Valdis Story: Abyssal City Satın Alın

Ever since I got into ametuer game design myself about 5-6 years ago, I always wanted to make a game that combined some of my favourite genres: Platformer, Action/Adventure and RPG (with a little touch of Fighting a la Smash Bros). Monsters, bosses, weapons, party members, stores, collectibles and TIGHT combat controls. Obviously, since games are hard to make (let along by yourself) that never happened. But I would happen across Valdis Story, which I think is the closest I've ever seen a game be to my "dream game." Side scrolling action platforming at its finest since Symphony of the Night! If you liked SoTN or any of the other Metroidvania games (including Metroid itself) you will highly enjoy this game just like I did. Fun bosses, high skill cap and rewards the skilled with bonouses from bosses encouraging you to learn the bosses' patterns and improve yourself. After you beat the game your first time, why not play again? On a harder difficulty? And its not just the numbers that get harder with the difficulties either, some bosses mechanically change in terms of how they are fought (albiet minorly, but still) and the best part is, THIS GAME ISNT EVEN DONE YET. There is more to come! It's good enough as it is, but knowing that there are other characters and items and possibly bosses planned in future updates just makes me rock hard. GG EndlessFluff. You did good.

In summary, this game is so much fun and so impressive that I can't recommend it more.

I played through this game once, and MAN did I love it. There are so many different styles of play: rush in like a barbarian, use melee attacks, take time to plan things out, use magic, attack from a distance, run away in fear, or any combination of those. The gameplay is so well made and the design so spot-on that there was never a dull moment. There's quite a lot of optional paths and bosses too. I really like how whether or not you defeat certain optional bosses determines what happens later in the game. Some of them change the story, some change the ending, and some even change how future bosses act. Plus the bosses were all unique and unbelieveably intense.
It's a really pretty game, too.

And don't even get me started on the music.
Ooooh god, the music. It's so good. I legitimately feel that this game has my favorite soundtrack of any game I've ever played. Zack Parish is now my God. I've never bought a video game soundtrack before, but I HAVE to buy this one.

I did notice that if there was more than one or two lasers on-screen at once, and during the final boss, I would experience framerate issues, but I also had a recording software running, and I'm sure everything would've been smooth if I hadn't been recording. In the end, I turned down the graphical settings for the final boss (which is a super intense experience and takes a little while to beat) and everything was fine. I have a really hard time saying that this is any fault of the game, but I wouldn't know.

As I mentioned above, I did play through this game on YouTube (youtube.com/Frozelar), if you'd like to see some more gameplay before buying it. I really hate to self-advertise but maybe it'll give people a better idea of just how great the game is before they buy it.
Easily my favorite Let's Play of all time. Looking forward to playing through it again. And possibly again and again and again.

Fantastic, well polished, feature rich Metroidvania.
Deep, satisfying combat (perhaps the best in any game of this kind that I am aware of); varied branching upgrade paths which allow for different , focused builds, and thus encourage replay value.
Incredible soundtrack.
Basically, this came puts Konami to shame for not making a properly updated Vania game in years.
Well done, devs!

What do you get when you combine a responsive hack 'n slash with Metroidvania? Prepare for hours of exploring the Sunken City while using sick combos to clear challenging boss fights and frustrating puzzles. Controller is recommended.

This game was a hidden gem that I bought during one of the holiday sales last year I think. Man o man, was I surprised to find such a fun and charming game.

Taking from the Metroidvania style of layout and combat similar to that of devil may cry, this game makes out for some fun times. The music is great, the combat is great, the platforming is great...for the most part. I say the most part because there are some tedious level designs that require a lot of attempts due to nearly impossible requirements in speed and platforming. Other than that the game is amazing and easily has become one of my most fun and memorable games of all.

Given that there are two charcters, both with their own stories, the game begs for a second playthrough; which I am working on now :D

I sincerely hope the developers decide to make a sequel or another game in this same style.



Easily a 8.5/10

Update: After finishing the game with Reina and playing throught the new content, I have to say, STUN LOCKING is a HUGE problem with this game!!!!!!!! It is frustrating an infuriating!!!! I still stand by that this is an over all great game but the two GLARING flaws in the game design are some of the platforming and definitly the stun locking that some of the enemies put you in and definitely the eye of Myrgato and the final boss.......wow, I have never been more frustrated with a game. I just hope the sequel, if there is one, will not fall victim to these design flaws.

This is an action-platformer in the style of new Castlevania games.

