Another combat focus metroidvania, except the Taopunk vibes are absolutely impeccable. Big world, small creature yadda yadda, though it’s not like you’re a nobody here like you are in Hallownest or Aorasque. You are Yi, one of the leaders here, exiled for 500 years.
You’re awoken by Shauhshaun, a young human from the Peach Blossom village, after a long hibernation recovering from your death in the intro cutscene (as you do.) You get given a little bit of space to practice movement and combat, and learn your new skills, and well, if you could describe the vibe and combat of Ori as “bash”, or Bo as “airborne”, then the vibe of Nine Sols is undoubtably parrying.
There are 2 kinds of attacks that are coming your way, normal and crimson. Normal attacks can be parried, always, no matter the enemy or attack type, tap LB at the right time, and you don’t take any damage, and in fact are rewarded for it. Parrying an attack grants you one Qi Charge, which are used to execute stronger Talisman attacks. When you have a Qi Charge, you can tap RB to dash through an enemy and apply a talisman, dealing a small amount of “Internal” damage, or hold RB to apply and then detonate the talisman. Detonating the talisman deals damage, and also converts all the accumulated internal damage on the enemy into actual damage.
Internal damage isn’t just for the enemies though, it’s a key mechanic to your own survival too. If you parry too early, instead of taking damage like you would from not parrying or parrying too late, you instead take a small (non-lethal) amount of internal damage. If you then survive a few seconds not taking any further damage or internal damage, it’ll start healing back up again. However if you take actual damage, you also lose all the internal damage too. Later on there are abilities that let you recover internal damage from performing perfect parries, and Jades which can let you heal damage in other ways such as through landing sword strikes.
Learning to parry effectively and manage your health and internal damage is key to beating the enemies. They can fell you in 4 or 5 hits, even fewer if those hits wipe out large amounts of internal damage, so boss fights involve a lot of learning the opponent’s attack patterns, tells, and timings in order to effectively parry, and it’s always worth parrying, since internal damage is less deadly than actual damage on account of it can’t actually kill you until you make an actual fatal mistake. Nine Sols really manages to blend fast paced and methodical together in the combat system.
For a personal anecdote, I spent most of the game using a playstyle and Jade build (think HK Charms or Bo Omamori) which enabled me to abuse the heck out of the charge attack, meaning my X button was practically held down the whole time, and my parries just made my attacks stronger by spending Qi to boost them, but near the end, I encountered a boss who had very few openings I felt comfortable exploiting, so I switched off of the hyper aggresive charge attack build, and changed to one that focused on internal damage instead. I equipped a Jade that meant every time I perfect parried one of their attacks, I dealt an attacks worth of internal damage. That meant that when an opening finally revealed itself to me, and I was able to detonate a talisman against them, it dealt a significant portion of their health all in a single blow.
My only disapointment with the game is that it includes a corpse run mechanic. I do not like corpse running, it wasn’t fun when Hollow Knight had it, and it wasn’t fun when Demon Souls invented it. All it does is punish weaker players by making it harder to gain strength and more grindy when the game just unfairly decides you lose all your money and experience. Thankfully like in Hollow Knight, you can collect trinkets that can be traded for money, and aren’t lost when you lose your corpse. Even more so once you complete Chiyou’s quest line and they move to the Pavillion, meaning that all the shops are in the same place and there is no danger to exchanging your trinkets to buy something.
In terms of aesthetic, once you beat the “Prologue” for lack of a better word, and break back into New Kunlun from the Peach Blossom village, the tone shifts drastically. The village is Tao, the world is Taopunk. There is a lot of robots to kill, a lot of gore, a lot of horrifying reveals, and even one cutscene with blood raining from the ceiling! Did I mention this game was made by Red Candle Studios? Those guys really have some pedigree when it comes to disturbing imagery and emotionally devastating stories. For their first action oriented game, they did a bang-up job of it. The Sols are all incredibly diverse and well written, everyone fits together into the story and has their own roles to play both past and present, and it’s honestly just sad wandering through a world so ravaged by disease and failure. The story is fed to the player at a very good pace, enough to keep you engaged and curious and wanting to learn more, but leaving the heaviest reveals until right at the end, making a second playthrough give you so much more insight about why things are the way they are.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1809540 £24.99
Humble Bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/nine-sols £24.99
Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Nine-Sols-2695384.html £24.99
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