Exile's End Reviews

[h1] The Metroidvania Review[/h1] [url=https://metroidvaniareview.com/2019/11/25/exiles-end/] Scored Summary[/url] | | [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/30503887/] Subscribe to our Curator [/url] [b]How Metroidvania is it?[/b] High Fit – In spite of the store page’s pleas to the contrary, [i]Exile’s End[/i] fits the Metroidvania Mold extremely well, and is probably the best genre to categorize it as. [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/MetroidvaniaReview/discussions/1/1744480966999144417/] Want to hear a different opinion, or want to share your own review? Check out our Forum here.[/url] [h1]Full Review[/h1] I’ve noticed that for some people, presentation is everything. If a game has good graphics, a story that is written to be exciting or entertaining, and great music, that’s all they need. [i]Exile’s End[/i] really attempts to push the boundaries of how far presentation can carry a game. Beauty of course, is in the eye of the beholder, but if you’re nostalgic for the era that [i]Exile’s End[/i] is trying to emulate, you’ll probably find the game to be quite beautiful. At the very least, the cut scenes are basically perfect in this regard. If you’re one of those people that appreciates presentation above all else, then you may enjoy what this game has to offer. For myself though, I’ve always been one to analyze the level design, then the gameplay, first. To me, even wrapped up in all of its graphical wonders, [i]Exile’s End[/I] commits the cardinal sin when it comes to rating a game; it’s boring. [i]Exile’s End’s[/i] biggest problem is that it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to present in terms of gameplay. It starts out interesting – to me at least. You’ve crash landed on a planet with all of your allies dead or missing, and you’re hanging on by a thread yourself. Your environmental suit is malfunctioning, so you can’t even fall very far without taking severe damage. It’s a great setup for a Metroidvania game, even if it’s a little frustrating. That genre can really cash in on the idea that you start out as a weakling and eventually become an all-powerful conquerer, and you certainly start out weak here. [i]Exile’s End[/i] seems like it’s trying to be atmospheric – certainly the claims that it’s actually a cinematic platformer rather than a Metroidvania testify to that. But its slower movement and pacing – albeit perfectly functional – sort of kills that atmosphere rather than build on it. This is especially true in the long run as monsters are encountered to the point where dispatching them becomes routine rather than a terror to be faced – thus it sort of fails at being a cinematic platformer. The game’s progression is wholly Metroidvania-like, but you never seem to move beyond backtracking through boring enemies so you can flip switches; you never end up being the powerful master of his environment. The end result is a game that wants to be something else, ends up to be most like the thing that it claims not to be, but then sort of fails at being good at that anyway. While moving through the stages quickly becomes tedious, exploration does give some very meaningful rewards – so there are [i]some[/i] positives in the gameplay. Bosses aren’t particularly well-designed in terms of patterns and telegraphing, so upgrading your armor and weapons really takes the edge off of having to face them. Thus finding ammo upgrades still gives that wonderful sweet taste that you may have experienced in other exploration-based games. It’s just a shame that moving between them can be so uninteresting. Another way exploration is rewarded is feeding you more information on the story. It’s fun to find communiques and tidbits that unfold the plot more organically, rather than [i]only[/i] having it fed to you through forced cinematics – even if said cinematics are also a highlight of the game. The game ends off on a ponderous note which I consider a major positive overall, but ultimately the narrative is still probably similar to something you’ve heard before if you’ve dabbled in any sci-fi prior to playing. There’s also a huge missed opportunity to tell that story through the environment itself. Some areas are better than others, but overall levels feel like they were made in service to the gameplay rather than to create a sense of “place” – which wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the gameplay was actually good. There are some very talented people involved with [i]Exile’s End[/i], but in the end it falls apart due to poor direction. It never really sets itself apart in the ways that matter most and while it’s not [i]that[/i] bad, it exists in an environment where it can be safely ignored. I feel like any of the 2D [i]Metroid[/i] games capture what [i]Exile’s End[/i] does best, but better. While the more atmospheric Metroid-like version of Metroidvania is slimmer pickings than its campier Castlevania-inspired brethren, I don’t think that’s enough to recommend slogging through this one. 2 out of 5

