Ultimately I wanted to like the Messenger more than I did but I feel out of love with the game following the transition between gaming genres and I gave up about maybe a ⅓ of the way into the second half of the game. To concede some positives, I think the game feels pretty good to play. Clearly taking inspiration from Ninja Gaiden, the game moves and feels tight. A crucial design of this system is being able to recoup an air jump after attacking an enemy, object, or even projectile which allows for seamless chaining of movement options. Additionally controls are simple yet intuitive bolstered by a few, but impactful, powerups that in total allow you fluid movement through the environments. I think the overall speed of the game is too slow however, especially given the extent of backtracking, but in a vacuum the game is fun to play. My only asterisk here is that controlling whether you jump slash (horizontal slash) versus hold jump slash ( a downward slash) is clunky to differentiate and oftentimes would perform one type of attack when I intended to do the other. Since the difference oftentimes means life or death it becomes occasionally frustrating.

I do appreciate though that death is not a punishing aspect of this game. The worst that happens is that you are revived, but your next few currency drops are instead donated to the gremlin that revived you. In a sense you are losing currency but the gremlin takes so very little (especially after a skill tree unlock) that in the long run it functions as a penalty free feature.

The music is also fun and varied, each zone contributing a unique feel to the soundtrack. I also enjoyed the graphical style of the game, good use of pixel art to create distinctly recognizable areas and enemies.


By now, those exposed to any external media regarding the Messenger will be well aware that the game transitions from a linear side scrolling action platformer to a more open metroidvania experience. While the twist is novel both within the gameplay and storytelling perspective I think the execution leaves a lot to be desired. My main criticisms fall under two camps.

First is the open ended nature of progression in which most of all falls more to aimless wandering and randomness rather than deduction and decision making. It is in the nature of metroidvanias to introduce enough branching paths that players can become lost or disoriented. However, what the Messenger lacks is some general environmental hints that gives players a direction to go in. In a simple example, a player may pass by an insurmountable ledge early on, but after obtaining a double jump they may remember having passed that ledge and thus backtrack to it. In the Messenger there is no such guidance design. At this point you are given very vague directions that ultimately devolve into “Just revisit every zone!”. You just end up spending a large portion of this metroidvanias section just wandering aimlessly in the hopes of stumbling on something. You eventually go on some quests, but these are just as vague and just as helpful as saying “Explore this zone again!”, if even that and are glorified fetch quests. This won’t bother some, or even most players but for me it felt incredibly boring and exhausting.


Second is that the traversal itself is quite troublesome and tedious. I mentioned that the movement feels fluid in a vacuum, but the overall map traversal is quite slow and cumbersome. This is compounded by the poor level design/ fast travel features. As previously explained, the second half of this game devolves into just revisiting every area again. The game subscribes into a more traditional metroidvania design in which there are few travel convenience options. The problem here is that unlike Super Metroid, for example, movement feels slow, level’s aren’t as interestingly designed, and the map maintains a linear design philosophy. Thus to get to any specific point in the map it you follow a linear, oftentimes tedious, path that features no shortcuts or world interconnectedness. There are some secret paths that help interconnect some zones but to be honest the 3-4 that I had found up to that point are out of the way and wouldn’t really be used in any way as a traversal option. Pile on the guesswork involved in moving around and the end result is a metroidvania that involves slow crawling through every zone hoping you stumble on something, anything that moves the plot forward.

It surprised me how much I bounced off of the second half of the game and I’ll concede that my own lack of patience prevents me from enjoying or recommending this game.

Other mild complaints that are pervasive through the entire game:

Writing: I’m not inherently against a more whimsical, tongue in cheek writing style but to me the offering on display here falls short in its ability to entertain. Most of the dialogue in the game is during exchanges with the enigmatic shopkeeper from which you access the skill tree. The nature of your relationship with the shopkeeper is interesting but I end up bouncing off of most of the writing here since I found it neither fascinating nor amusing. The plot itself is pretty bare bones as well which I’m not considering a true negative but I must point it out to indicate there isn’t much to supplement the shopkeeper conversations. The positive here is that each of the bosses tend to have more character than you initially think, but these are so very and far in between that they don’t really carry the crux of the writing.

The combat, and skill tree system, are inherently basic and feels superfluous for the overall enjoyment of the game. In fact I think the game could have foregone a skill tree altogether as most of them don’t really impact gameplay all that much.

Level design is fairly basic, linear in scope and fairly basic to traverse. There aren’t any puzzles either and even with the time travel gimmick the levels usually don’t take on much extra complexity. Some areas do become more interesting but in the 5 zones I traveled before I quit only maybe 1/3rd of 1 zone game me some level of exhilaration.

"The world is full of surprises, but only for those with the courage to venture into the unknown."

"Embrace the challenge, fulfill the prophecy, and shape your destiny."

Phenomenal games can't believe how badly I needed this game, would recommend it to everyone everything about it is great, not done yet but I would love to have new dlc or more of this game I could play this forever and never get bored I would pay money for more of this game lol 😂