its fun

INAYAH has some of the best animations and cutscenes I've seen in awhile. The game looks gorgeous, and the combat is fairly fun. What's not fun is the navigation. If this was the first Metroidvania I had ever played, I'd never play another. Trying to get around the world and find save points(that don't have useful icons on the map), let alone make your way around the map itself... Woo boy. It's a rough time.

Switching between sword/glove/clunky pink thing to navigate the levels is far less of a positive than it seems at first. Some of the times it's not so bad. Others it feels like a gimmick that stifles progress of trying to move around to new locations. And, nothing bothers me more than working my way to a boss unable to find a fast travel elevator or save point because the map icon just indicates "Somewhere in this big 'ol room, hyuck. Good luck."

So anyway, I find that the majority of my gameplay just ends up in frustration because I struggle so much to find out where to go. I've tried, and tried to find some kind of happy medium with the experience but it's just not happening. But, hey. If you're patient and have an appreciation for some really good artwork - give it a shot.

I actually am enjoying this game, but with caveats. I really like Metroidvanias, and while it is not perfect (rough around the edges I would say), it does deliver a fun experience.

I like the basics of the over-arching story, and I really like the character art. I like that it is voice acted, though admittedly it does seem like some of these folks were voice acting for the first or second time at most. The same goes for the story... there are times when things just jump too quickly and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. For example meeting Rongo and rescuing him from the flower.... within about 2 lines of dialogue we seem to somehow have a relationship and knowledge of each other that is out of place with the fact that they just met. I think the devs are really trying here, and I think for the most part this is something I can forgive but it is definitely ringing a bit like a "first time" doing VA and story writing at times.

I like the combat so far, though I haven't unlocked all the weapons so I've been focused on the blades. There's some interesting platforming technicals that you need to master, which is good. There was a fight against the plant where it didn't really give me much audio or visual feedback that I was taking damage. Similarly, the dodge roll is good but it's on a cooldown timer of some sort which isn't clear to me why that is, and it's hard to tell when you time it right because again you have no indication of when you take damage, so you are just guessing at the dodge roll timing. Gas on the other hand is very obvious when you take damage, so this isn't a universal problem but it was for the big plant.

There is a platforming bounce mechanic where you bounce off of spikes by attacking downward. This works well in theory but right now if you fail, you take damage and basically warp to the previous platform or two, which is really bizarre and jarring. I don't like that at all. It should rather just land you there and give you 3 seconds of invincibility to get jumping again, or something like that. The warping is just not a good feel for the game. Also, there's no way to "look down" if you want to jump down. You end up sometimes completely blindly jumping down only to find there are spikes you couldn't see and had no idea were there, and it's really not fair in that sense. I go back to games like Ori where if you were stationary and held the thumbstick down, the screen pans a bit to give you a bit more of a visual to what's below so you can make an educated jump. This is the same problem for gas clouds... you often just end up blindly jumping down because there is no other option, and so taking damage from that seems unfair.

Difficulty wise... it's a mixed bag. There's just too much gas, first of all. There's plants that spit balls that become gas, there's plants that spew gas clouds, etc... you kind of just feel like it's a never ending battle with gas that you really can't touch at all. Also the gas isn't super clear when you can safely get through. I've had several times where I thought the gas was clear but I was apparently too fast and took damage from it because it wasn't quite clear, but that was really hard to tell visually. Most of the damage I take in this game is from gas, either you dropped down blindly and landed on a gas cloud from a flower, or you are being shot at by something off screen that spews balls of gas... I think this mechanic was a bit overused if I'm honest.

You have 2 heals which aren't super effective but they are there, but the game never really tells you how you got them or how to refresh them. It seems like they only refresh if you visit a save location. That said, save locations seem very few and far between, so you do end up dying quite a bit because it is very easy to take damage (see above comment about gas). The nice thing is that it doesn't seem like you really lose progress... you do go back to your last save spot, but you seem to keep all your points and quest progression, map unlocks, etc. So you don't really lose progress but you do often have to retrace your steps quite a bit to get back to where you died, and that can be frustrating because of how unclear the map can be regarding room exits (see next comment below).

The map looks pretty good at first glance for a Metroidvania, but I've honestly found it a bit awkward. You really can't look at where the doors are on the map, because it is not an indication of where to go in the room to find that exit. For example, let's say on the map you are in a big square room, and on the map there are three exits, one in top left, one in top right, and one in bottom right. You cannot tell from the map where in the room you are, but let's say you go as low as possible and all the way to the right and find an exit. You go through it... but turns out that was actually the top right exit, not the bottom right exit... which is weird and sometimes frustrating. It can be hard to tell if you are some place new or if you went in a circle until you check the map... but that may just be the overall size of the biomes coming in to play. I consistently find myself a bit frustrated though because finding the exit I want to find is just not obvious nor is it something you can just estimate by corner of the room... so you often find yourself backtracking. You take damage somewhere along the way, and then if you die you go all the way back to your save spot and now have to run that whole gauntlet all over again. This is probably one of my biggest criticisms if I'm honest, is that the combination of the lack of save spots, warping on death, limited heals, and ineffective map really just doesn't do this game justice in its current form. It creates a bit too much frustration.

Also, I think the abilities menu (improvement points, whatever you want to call it) is a bit confusing... there's really no introduction to how many abilities you have, or what they do... you get a weapon and play with it to figure it out. This is fine I guess but I prefer a bit more of a gradual introduction to abilities and things, and I felt like this experience was a bit glossed over. In this game it's more like... you get a weapon and now have 7 abilities listed but only 3 buttons mapped... so where are the rest? It's a bit hard to understand. Also most of your unlockables are dealing with crit damage and crit chance, but there's really not much indication of whether that is just this games core mechanic or if that's a choice somehow? Many of the unlockables will lock out other pathways, and so you kind of feel like you have no idea what you want to do, because you have no idea what you want to do, because you have no idea what else is coming down the pipe. I'm not sure that I found a spot where you could see your overall crit stats, so do you need more crit chance or crit damage? I dunno, kind of just guessing.

I do really like the art and animations here, especially the art for the characters and the world. While some of the rooms get repetitive the art overall is very good, and has quite a bit of detail. The overall sound design is good, and most of the basics of the story I am finding interesting so far. I like the combat animations, and the main character is great to look at. Some of the enemies are super detailed and I like how they move. The cutscenes I've seen so far are good, well done. I really do like the over arching story. I'm a big fan of metroidvanias, and if I can help this one become even better and more well rounded, I'm happy to keep playing it. I'm going to stick with this one a bit and try to get further into it, and will update this review once I do.


This may not be #1 Metroidvania 2025 quite yet, but I think it's worth a shot for sure.