There are a few key differences, however. Unlike Castlevania, this game emphasizes quality over quantity when it comes to item drops and spells. Enemies drop crafting ingredients, not gold or items. Each character has only a handful of armors and weapons, and every one caters to a different playstyle and has multiple upgrade levels.

The gameplay is more akin to a fighting game (especially in boss battles). There is a heavy emphasis on dodging over blocking. Striking enemies at opportune moments is much more important than simply hitting them as much as possible. You do have a revive built into your abilities, but you are still fairly fragile.

This is much easier to play than a fighting game, though. Your skill cancel is a simple press of the down key, and dodging is just pressing left or right after that. Your assist has its own button, and spell casting and super mode have modifier keys. The game offers some tutorials, but muscle memory is the only real stumbling block here.

Boss battles emphasize pattern recognition and reaction time over button mashing, and since your skill cancels have a short cooldown, spamming will get you nowhere. Killing a tricky boss after spending four lives learning their patterns is a very satisfying feeling. Retries are unlimited and place you right in the boss room, but its still crucial to keep your cool and respond to attacks carefully.

There are downsides, of course. Whenever the game chooses to focus on platforming over combat, it becomes significantly less fun. Thankfully most of the timed platforming challenges are optional, though you will be missing out on a few items if you ignore them, as I chose to.

Like any non-linear game, there are times when you will be unsure where to go, or where you accidentally miss important things because the game doesn't tell you enough. This is compounded by some occasionally suspect level design, particularly areas where it's easy to fall down several rooms and be forced to repeat an area, or where enemies can stunlock or toss you easily.

The map and menus are rather bland. While it has some nice sprite work, the graphics options don't really give everything room to shine. It also doesn't scale well, so if (like me) you have a fairly large monitor and play in fullscreen, the upscaling is very noticable.

The story is nothing exciting. Like Castlevania, it's mostly relegated to text boxes whenever you find a new area or kill a boss. It has a few engaging reveals and some pleasant backstory here and there, but the story is not a reason alone to play this game.

Ultimately, this game doesn't hold your hand, but it has a reasonable difficulty curve and skill floor. It expects you to work a little bit for your victories, but it is neither impossible nor unfair. If you like action platformers and skill-based combat, look no further. Just be sure to use a controller.

an rpg platformer that worth buying because:
pros:
+challenging boss battles.
+replayability value.
+random humor.
+balanced mechanics.
+two characters with different move set.
+catchy soundtracks.
cons:
-no in-game guide for quests since the story path is not clear.
-opening crystal and button doors can be tedious.
-you have to backtrack alot to finish the game 100%.

The “Metroidvania” platformer enjoyed its heyday some 15-20 years ago when Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night ruled the roost, and eventually found their names lent to the genre’s title. While many games since then have borrowed the tried-and-true mechanics of these classics, Valdis Story: Abyssal City is one that does so while also re-creating the aesthetic of the old-school consoles — its colorful art style would feel right at home on a PlayStation. The hours of engaging gameplay at hand will especially satisfy the nostalgic.

In a world where demons and angels are at war, Wyatt and his crew set sail in order to track down his missing father. During the voyage, their ship is attacked by creatures from below and sunk. Beneath the water's surface, they find a slowly dying ancient city under constant attack from angels, demons and ferals. Separated from his crew, Wyatt must now reunite them while continuing the search for his father. During his journey, he discovers lost secrets and unravels mysteries surrounding him and his friends.

As with its classic inspirations, the bulk of the gameplay in Valdis Story is spent battling enemies and exploring the side-scrolling landscapes. The satisfaction of a good Metroidvania game is intact; you’ll come across many inaccessible doors and return to them hours later with a means of entry, filled with anticipation of what could be behind them. The location of your next task is not always obvious, with a vague line of text serving as the only clue. This lack of hand-holding might frustrate in other games, but it’s a boon to Valdis Story, as revisiting areas to more thoroughly explore only enhances the whole. Valdis Story rewards those who go out of their way to explore; a vital aspect of this Metroidvania-style game. As you leap around the beautiful 2D world, you acquire new equipment and spells that allow access to previously unreachable locations. Summoning ice pillars as temporary platforms, short-range teleports and wall-kicking are just a few of the abilities needed to fully traverse the city. Dozens of hidden items, chests and crew members wait to be found, some of which are extraordinarily hard to find, making it sweeter when you do.

There’s a solid progression system in place, injecting RPG aspects to great effect. Experience is earned through defeating enemies, with a substantial amount of unlockable skills and stat upgrades to choose from as each new player level is achieved. There’s even somewhat of a crafting mechanic — materials collected in the wild can be provided to vendors to increase the effectiveness of armor and weapons, or create new ones outright.

