Axiom Verge

Unbelievable that this game was made by one guy! It really nails and elevates the look, feel and atmosphere of the original NES Metroid, without being a clone or copying (most of) its flaws. In fact, the game surprised me again and again with unique mechanics where you'd expect genre standards. Instead of bombs, you get a handy drill for opening up walls, which is quite satisfying to use and can be used in combat as well. Instead of a morph ball, you get this neat little drone that you remote control. Where you'd expect a double jump... well, you get the idea. I don't want to spoiler too much.
Other than that, it's a solid Metroidvania and fans will feel right at home. The controls are tight, combat feels precise and has that retro *CRUNCH!* when you blow things up. Enemies look and move like you'd expect from a Metroid game. The art style is similar in a way that the whole game world is made out of cube-shaped tiles, but Axiom Verge's popping color palette gives it an overall more trippy feel compared to the rather dark atmosphere the Metroid games are going for.
What really deserves a special mention is the soundtrack. It's amazing! I got from an interview with the developer Thomas Happ, that he had no experience in making music whatsoever before working on this game. This is mindblowing, as it really sounds like a whole team of professional musicians were behind it. Really impressive!
Axiom Verge has a couple of flaws, too, but most of them are minor and won't spoil the overall experience too much.... most of them...
The visual design of the different sectors makes it hard to orientate sometimes. Was it the green blocks with the blue background? Or was it the blue blocks with the green background? I can imagine what a Crateria or Maridia is, but wth is a "Kur" or "Zi"? Thankfully, the soundtrack has more variety and makes it easier to distinguish the areas. If you got lost in Super Metroid, you will get super lost in Axiom Verge! There is a map, but you can only place 2 markers in a sector at the same time, which isn't nearly enough to mark all the spots you have to backtrack to.
And while the Metroidvania items like said drone are unique and fun to use, they open almost too many possibilities for exploration. With the Metroid series, it's common practice to bomb all the walls for secrets. Maybe not the best design to begin with, but there are limits where it clearly doesn't make sense to even check. In this game, hidden items CAN and WILL be everywhere! No tile is safe! And there's no power bomb or X-Ray revealing all the special blocks in a room, making it even more tedious. So with all that combined, I just gave up on getting 100%. It's neither fun nor worth the time and there's no real way to fast travel either.
The game has a ton of weapons you can find and they all work differently. But what feels rewarding at first will slowly fade into disappointment the more you find, as most of them are very situational or straight up suck. And by the end of the game, I had so many weapons that it became kinda hard to select them precisely from the weapon wheel. I often needed more than one try to select the weapon I wanted. Unfortunately, you don't have an inventory where you can store the weapons you don't need, the game just clogs the weapon wheel as soon as you pick them up and that's where they stay for the rest of the game.
Then there's the grappling hook. I hated that thing with a passion! I'm not even sure if I figured it out correctly, but it feels like it just disconnects if you don't swing in a specific rhythm. It's really the worst grappling hook I've ever seen in a game. And apparently, Thomas Happ thought so to, as the game is designed in a way that you only need it for a very short time and just when you got used to it, you get a much better traversal tool and you will never touch that hook again.
What disappointed me the most, however, was the bosses. Most of them have very basic patterns, always do the same 2 or 3 things and if they have a second phase, it's the same but sped up. It's also irrelevant if you play well or not. As long as you've found enough upgrades, you can more or less brute force most of them. I feel like that is where the game maybe tries a bit too much to be like the original, when other Metroidvanias and even the Metroid series itself have long moved on from this kind of archaic design. The final boss was particularly disappointing. I beat him first try and all it took was spamming the same move over and over again while jumping in place. I really thought there would be another boss after that, but nope. Also, the boss theme doesn't fit at all. While the rest of the soundtrack is often dark, trippy and unsettling, here it suddenly gets all upbeat and poppy. The track isn't totally annoying, it just doesn't fit and makes the boss fights even more forgettable.
But that's really all I have to cirtizice. If you're a Metroid fan, this is a must play!
8/10 Metroidvania, 10/10 one-man project.

Trippy game, insanely fun, couldn't stop listening to the intro song for hours.
Mind blown - will play Axiom Verge 2 after my brains are back up and running :)

Not as good as Super Metroid but good enough.

Wer Super Metroid liebt wird das hier definitiv auch lieben!

One of the best metroidvania I ever played!

Cooler Soundtrack!

Aa