Great atmosphere, cutscenes and overall graphics. But sadly ruined by poor leveldesign, repetitive music (5-10 sec looped tracks), awkward controlls (missed my jumps more than once), very high difficulty just from the start and stiff animations. It's not bad game at all, but it got more flaws then plus sides. If this would have been a game for the SNES back in the days it would have been lost compared to Flashback, Another World, Blackhawk/Blackthorne, Prince of Persia etc. But as of this time and age, it still holds up if you keep giving it a first, second and third chance to grow on you, it really doesn't have much of titles to compete against out there. But as for me, i keep comparing it to the mentioned titles above, making it mediocre at best. [b] 5/10 [/b]

This game felt unfinished. It wasnt a bad game it just didnt feel complete. Lets start with the story, There is little of it. A few cutscences and some message logs , The latter mainly hidden in secret areas which makes me wonder if we were supposed to know what was going on. The main character may as well have been a sack of used socks as he has no story or information. It mentions a dishonorable discharge at the beginning, But thats all you ever learn about him. The other character that helps you may as well be wearing the same sack, as even less info was given out about him. The end has you make a choice without telling you that it is one, I ran forward and got one of the endings on accident and was left wondering "Do I care?" I had formed no attachment to my alloted sack of socks which caused the end choice to be a pointless one. Up next is combat. It takes a while to get your first actual weapon until you do you are stuck with rocks which i thought was funny, The weapons themselves were well designed except the grenade launcher which for some reason if you hit an enemy on the top of its sprite, It would do the same damage as a rock or less. The placed explosives which I found no use for other than blowing up a clay pot i had put on a plate I shouldnt have and the cloaking device which lasted about a second and did about as much as covering youself in a sheet and yelling "im not here! You cant see me!" Enemies! Largely boring. There are two kinds walkers and flyers. The walkers tend to walk straight at you and fire their respective weapons (Gun/fireball) Except the spiders which alternate between floor and ceiling, The chargers which rush you and explode when killed and the stalkers which turn invisible. And flyers do just that, Fly. Didnt matter the sprite they all did the same thing. There is a unique enemy that runs quite fast, kills very fast and is attracted to sound but ultimatly nothing was done with it. Wasted potential as it would've been quite cool if it stalked you through the game, Kinda like a SA-X. Bosses! Where there any? Only one truly felt like a boss, even had a cutscene beforehand but nothing happens when you win, he drops a weapon and leaves you to your own devices. The cutscene had him holding a bag standing in front of a giant crystaline figure. Okay, Whats in the back pack? Where did it go? Whats with the figure? When I won I worried that the game might have glitched because no acknowledgement was made at all that I had just defeated a boss. No acknowledgement was made of the back pack or the figure which the man was obsessed with. So yea, The boss fights were uninspiring. Audio/Graphics! I play most games with music off so i cant really comment on that. The small parts of music i did hear sounded alright however. Graphics are probably the best thing about this game. I enjoyed them immensely, It felt like i had loaded this game through windows 3.1 with a backup floppy disk in case i didnt have enough memory. Good times. Overall the game was boring, Its got a lot of space but its wasted and sparsely filled with anything of interest. There are two things however that I truly hated. The first was the map, I like to fill in my maps and in some rooms it seemed quite impossible as the missing pieces where high in the air or embedded in the walls. It was very annoying. Second was the lack of any invincibility frames anywhere. If one of the walkers traps you in a corner you will keep taking damage until you die, and because your character reacts to every hit, escape is very difficult. My overall completion was 84% and I was bored for the majority of it. Im sorry but I wouldnt recommend this game to my friends but I would recommend it to people I dont like.

This game is pretty fun and forces you to think outside of the box a few times. People are complaining because it doesn't play like Metroid or Castlevania, well boo hoo! The controls are really basic, only a few commands. It took me about ten minutes to figure out how to shift the screen by holding down, but I never played old computer classics before, so it made it a bit interesting. You get power-ups as you progress, just be sure to read the discription when you grab it, or you'll be scratching your head wondering what it was since it doesn't discribe the item again. The game is pretty short, took me about 3 1/2 hours to beat, but if your looking for something that is different or like 2d side scrollers, pick it up.

