: contact damage.
Lots of enemies rush towards you and do contact damage. Even when they are standing still.
Most of the time, I dodge and hit a different enemy. Or I dodge away and the enemy still hits me.
The ending was a bit lame.
The final boss was incredibly easy, then the ending cutscene is just a few words and still frames.
Well, overall, good game.
Flawed, but good.
