I know what I just write doesn't make much sense, but this is exactly how I feel about Possessor(s) after I finish it. I was quite excited when I first heard about this game. Metroidvania has been one of my all-time favorite genres, and knowing that Heart Machine is creating one gets me really hyped up. Similar to Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash, the game perfectly captures Heart Machine's signature craftmanship - stylish world-building and interesting storytelling. There are some major hurdles regarding combat and common metroidvania oversights that might bring the whole experience down. Still, I think Possessor(s) is a good metroidvania and I pray for the best for the studio's future.


Style And Story
If you played Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash before, that special feeling is also presented here.

• The bold colors in character design and the dark, muted hues in background create a unique contrast. The clever use of dramatic lighting adds a special flavor to the ruined mega city. It's dark. It's hauntingly beautiful.
  
• The soundtracks aren't actually music. They are more akin to ambient sound with the mix of a few notes in repetition, a familiar design across all the of studio's works. I quite like it. It gives off a surreal feeling during exploration.
  
• The story structure and character development are really interesting. Using memories found in various locations to gradually envelope the whole story fits metroidvania's level design surprisingly well. I also love the dynamic between how Luca and Rhem. They both cope with their own emotionally abusive relationship, and are in extreme denial with each other when prompted. They argue. They crash out, but eventually they reconcile with each other.

Combat
A mix between souls-like and spectacle fighters.
Like

• It's not as methodical as souls-like combat goes, but you still need to dodge and find openings; the combo is not as stylish as spectacle fighters, but you can still pull off some nice combo should you find the right equipment.
  
• I like the design that all the weapons are simply household appliances and tools imbued with demonic energy. It fits theme well. There are two types of weapons: primary and secondary. Primary is the usual normal attack. There are only four of them, but each one specializes in different aspects of the combat: Kitchen Knives is fast and a good weapon for all sort of situation; Hockey Stick excels at multi-hit combo with incredible air-borne attacks; Baseball Bat trades some of the combo potential with excellent knock-back effect; and finally my favorite, Guitar is a charging weapon that sacrifices combo for extreme heavy hitters.
  
• Secondary may be a bit underwhelming at first, but as you collect more of them, you can unlock more tricks for your combo. They function as skills that cost you charges to use. Each of them serves a unique function that can help either bridging your combo or finishing the last hit. Take the very first secondary Mouse for example. It's an upward, diagonal, multi-hits swipe that can keep the enemies airborne for a short while, perfect for Hockey Stick and Kitchen Knives. It can also break smaller enemies' armor faster.
  
• Affixes are the passive buff you can put on primary and secondary if you upgrade them. They are usually quality of life bonuses or stat boosts you can freely swap around anywhere you want.
  
• Some of the gating abilities also double as combat tools, which is something I always welcome in metroidvania.

Dislike

• The feedback is off. Every hit feels like you are punching pillows. There's a weird delay between each attack that can throw off your combo rhythm.
  
• Animation-canceling is an essential part of the combo, yet the game handles it in a very indecisive way. Sometimes you can easily jump-cancel any part of the attacks into other combo. Other time you are forced to complete this specific attack chain whether you like it or not.
  
• Enemies' armor values in early game need some slight adjustments. Without proper tools, you can easily be overwhelmed.
  
• Because of enemies' janky animation and the hit-box being faster than the animation, it's hard to read their cues and parry accordingly.
  
• There is no invincible frame to safeguard you from multi-hits. If there are enemies that can shoot multiple projectiles at you and you fail to dodge or parry, you are going to eat EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
  
• There are only two ranged weapons, and both of them are not particularly good at dealing with ranged enemies.
  
• There's a weird glitch with the giant toads. Fully-charging the guitar hit right next to them will do nothing except locking you in place for seconds.

Other Complaints

• Box map design is so outdated. Seriously, why??
  
• Too much arena fights.
  
• The invincible phases for some bosses are poorly designed, lacking any signs.
  
• Side quests lack variety. Most of them are all just fetch quests.

