Afterimage

The first thing to say is that Afterimage is one of the most beautiful metroidvania games we can play. It's a metroidvania that, despite its confusing story, has something that grabs you, beyond its artistic audiovisual plot.

The starting point is the huge and vast world of Engardin, which is falling apart after the disappearance of its patron goddess. Evil creatures are at large, while mysterious hooded creatures also seem to be involved.

In this context we meet Renee, a young amnesiac whose village is destroyed and who tries to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of the goddess and help in any way she can... But perhaps her amnesia and fate have something in store for her.

This approach results in a pure metroidvania, with 2D development, touches of role-playing (experience, levels, equipment with different levels of rarity and damage...), and with no shortage of NPCs to talk to or talent points to unlock new skills in a skill tree.

These upgrades can range from improving the critical hit rate to reducing enemy damage or activating elemental affinities. Many of these skills are locked by a level requirement and a certain number of talent points, so it is not uncommon to find yourself grinding on occasions.

There is also no lack of soulslike touches, in that you will die numerous times in the face of tough final enemies, or details such as enemies respawning when you use save points.

Luckily, Renee will soon discover that she has a special gift, and that is that every time she dies, she comes back to life. If she manages to go back to the point where she succumbed, she will be able to retrieve an aura with some of her belongings.

All of this takes place in more than 15 beautiful and varied interconnected locations, leaving a world that is not only very large, but also full of very different and above all colourful locations, which help to make the game a visual spectacle with every step we take. These places are populated by a bestiary of more than 150 creatures of all sizes and colours.

Despite all this amalgam, and despite being a more than adequate game, with wonderfully responsive controls and beautiful visuals (sometimes resembling hand-painted illustrations), Afterimage fails to surprise. There is nothing that in one way or another we haven't seen before.

As we said, visually, Afterimage is a remarkable game, to which we must add that it can last more than 25 hours of gameplay in a first game (we'd say quite a few more, if you're a bit of a gamer).

It has its little things, like the character that accompanies us can be a bit tiresome or that some songs go a bit unnoticed, but if you like metroidvania games, it’s highly likely that you’ll enjoy it a lot, and that's something to be applauded in a subgenre that is increasingly overexploited.