So, Exile's End. I knew it looked a ton like Inescapable, and, well, it's the same guy. There are some big-name Japanese veterans in on the game as well, including Keiji Yamagishi (Ninja Gaiden composer) and some folks that worked on Secret of Mana, among other titles. Interestingly, the game doesn't bill itself as a Metroidvania, but by some measures, it is. It lacks the sort of level-up progression of the Castlevania side, but it definitely includes its fair share of unlocked abilities to enable progression, a map system to get around (something Inescapable lacked!), and a few hidden rooms for optional upgrades as well. But it does feel a bit closer to its stated inspiration, Commodore 64/Amiga games of a somewhat non-linear nature. There's probably a little Flashback/Out of This World as well, although the controls are much more responsive. Early on, the game is pretty tough, but this gradually starts to smooth out, especially once you get the shock absorbers so you can fall from any height without taking damage. There are also some instant death spikes to worry about... but the game is quite lenient, giving a checkpoint each screen with the auto-save, and four save slots, which record progress at each screen transition. Graphically, I love the look of the game. It really does look like a period piece in a lot of ways, with some spiffy-looking but somewhat repetitive tiling that would have indicated a lack of memory back in the day. The executable itself was a whopping 31 MB, of which you have to figure a fair amount was the soundtrack. Gunplay is fun, once you get one. You've got a bit of a pause between shots that you have to account for, and the weapon is governed by an energy meter. Enemies will cough up crystals to restore that, though. You'll also find other guns, but they tend to consume a lot of juice. There are also a few limited-ammunition items like a machine gun, grenades, and a grenade launcher. You'll also find first-aid kits scattered about, but these do not replenish, so be careful you don't use 'em all up. You can only carry one of those at a time, too, so feel free to use one if you're almost dead and come across one in an area you'll never revisit. Enemies will also drop restoratives, although not quite as often as you'd like. There are a few boss battles, with the best option there being the grenade launcher, if you have it, then finishing things off with your SMG. Or throwing grenades, that works too. I wish that the game did a little better job building up suspense in spots, because it doesn't always feel like it maximizes parts of its story. I would have loved to have known a bit more about the protagonist outside of the intro sequence. I also wish the game would lead you just a little bit more. It can be quite cryptic about where to go next. One particular spot is quite egregious, and if I hadn't decided to check a Let's Play, I would likely have been stuck for a while... although I'd probably have uncovered some other secrets in the process. Anyway, for the whopping $5 I dropped on the game, I definitely got my money's worth. I probably should have bought it a while back, despite the "Mixed" reviews on Steam. This, like Inescapable, was a game that somehow was greater than the sum of its parts.

Much like "Inescapable" (a very similar, if simpler take on this formula by the same developer), this game is a modernized take on late 80's, early 90's computer platformers like Shadow of the Beast, Rad Warrior and Flashback. It has Metroidvania style elements, but like the description says, it really isn't meant to be considered such. The graphics look like those games and the sound is like an old Amiga or Atari ST game. It's unforgiving and requires patience and trial and error to some extent, but it isn't extremely difficult in the long run. If you enjoyed classic platformers from the Amiga era, you'll probably enjoy (and get a nostalgic rush) from Exile's End. By the way, if you've played Inescapable, you'll notice this game is almost like an expanded, improved version of the same game.

OMG. Who made this and thought it was a good idea? There is so much wrong with this game I am just gonna list it: 1) Auto saves every room. Which on paper is nice to have but in reality it saves your health too. Which means all damage is permanent with no way of healing outside of health kits and there are no health kits. Like literally. There is one you find at the beginning of the game and then nothing for hours. And if you didn't know that's how it works then you took a lot of fall damage early on and have to complete the game 1 hit from death. 2) Fall damage. The game starts you with your suit damaged so you take fall damage from miniscule drops. Which means you have to crawl forward in the beggining holding down on every ledge for a few seconds until the fking camera decides to actually pan down. 3) Throw rocks. This is your only weapon for first hour. And you better pick them up before you leave the screen because you know, it autosaves you without any otherwise. 4) The worst bossfight in human history. Which is when I gave up. You have max 5 stones at that point and have to fight a beast that charges at you in what isn't even a combat arena but just a normal corridor with no way of avoiding the thing. I watched a playthrough on youtube to see if its doable, but they just took one unavoidable hit damage and ran past the boss to pick something up and run out of the room, skipping the fight. 5) And then there is the music: Doo Doo Dee Doo Doo Dee Doo Doo Dee Doo Doo Dee Doo Doo Dee Doo Doo Dee Doo Doo Dee into infinity. 6) ah also the game doesn't save your options so each time you start the game you have enable fullscreen and turn of the crt filter again and again. This game is distilled garbage in videogame form.