中文小簡評
→光明行者製作團隊新作，有著團隊一貫風格的類銀河系惡魔城。
→角色鮮明的色彩與黯淡的背景形成強烈對比，光影的運用也讓場景極具特色，搭配帶有簡單音符的環境音效，探索起來往往給人一股迷離、玄幻的感觸，可以看的出來製作團隊非常擅長這種設計。
→敘事手法搭配類銀系惡魔城的探索方式，讓你以拼圖的方式將細節一一串連十分合適。故事也非常有趣，講述極具敵意的兩人如何面對各自生活中的情緒勒索，如何一步步面對自己真實的感受，最後共患難，在彼此間找到最純粹的友誼。
→戰鬥方面算是慢熱的，有點介於魂系的看招抓破綻與惡魔獵人那種華麗連擊之間，需要蒐集齊武器裝備才能玩出連擊的快感。主武器的連擊條件與副武器的功能搭配得當可以製造出許多連擊機會，你也能安裝附加物強化主角機能或武器功效，玩法配置還算多樣。
→部分探索用關鍵技能也能在戰鬥中運用，是我非常喜歡的現代類銀河系惡魔城設計。
→可惜遊戲缺點也不少，有的甚至影響遊戲體驗。
→打擊感不好，攻擊都會有股奇怪延遲感，普攻要接其他動作常常需要刻意慢個半秒再按才會成功。
→敵人霸體我覺得需要稍微調整，一些小怪的霸體血量過高，前期裝備不足的情況下容易導致一般戰鬥時女主很容易被複數敵人圍毆。
→受到連續攻擊時也沒有短暫無敵時間，特別是遠程敵人，基本上第一下沒擋下來後面的連擊全吃。
→女主遠程手段少的可憐。
→箱型地圖早該被淘汰了，怎麼還在用啊.....
→遊戲塞太多關起來打一堆敵人的橋段。
→部分Boss的無敵設計得不好。
→支線任務基本上都是撿東西而已。

Originally posted by author:

If you like what I write, please consider a follow to my curator page, thanks!
如果你喜歡我寫的東西，可以追蹤我的鑑賞家喔！

This game is like a downer song that means a lot to you personally, but you understand why nobody else likes it. (But you secretly think everyone else kind of sucks and is wrong about it.)

Recommended for:

1) Melancholic folks who find sad stuff strangely comforting and uplifting.

2) Metroidvania fans who want to play another metroidvania, even if it's not "THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME."

3) People who like 99/100 games they play. Someone who isn't picky, and enjoys overcoming different challenges different games present. You are flexible and enjoy adapting to the game, rather than someone who needs the game to adapt to them.

---
Not recommended for:

1) Someone who says things like, "I don't have much time to play games. I need a game to win me over right away."
2) Someone who spends $20 and requires something absolutely exceptional out of it.

3) Someone who hates parrying.

4) Just most people, lmao. IDK. 

******

This game REALLY grew on me by the end. Again: BY THE END!!

I was close to abandoning it at the 25% point, and again at the 50% point.

I had to force myself to keep playing it. But then at around the 70% or 80% mark, the combat finally clicked, and I really loved my last two play sessions.  Like by the end, I legitimately enjoyed the game and was having a fantastic time. My original plan was to hurry through it and beat the final boss ASAP. But something in me changed, and I went around and backtracked and defeated all of the optional bosses and did some of the available sidequests.

For combat, you're supposed to move fast, fast, fast. You unlock a lot of abilities, and you're supposed to chain them together. The game feels awesome if you do that. You're supposed to be attacking, repositioning, parrying, dodging, and stringing together charged attacks all kind of at once. The parry is 360 degrees, giving you the opportunity to attack one enemy while simultaneously defending yourself from another enemy behind you. If you do it right, you can break enemy poise quickly and cut through waves of foes in a stylish manner.

The worst way to play this game is kind of in that wimpy "souls" style where you poke once or twice, then run around, dodge, and wait for another opening.

****
The quality of the story is subjective. It will either move you, or it won't. If it doesn't, you will probably think it's a bunch of nonsense and that the whole thing sucks bad.

But if it moves you, you will sit there and be all like, "Maaaaaaaaaaaan."

I am currently sitting here being all like, "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaan."

I highly recommend this game to my past self. My current self is happy that I played it, persevered, grew to love it, and saw the end.

But I'm honestly not sure if I would recommend it to anyone else.

So let me open with the fact that I think the story in this game is an absolute gem (with a caveat!) wrapped in a very very unfinished product.

Non-spoiler about the story up-front: Giving a player choices without differing outcomes is plain bad, especially when in the first few minutes that your head-mate characters are likely going to be at odds, then the story otherwise very explicitly sets a loaded gun on the table and it's pretty clear it was going to be an option for one or the other to shoot eachother in the face.


