A lot of my gaming decisions are made by random offerings that the Playstation Plus system makes available from month to month. I have to say that most of the time these games are exactly what you would expect from a game that you didn't have to pay for in that they aren't really good and a lot of the time these games are downright failures. Another brand of game that tend to end up on their lists are things that sold well, were well-received, but the company already sold as many of these games as they are going to be able to and normally this coincides with the developer having another game coming out soon and this is not a coincidence.
In the case of Nine Sols there was a lot of people that were calling for this to be GOTY back when it was released and it sold pretty well. For me, I never even heard of it until I played it.
I watched the trailer before downloading it, found out it was a metroidvania game, which appeals to me, and also saw some other things that definitely doesn't appeal to me such as someone calling it "souls-like" which to me, is normally a secret code word for a game that I am definitely not going to like.
I gave it the benefit of the doubt though and thus far, I think the game is great although it is showing signs that it is going to get seriously difficult as we move forward.
While we aren't given an entire story, which appeals to me because I get frustrated when games are too wordy, we are told through exposition that we are some sort of ninja/samurai master that happens to look like a cat and that we were defeated at the start, and then rescued by accident by a little kid. We then befriend the kid and look after him, and later discover that his primitive village is some sort of feeding ground for the true overlords of the land who have duped the primitive folk into laying down their lives for offering ever so often.
The villagers believe they are being taken to a higher plane, taken away to be with some sort of supreme being at another place but in reality, as we can see from our perspective as players, they are being decapitated and their bodies disappear below. The character we are playing named "Yi" knows what really happens in this chamber and rescues his little fried ShaunShuan at the last second and this sets off an imbalance in the entire system. Yi, as it turns out, is the 10th "Sol" and the other 9 sols have now been activated because he interrupted the ceremony.
While a bit outlandish I do like this story and how the character we are playing is rather reluctant to get involved and does so, apparently, only because one of the only humans he has bothered to befriend, and kind of owes one to because ShaunShaun saved his own life, and now this vengeance plot has been started off.
It is at this point that we get into the meat and potatoes of the gameplay, which at first is deceptively simple.
The enemies that you dispatch rater easily at the start are done that way intentionally and perhaps to ease you into how difficult this game actually is. You are able to dodge or mad-button-mash your way through almost everything until you get to the first sub boss. It is at this point that you start to notice that the attacks that the regular mobs were throwing at you are not a good representation of how hard battles actually can be.
Although you can actually mad-button-mash-and-dodge your way through this one battle, you will probably take notice of the fact that there is no way that this is how the game is going to remain. And this is because it doesn't remain that way.
This could be a turn-off to a lot of people, but basically in this game you are forced to embrace parrying if you want to make it, a lot of the attacks you are going to face cannot be dodged and even the ones that I suppose you could dodge if you were quick enough on the controls, that is not the way forward. You MUST parry and for me, this is a tough things to accept and get past seeing as how I have never really enjoyed parrying in any game and will always seek a way around that.
The parrying animation is actually pretty cool and it was really hard for me to get used to this but I had read that this game is out of this world but you MUST learn to parry. You can see in the above picture that was actually pretty tough for me to screengrab that Yi is in the process of Zen-blocking this attack from a regular foe.
When I got to the first "real" boss I was a bit disheartened to find out that while most games wait until much later to give a boss a "second life bar" they are already doing it to you on the very first boss in the game. This is a point in Nine Sols where most people who bailed on the game said it had an "extreme difficulty spike.
The thing about the parries is that there is an "CLICK" sound that is made by all enemies right before they strike and it is at that exact moment that you are meant to hit the parry button. If you mistime the parry, you will still take less damage, but the only way to negate the damage is to get the timing just right. I can completely understand why a lot of folks would just bail on the game at this point. I nearly did and honestly, most likely will at some point but I don't want to give up on a game so quickly. I took the time to "git gud" at Hollow Knight and it remains one of my favorite games of all time despite being extremely difficult.
I found it VERY TOUGH to figure out the timings on these attacks to parry them and by the time I did finally figure it out it is really easy to panic and then completely screw up your battle. These battles are not short either and the "walk-back" to them might not seem like much, but 20 seconds is a lot if you have to do it 30 times in a row. I don't know how many times it took me to finally overcome this 1st proper boss battle, but it was a lot of them, probably at least 30.
This game is really tough. I would say that it is one of the toughest games I have ever played but I am not going to give up on it just yet because I have read that the bosses are intentionally very difficult and I suppose that isn't all that surprising.
if it is too hard for you, you can play the game in Story Mode and also adjust the attack and injury multiplier to great lengths. I haven't messed with this yet, but it seems as though you could make the game so easy that it might not even be worth playing. I have read on some forums that even at max attack multiplier that people are still dying. I haven't used it yet, but only looked at it.
So far, and I am only 10% of the way through the game, this game is pretty fantastic. I think the hard-as-nails difficulty is going to be a bit much for most people, including me, but I am planning on playing it a bit more.