Maseylia: Echoes of the Past (PC) (Demo)

Overview: "Maseylia : Echoes of the Past is a 3D animated metroidvania. [...]" - Steam Store page

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20241118:
I tried playing this demo before going to bed.

Setup: I initially played with keyboard and mouse and then tried playing with controller.

Gameplay Log:
Got the dash
Got the shooter
Dying from platforming began feeling no good. So I stopped playing

Steam Game Time: 17 minutes

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First Impressions:
The visuals for this game are pleasing, and the movement on land felt smooth. Unfortunately, I felt the game lacked visual clarity on where I should go. The entire world kind of visually blends together and it just feels jarring. On the topic of visuals, I found it odd that I couldn't see the front of the player character - except for when I'm looking at the map.

While the game initially looked promising, it soon began to spiral down as I continued to play it.
- combat did not feel rewarding (e.g., enemies just disappeared with a slash); I think early on enemies should require two or three swipes to give a sense of weakness and interaction
- on that note, there's a lack of enemy density
- platforming felt excessive; while the game is self-described as a Metroidvania, it feels more like an adventure game (e.g., Zelda). But what I think about when I enjoy in a Zelda game is being able to take in the world around me as I travel from one place to the next, not having to worry about jumping from platform to platform
- I dislike the map system. It's too difficult to understand, it'd 3D, and it contains information beyond the areas I've explored.
- there's absolutely no story and no motivation to the game
- there's a lack of clarity on what causes death and respawning at the last game save

Overall, there was an initial beauty to the artstyle but ultimately the colors didn't work and the gameplay didn't do much for me either.

Demo Rating: 1.0 out of 5

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20241118 Comment:
The game aspires to be a 3D Metroidvania, of which there are some, but most Metroidvanias are 2D and I think the genre is better off that way. Though maybe I'm just a 2D oriented player. For example, I still like the original Risk of Rain over Risk of Rain 2. In any case, I'm sure as the genre grows, more and more games will become less familiar to what I'm used to, but I grew up playing the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS entries in the Castlevania series, so that's my baseline for what forms a Metroidvania (I also played part of Metroid Fusion). While the game demo had aspects of unlocking abilities and non-linearity, I feel it failed to capture the essense of how this is done in a Metroidvania. With other Metroidvanias, there's often an NPC that applies some context to the game within the first 10 minutes of play. Also within the first 10 minutes, the game typical guides the player through the controls via the environment.

As another thought, early on I collected the dash power-up which seems like for free. I think a more standard Metroidvania formula would be exploring an entire area with some areas along the way having jumps that cannot be assessed due to the lack of a dash. Then at the end of that initial area, there's a boss. Upon defeating the boss, the player gains the dash. Immediately the player needs to use the dash to escape a room, ensuring the player knows the purpose of the dash. A lightbulb should go off in the player's mind that the player should backtrack to a previous point in the game to use the newly acquired dash. As such, while elements of a Metroidvania are in fact non-linear exploration, ability-based progression, and backtracking, I feel the order of the elements is also a key characteristic of the Metroidvania.

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Maseylia: Echoes of the Past (PC) (Demo)

Relevant Links:
Maseylia: Echoes of the Past (Steam Store Page)