Zexion

Zexion is a great game but still a bit difficult for me to recommend. It feels like a ♥♥♥♥♥-up Metroid romhack, which is both a good and bad thing. Exploration, environments, and upgrades stand out as fantastic and I honestly wish there was more focus on those metroidvania aspects of the game since they're done so well. Zexion is a good challenge for experienced platformer fans, but probably too frustrating for more casual players. The precision platforming sections felt finnicky and frustrating to me. I can't say they're bad, but I didn't enjoy them. The movement mechanics in Zexion are somewhat unique and although I feel like I understood them, I may have missed something that would've made the platforming feel better. Bosses are mixed for me, on the positive side they're pretty challenging and offer a good spectacle. On the other hand, bosses don't seem to have distinct patterns as much as a variety of attacks that blend together creating a mess of bullets. It's a bit more fast-paced and hectic than I would've liked for a game of this style but still fun if you don't mind struggling a bit. Zexion is a seriously impressive Metroidvania, especially for an indie dev. I'm looking forward to Gallant Leafs future projects.

Great metroidvania with somle really cool and new ideas, has a bit of that retro game unfair difficulty at times unfortunately

It was a blast

this is a love letter to metroid, yes, but believe me when i say it bares resemblance to contra, or at least contra hard corps (the only contra game ive actually seen ngl). this is a ridiculously over the top hard game and i loved every second of it

Fantasic metroidvania 10/10

I wanted to like this one, as a huge fan of most 2D metroids and a handful of modern metroidvanias as well, but this one just doesn't hit. Like so many other modern games that lean on retro aesthetics, this one feels like it's trying too hard to be something that it isn't. Movement and gunplay feel extremely slow, dated, and clunky, while enemies feel like they're designed for much more modern games - bosses (and minibosses) especially tend to zoom around at mach 12, spam the entire screen, and take heavy advantage of the player being limited to 8-directional aiming. Very reminiscent of Mina the Hollower, and that's not a compliment. 3 hours in and every beam upgrade still feels like a peashooter, missiles feel mandatory but health and ammo drops are obscenely rare. The full map being limited to navigation rooms is obnoxious for no reason. On top of that, the story is basically nonexistent. There's a lore drop in the intro, some slight environmental storytelling, and that's it. Overall it feels like a bizarre interpretation of Super Metroid without really understanding what made that game work, and so far it doesn't feel like it's trying to be its own thing either.

Been meaning to check this one out for a while now and am glad I did! As for as the Metroidvania genre is concerned, this game is among the most Metroid-like on that scale that I've come across yet (if the aesthetics aren't a dead giveaway, the gameplay is). Admittedly, this is a pretty crowded genre among indie developers, but this one simply stands out due to the degree of love and quality that went into it - the atmosphere, music, controls, overall game design choices - it's all very well thought out and makes for an immediately engaging experience. The only caveat to keep in mind? The default difficulty settings are intended for Metroid/Metroidvania genre veterans seeking a "Nintendo hard" level of challenge. But no need to panic if you're after a more casual experience or something in-between as the "Assist" feature from the options menu allows you to tailor multiple difficulty variables to taste, and you still have modern QoL features absent from many of the games that inspired this one. Overall, this is absolutely among the finer modern Metroidvania titles - highly recommended!