9 Years of Shadows Reviews

Artistically very beautiful, but sadly very easy. Entertaining and fluid though.

в целом сойдет но не более брать со скидкой больше 50% из минусов: странная механика хп, контактный урон, дэш назад, финальный босс просто срет крестами

A softer take on the metroidvania genre, 9 Years of Shadows marvels the player with wonderful scenery, delightful art in traditional and pixel forms inspired by anime like Saint Seiya, a wonderfully done soundtrack and an interesting, although not very satisfying narrative, in the grand scale of things. Its easy to understand gameplay and simple, albeit effective combat system, allows one to inmerse themselves in the game's setting without needing to try too hard. Its difficulty, at least to me (a fan and avid player of the genre), wasn't an issue. However, as I said before, I wouldn't consider 9 Years of Shadows to be a "full-on" metroidvania game. It does have exploration elements and some backtracking (which could be tedious to some because of the lack of fast travel), however, the game is really mostly linear. The armours which grant Europa the skills needed to progress are obtained in a predetermined order and most areas of the game are mostly inaccessible if one doesn't have a particular kind of it. Overall, the game was highly enjoyable. A nice, not too taxing experience, which shows that my home country definitely can produce great videogames. I'll be patiently waiting for Halberd Studios' next release.

9 Years of Shadows is a good Metroidvania game with, as its most sublime element, beautiful graphics. It may be a good game but to be honest it lacks a certain degree of originality since most of the time it feels a bit bland (mainly due to a lack of contextual themes). You know you're playing a Metroidvania but this one gives the impression of discovering the basics of other Metroidvanias. In any case, if you like the genre with tough bosses, great level design and especially stunning graphics then 9 Years of Shadows can be a complimentary game in your collection. Despite my negative comments, some elements should be taken into account such as the protagonist who feels much more authentic and human than protagonists such as in Blasphemous or The Last Faith and I found it quite a nice change. Lastly, I think that this is the first game of these developers and it is quite impressive to find such quality as a first project. This makes me hopeful for the future where I hope that I can look back on 9 Years of Shadows as the glorious debut of developers striving to produce more interesting games.

Note: I played for the first time in 2025, the game had some changes since release 9 Years of Shadow is a fun metroidvania with a bad reputation. From all the comments/reviews I saw online looks like this game had a bad reception on release, after trying It I don't think It is bad at all. Here are some complaints I saw online: - Game crashing: I played the whole game on steam deck and didn't get a single crash, I guess It is fixed or I'm lucky - Game is too hard: IMO the game is actually kinda easy, except for the final boss - No fast travel/too much backtrack: For a metroidvania I think the amount of backtracking is okay, and there is an elevator for faster navigation - Too short: Maybe I'm bad, but It took me 15 hours (8 hours in the ingame clock) to 100%, for an indie metroidvania It is not short at all Overall the game is good, the whole presentation is awesome, there are some problems, like the final boss being really fucking hard, but It is worth giving It a shot. P.S.: I love the Saint Seiya look of the armors

Great artwork and setting, fun gameplay. Backtracking is a chore. Bestiary bugs prevent getting 100% achievements.

If you like metroidvanias this will be a nice game to add to the list. Its not revolutionary for sure but its short, gorgeous to look at and gameplay is average but not bad by any means.

Scaling issue, the last boss is way harder than the other. Loss of ability to recover light quickly make the character weaker. Weird decisions overall, Power up don't reward the player enough.

Froze during the cutscene after beating the final boss so I didn't get my achievement. Nice pixel art, but not a good metroidvania. All of the abilities you get are movement abilities, so there is nothing that improves the incredibly boring combat.

This is a mechanically simple game, and I really like that about it. Unfortunately it just has too many balance and quality-of-life issues which make it more frustrating than good, and I gave up before finishing it. 9 Years of Shadows doesn't have a lot of mechanics; it would feel at home on a 16-bit console, and that's refreshing when a lot of games are touting "deep" combat and complicated movement. What's here controls and plays well, and lets the exploration be more central to the game. Unfortunately that exploration is hampered by a lack of a fast travel system, which means you spend a lot of time trekking around while trying to find secrets you missed in some far-flung corner of the map, which is made worse if you ever end up not knowing where to go next. Fortunately (but not really) you can eventually figure out how to move through most enemies while avoiding combat, and cheese the heal feature repeatedly to traverse quickly. The game's gimmick isn't very unique: it's a colour-matching-with-the-enemies-to-get-extra-damage thing, but it's essentially never used in an interesting manner. It's for the best that it isn't: because switching is so cumbersome that if you had to do it constantly you'd be quite frustrated. You also can't do it unless standing perfectly still, which is awkward. It also seems to have no other effect on the combat: just four different colours of the same thing. The boss difficulty is massively unbalanced, which paired with some extremely obnoxious hitboxes means I gave up playing the first time I tried it. On a second attempt I powered through and enjoyed my time, up until (what I assume is) near the end when I met another very frustrating boss, and decided it wasn't worth it. The latter half of the game gives up on exploration and throws a bunch of boss fights at you, which are frustrating at worst and unsatisfying at best. Every time you die you have to mash through their dialogue: there is no "skip" feature, or at least I couldn't find one. I pressed and held every button imaginable and got nothing. Also the healing mechanic is not good. You have a shared health/ammo bar thing, which out and then do a timed button press to get a fast heal. Except that it appears too quickly and without enough visual indication, and also not at expected times: sometimes it appears when your bar runs out, but sometimes not and you have to fire one more shot to get it to appear; you cannot tell the difference between "exhausted" and "empty but has one more shot". If you miss the timed button press, you can do a much longer heal; it's more effective and you wish you could do it at any time, but you can't without running out the bar first, usually taking pot-shots and then hoping you don't screw up the timing. Visually the game is pretty interesting; it's not really my aesthetic but at least it's quite unique. Unfortunately though, it's more frustrating than fun, and while I did put in some time, I wouldn't tell anyone else to.