The Messenger

Ninja Gaiden clone that turns into a short metroidvania. Writing is very hit or miss it seems like; I've seen somebody say they should "fire their hack irony-pilled pseudo-writer (...) who keeps ruining [their] projects". Personally I thought it was fine, but I guess it's the danger when you lean too much on meta humor... or humor in general.

The game has a new game plus system that makes the game marginally harder (or, rather, less forgiving)—I played through a chunk of it on NG+ in order to fill out some achievements, and boy do you feel your own improvement in this game. The movement mechanics are a bit fiddly but very much masterable, and it feels great when you do.

The boss fights are mostly pretty fun, offering ways to be risky to win faster, though there is some classic "wait until the weak point presents itself" stuff, too. Enemy variety is fairly limited, but I don't feel it matters much, most of the challenge comes from the level design, not the complexity of any one element.

I love the music:

Hills of Destiny
Bamboo Boogaloo

It really fits the sort of game it is, and a lot of the tunes are very memorable.

One of the achievements was to reach a certain point in the game deathless, and it felt like an overwhelming task at first, but honestly? I just did it. It feels really good to be good in this.

I ended up going for 100% achievement completion, which I sometimes do for games that I enjoy actively playing, though in this case it pushed me a little bit.

One relatively difficult achievement was for going through a dark screen without light (which took a couple attempts, but wasn't that bad).

The achievement with the lowest completion rate has you complete a specific section from the (free) DLC quest perfectly, and I was very close to giving up on that one. It's effectively a timed platforming gauntlet, with three very free sections, one that felt really hit-or-miss, and one straight-up kaizo screen (required precision-wise). If you mess up at any point, you have to start all five over.

I think a good run is only like 2-3 minutes, but, when you're trying to lab out the final screen, having to go through two minutes of easy filler for each attempt does grate on me. Not to mention the fourth section where I sometimes just randomed myself out and had to start over without even getting an attempt in.

But hey, I did it. I don't know if I'll ever return to it, but for the about 12 hours I spent with it were great. Doesn't have to be more than that.