Nine Sols [Review]

I was caught off guard several times with Nine Sols. Not only because of its pristine gameplay, but by everything else: a surprisingly deep story, compelling characters, and interesting world. In many ways, Nine Sols doesn't really aim at revolutionizing action games, and even considering its missteps, I had a lot of fun.

For some reason, Nine Sols was in my wish list for a long time, and I'm not sure why I haven't started earlier, though I have a hunch... The thing is, I feel that there are so many different, iconic and genre-defying yet-to-be-played metroidvanias that playing one before another "would not make sense" so I ended up ignoring games that I often enjoy. Nine Sols effectively made me realize that I was just being reductive, and ignoring something that seemed appealing to me for no reason other than a subconscious gripe about the genre.

Still, I wasn't really prepared for one of the strongest elements of it: the story. It is rather verbose, and sometimes the dialogues can be too big and repetitive, but regardless, I was actually impressed by the amount and quality of the text. It is a rather tragic story, with twists from the first moment, and there's a feeling that the characters are hiding parts of something big that happened a long time ago.

The structure of Nine Sols starts familiar enough: Yi is a Solari, a cat-like species with infinite intelligence and battle expertise, and he was betrayed by the council that employed him, resulting in a near death experience that took him as dead for the Solaris. He is then forced to live in the shadows, hiding his fighter and scientific nature due not only for the process of healing, but also growing as a person, in a planet filled with "lesser" life forms: The Pale Blue Planet.

It is a traditional approach for the genre, but the art, aesthetic and world is everything but. The whole plot is intergalactic, and the relationship between the Solari Council and the Pale Blue Planet has way more layers and twists than I first assumed. Yi seeks revenge, and will go after the nine other members of the Council, the nine Sols. Each one of the Sols has an intriguing backstory, some surprisingly emotional, others disgusting and horrifying.

The Sols now oversee some different areas of the city, and these are basically the stages, connected by a hub in the middle. The sections aren't that big, with three or four rooms each, but they are often filled and vertical, with optional bosses, rooms, challenges and discoveries. Until the middle of the game, things felt a bit linear, but eventually I could choose between some paths and do a Sol before the other.

The battle is straightforward, with a simple hit that can be charged, a dash and a parry. There's an equipment system too that can give some special effects to Yi's attacks, and with it, there are builds that can make it play a bit different from time to time. There are enemies that repeat in every section of the game, but also some that are exclusive to their environments, and the variety was good, with enemies that forced me to play a bit by their rules from time to time.

There's also some decent platforming, with clearly sectioned areas, so it is hard to not know where to jump when in a challenge. The movement is great, but some moves are unfortunately locked behind the equipment system, so I never used them in the end, in favor of damage or survivability. Still, it is awesome to move around, everything is fast and snappy at the same time that it is easy to follow the action.

Every stage has a main boss – one of the Sols – but also some other optional battles here and there to spice things up. The battles against these lesser bosses were always nice, but the ones with the big baddies were not always that well balanced. Some of them had unfair moments that can spoil an otherwise great section of the world. Fortunately, it doesn't happen much.

The heavy story builds up in a very interesting way, with characters that are greatly flashed out, including Yi. From time to time, the game has gorgeous cut scenes in a comic book style that I often dislike in other games, but here, it worked really well. Some encounters rendered me a bit sad or gloomy from what was happening, but there were moments to have peace and joy as well.

In between sections, when going through them for the first time, Yi will have some flashbacks that are often a bit too expository, with lots of reading. The mysteriousness of it all made it interesting to me, and sometimes they show the events instead of having them only in text bubbles, which helps. Maybe the developers could've made some of the conversations a bit shorter and more to the point, but it still got me enthralled by what happened in the Pale Blue Planet, and what exactly Yi do before the beginning of the game.

Nine Sols was a great action game with engaging platforming that doesn't cut back on its story, characters and world. Even considering its eventual balancing issues and excessive reading, it remains memorable and rewarding to beat.

8/10