That said, wow, I understand that Heart Machine absolutely had to push something out to survive, but this feels like an unfinished product in a lot of ways



Why do I say it's unfinished?

Let's start with enemies and characters!
Assets wise, a lot of the character art seems like roughs and have very limited frames of animation, while a few are just static sprites, and for the bit being that demons are supposed to be able to possess anything, there's only a small handful of enemy types, of which even many of those are just resizings, palette swaps, and minor alterations. It feels like they just took what art assets they had for one type, splashed some color on it, and then split up what ones did what moves. The final three bosses were absolutely buggy untuned messes, and the last two very much seem lego-pieces of versioning the same fight, which does not have any kind of narrative connection.

The first few zones have enemies made for them, like the library having globes and books and such.
But then those are just kind of... there for the rest of the game.
Go to the aquarium, there's Jeff dog-sharks, and in water, a type of squid, but you're otherwise outside specialty encounters, you're fighting the enemies from intro areas again. Also you'll have probably already encountered the shark several times.

Several of the enemies are just plain annoying to fight because they can sometimes end you in a single attack (more on this later)

Level design?

Yeah, okay, let's make it an absolute hike to revisit anywhere you may want to go back to a shop. There's characters I liked, but I never wanted to revisit them because their dialogue seemed like it would never change unless I fully completed their quests, which naturally involved going across THE ENTIRE map, including a couple that you have to go into the final dungeon for, which I think it's very funny when it's a "THE BAD GUY IS GONNA DESTROY EVERYTHING, WE NEED TO HURRY!" and no, let's walk THE WHOLE WAY BACK THROUGH THE DUNGEON to turn in the final trinket of trinkety goodness.

You might think this is a search action/metroidvania game, so there's reasons to revisit areas?

There's really not. Once you unlock an ability, it's really only useful to open up the next one. Yipee.
Oh, there might be ONE extra area somewhere that gets you a paltry amount of currency. Who cares?
The level designers should ask themselves "what purpose does this pathing serve for the player?" because the only thing it seemed to serve me was a dislike of bothering to visit shops outside upgrading my health and heals because of the aformentioned "standard enemies can one shot you"


What about player economy?

The poor economic design of the game for the souls or whatever its called can be summed up easily:
I got enough souls or whatever to achieve a final upgrade once or twice, and I only lost a substantial amount of souls once, but also I didn't see the point in the third upgrade slot, because there's maybe 3 upgrade slot items worth a damn

Enjoy fighting enemies give 5 souls when you need at least 400 to purchase most interesting items.

Oh, you beat a difficult end-game boss? Here's 50

What about equipment?

Most the weapons are pretty dang fun!
HOWEVEr

Upgrading them just lets you put a rune or gem in a slot, that mostly confer general character abilities, rather than actually enhancing the weapon themselves.

WHY, when the upgrade slot items confer GENERAL CHARACTER ABILITIES do I need to UNLOCK SLOTS ON EACH INDIVIDUAL EQUIP ITEM?

What purpose does this serve other than to pigeonhole the player? What exactly are we doing here?


What about combat itself?


Well, coming from the same folks as Hyperlight Drifter, which could be said to be known for it's extremely tight, well tuned combat, where you always know why you die, Possessor(s) also explores some really fascinating concepts in combat mechanics:

What if the hurtboxes were so much larger than the attack itself, you're really not sure how you got hit?

What if enemies could hurt you before even starting their attack animations, only doing a few frames of it or... OR! What if they could attack without animating the attack?

What is a single attack can hit you for multiple animation frames, each doing the same damage sometimes, and somehow this occurs most often when the animation bugs our or doesn't animate?


What if, and this is crazy here... What if when you get hit, you have zero i-frames, damage reduction, or anything else, and no recovery move?

Wouldn't it be so cool if these could combine, so when you do get hit by the massive hurtbox of an attack that doesn't animate you can just be instantly stunlocked to death, and not be sure why?

That's rad. Thanks. I loved every time that happened.


that said, I was willing to suffer through the bummer gameplay to see how the story went, and I liked it a lot, but boy howdy, even if they do patch in the obvious alternate ending options, I'm gonna watch them on youtube, because boy this felt like being in an abusive relationship with someone I once cared about, and I stayed around a lot longer than I should have because of the parts of them that I still loved, but the best thing you can do in that situation is leave, and never come back.