October Assassination #1: Chasm

I thought I would never find a 2D Metroidvania I didn't like. But then I played Chasm.

In the most basic level, a Metroidvania has to do two things well: combat and exploration. Chasm draws a lot from the SNES Castlevania titles for combat and movement, with long wind-up times, stance locks during attacks, stun locks during jumps, and different attack reach and arcs based on the weapon. Also the "magic" system is copy paste from Castlevania, particularly Castlevania X and Super Castlevania IV. The problem is that these games are not known for their expressive combat options, or for their fluid and responsive platforming.

If you've played any modern 2D action adventure game, you'll be left scratching your head as why Chasm is so dull. Combat options are extremely limited, and you're constantly punished by enemies that hit pretty hard and stun lock you into place, even on the Normal difficulty. You'll be missing ledge grabs and wall jumps because the inputs for these moves are arcane and unresponsive. You'll be jumping on disappearing platforms, and they will fade before you had a chance to register a jump away. Moving around and fighting enemies is just not fun, and given this is the core of the game, this makes the whole experience a chore.

I could live with these flaws if difficulty was balanced or the map and level design were fun to explore, but alas, they are not. There are very few save points in the game, and they are far from each other. Re-entering a room re-spawns enemies. The first time you encounter an enemy, you'll likely lose a big chunk of health trying to learn its moves (which is harder because your own moveset and attack is sluggish), and then you'll face a challenge: go to the next room hoping it's a save point (probably it won't), or try to backtrack to the last save point but risking dying in the process? If you die, it's game over, main menu, so dying in the game is very punishing. And this system incentivizes you to grind enemies besides the save room. Seriously, a grand total of 0 people find that fun. The amount of times I had been playing for a while (like, thirty minutes) and died, only to have my progress reset, was frustratingly high. And I wasn't even playing on hard, I was just fighting the controls and the platforms instead of fighting the enemies.

To top it off, the devs seem to take a lot of pride from having a proc-gen game. But if I'm just playing the main story once, does it matter? Spoiler alert, it doesn't! Proc-gen makes sense for games with weak narrative and quick gameplay loops, like Rogue Legacy or Enter the Gungeon. Chasm tries to be a narrative-heavy game with a random dungeon that is all disjointed and makes no sense, relying on teleports to "connect" the world, and it fails. It tries to be a modern SNES Castlevania with RPG elements, but fails at that too. It tries to have puzzles, platforming, combat, an in-game economy, and it all falls through the cracks. It's a game that's not fun to play, trying to do too much and doing none of that right.

Steam review