If you have enjoyed any IGAvania, chances are you will love this game. I seriously cannot sing its praises enough.

Of the many cool things about this game, the one I want to talk about is the shard system. Nearly every enemy can drop a shard of their power. These can range from attacks to passive buffs to familiars. Fans will recognize this system from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow's "soul" system, where nearly every enemy could drop a soul that would function as attacks/buffs/etc. But while I adore Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, there were a bunch of souls that I found to be underwhelming. If I killed a giant homunculus that fired a big ol' ****-you-in-particular laser, I'd get super excited to use that laser... only to find out that its soul merely let me clear some special ice blocks that showed up in 3 places.

The reason I bring this up is that the shards in Ritual of the Night largely tend to be freaking awesome. Starting from the very first shard you get, it has this awesome bouncing property that lets it hit a bunch of times depending on the terrain and how you aim it. And it just keeps getting better from there. They even made the comparatively boring passive shards fun: if you max out their rank, you get a version of that shard that you can turn on and off at will **without taking up a slot.**

It's so good. It's so friggin good.

If you have enjoyed any IGAvania, chances are you will love this game. I seriously cannot sing its praises enough. Of the many cool things about this game, the one I want to talk about is the shard system. Nearly every enemy can drop a shard of their power. These can range from attacks to passive buffs to familiars. Fans will recognize this system from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow's "soul" system, where nearly every enemy could drop a soul that would function as attacks/buffs/etc. But while I adore Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, there were a bunch of souls that I found to be underwhelming. If I killed a giant homunculus that fired a big ol' ****-you-in-particular laser, I'd get super excited to use that laser... only to find out that its soul merely let me clear some special ice blocks that showed up in 3 places. The reason I bring this up is that the shards in Ritual of the Night largely tend to be freaking awesome. Starting from the very first shard you get, it has this awesome bouncing property that lets it hit a bunch of times depending on the terrain and how you aim it. And it just keeps getting better from there. They even made the comparatively boring passive shards fun: if you max out their rank, you get a version of that shard that you can turn on and off at will **without taking up a slot.** It's so good. It's so friggin good.