This short metroidvania (and it [i]is[/i] a metroidvania) is bare of flashy gimmicks and multi-stage boss battles, but its simple elegance is its strength. I can't recall the last time I played a game with such responsive, no-slip, frustration-free controls. The atmospheric score, the simple yet attractive graphics -- they wove a world of adventure that wasn't harshly insistent, that invited me to diffuse my stress into a sprawling, but never confusing, map. The story could have been richer. The ending(s) could have been more extravagant. But in light of the warm feeling of [i]Zen[/i] that I felt the entire time I traversed [i]Exile[/i]'s scanlined warrens, I can complain of very little.

I finished this in 4 hours, 27 minutes, but that is a bit deceptive. There was a major bug at release and I lost the first 6 hours or so of play and had to start over. I knew what to do then and repeated that 6 hours worth in like 2 hours. That 4:27 apparently doesn't count loading a saved game either (which I didn't have to do very often). Steam shows 12.7 hours total. I'm guessing it would take a new player about 6-8 hours. The graphics, sound and music are all fine. Nothing sepectacular, but adequate and even fairly good for the most part. The game has a few flaws, but I found it quite fun and worth the asking price. My biggest problems with the game were: 1) The beginning area (forest) is not really very fun. You start with nothing and you take fall damage. It is very easy to die by stepping off the wrong ledge. They did add a way to look down (hold "down" for a few secs) so this part should be a little better now. 2) Most of the bosses are too easy. At least two of them have a "safe spot" where you can stand with almost no danger and kill them with your infinite ammo default handgun. As to whether it's a a Metroidvania or not, I would say "yes". At first it feels a little more like "Out of This World", but as you progress and start finding power-ups and new weapons, it defintely starts feeling more like a Metroidvania. When you die, you restart on the screen you are on, from an auto-save so your hp, ammo, etc. are all restored to when you first entered the screen. There are no checkpoints and you can save anywhere. When you re-enter a screen, all the enemies have respawned, making it easy to farm hp or ammo. I wish there was a hard mode. Edit: I also should point out that at the end of the game I got a message saying I had found only 46.7% of the items, so there was a lot more exploring and discovery that could have been done.

[h1]Theme[/h1] Exile's End has fantastic environmental graphics for a 2D platformer, making me think of the old Flashback game. Unlike Flashback, however, the environment looks very empty and bland. It is a shame that such beautiful graphics are paired with such lackluster level design. The soundtrack is nothing special, and even becomes very repetitive and droning after a while. The story is very simple as well - the protagonist is part of a rescue mission right when something goes horribly wrong. With no way out, the only thing left to do is to go further in and find out what is going on. Storywise, there is no real drive to continue playing the game. It is not very exciting and it all seems rather predictable. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] The controls of the game are great, which is the most important aspect of a 2D platformer. However, the mechanics and level design are outright mediocre. Due to getting falling damage at the beginning of the game, you are pushed to explore your environments carefully before advancing. However, moving the screen around to do this is terribly slow and takes away from the platforming. The environmental dangers such as floor and ceiling spikes feel terribly cheap as you just can't be bothered to wait for your screen to move up or down. Enemy design is mostly lackluster. Each area usually has one or two enemy types that do little else but walk back and forth at the same pace. They feel out of place and offer no challenge what so ever, making them feel like filler content. The only exception is the first "tough" dog-like enemy you encounter, which sprints and jumps at you and requires a trick to escape from. The rest are just badly designed. Touching an enemy bumps you back a bit, but you get no invulnerability frames. Thus, if you are stuck in a corner or walking forward, you keep getting more and more damage. The level design makes most screens feel like filler content (with monsters feeling like pointless bullet sponges), and often enemies spawn right in front of you when you transition from one screen to the next. Exile's End allows you to save in any screen, but it's rather stingy when it comes to healing items. The only way to heal are from the limited number of health packs, and the rare pill drop from enemies. As a result, if you are low on health you'll find yourself grinding for such a pill drop. Fortunately, the game - outside of bosses - is not challenging at all. The majority of the damage you will get is from not being careful enough with the environment as you try to traverse filler content areas as fast as possible, desperately waiting for something exciting to happen. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] The game would be great if enemies were more interactive and varied and the level design would do the graphical design justice. It's a real shame that the level design is so bad, because it is the one flaw making me not recommend this game. As it is, the game is bland and boring because of it.