The combat in Valdis Story is fun. Stringing together combos with the aid of unlocked skills is enchanting from start to finish. Magic plays a major part, serving as a gratifying complement to melee swordplay. By the game’s conclusion, you’ll have access to a generous amount of spells ranging from elemental attacks, to stat buffs, to abilities that help you reach otherwise-inaccessible areas. The depth of combat comes to light most effectively while entrenched in the numerous boss fights. Some of these tests are quite stiff, particularly later in the game. Success comes through experimentation, practicing different spells on different bosses, and even exploring the area where the battle takes place. But if nothing’s working out, doubling back for some old-fashioned level grinding goes a long way.

Combat flows smoothly, and stringing attacks together is fast-paced and exciting. The keyboard controls are clunky, but they can be rearranged or a gamepad can be used. You can execute short-ranged dashes that allow you to dodge and move past foes, or employ more than twenty spells to deal damage, heal, boost your own abilities or reach new places. The sound effects that accompany them are appropriate, though a little artificial-sounding at times. Nevertheless, spell diversity is outstanding, and there are dozens of ways to approach combat in any particular battle. Often, you will need to mix up your strategy as some enemies focus on speed and manoeuvrability, while others are heavily armoured or stand back and shoot. There's a solid variety of foes, though their design relies on palette-swapping as the game progresses. On level up you can assign stat points and choose to focus on magic, melee or a mix of the two. It's a fun, flexible system that provides great variety on additional plays.

There are plenty of bosses to test your skills against, both story-based and optional, and you'll always need to be at your best to beat them. Monstrous armoured angels and sleek, agile demons are just a few you'll encounter. Different bosses require you to take down shields, stay above poisonous gas, navigate precarious platforms, destroy healing devices and even beat a time limit in order to destroy them. There's terrific variety, and, even on the normal difficulty setting, they are a real challenge to defeat. Once you do so, you are given a rank based on how soundly you thrashed them, and may be rewarded with extra experience or even additional stat or skill points to assign. At the end of the game you receive an overall ranking too, so completionists have a huge task ahead of them.

I had a wonderful time playing Valdis Story. Time and time again it exceeded my expectations, and it's a privilege that I was able to play and review it. Just when I thought I had seen the greatest boss or most intense challenge, it threw another one at me. One play through, as Wyatt, takes about 10-15 hours, so there's at least twice that to play as Reina and collect all the hidden items. Throw in Gilda and Vladyn, and you can double that play time again! As long as you're prepared for a challenging game, I can't recommend Valdis Story enough.


Be sure to check out Nerd House Gaming for more reviews!

Fantastic metroidvania/brawler style game. Definitely one of the best I've played. Combat is very rewarding, level design and art is great throughout, and bosses are very well put together. Bosses also have a rating system, and a rather forgiving retry system (it hurts your rating to restart a boss fight - but ratings have a very slight affect on the game, and it is really only their as a slight punishment - I thought this was a fantastic compromise between challenge and hand-holding).

Honestly my only critique is the games platforming sections. While controls feel great for combat - I had a harder time when trying to navigate tiny floating platforms. It feels almost as if there is a slight input delay - that lends itself well to the combo based combat, but not so to navigating an obstacle course.

Right from the beginning, one of the things I found really offputting about this game was the lack of instruction. There's a skill tree, stats to ugprade, accessories, assists, etc. Through trial and error I discovered moves and abilities, but even towards the end of the game, I was still discovering basic game mechanics because it didn't bother to tell me anything. Worse yet, even on normal mode, the game can be pretty difficult.

As you level up, the enemies level up too (making the entire process basically worthless). There are no easy areas. Come back to the starting section after reaching level 10 and you'll discover the enemies have all leveled up too with new abilities and skills, increased defense, and increased attack power. This becomes especially frustrating because the game requires a lot of backtracking if you want to collect everything. Or in some cases, it's required just to progress.

Boss fights especially are hard because they have extreme amounts of health and you can barely scratch them. If after twenty minutes the boss's health is only at half, then something is wrong. Even worse, many of them can heal, so it's entirely possible to spend an entire hour fighting a boss and have them at full health.

Status effects are never explained either. Hit an enemy and a strange symbol appears over their head. The game will never tell you what it does.

Finally, about halfway through the game I decided to sit down and really commit to searching for information on the game. And let me tell you it is almost impossible to find anything decent. What is out there is scattered through several dozen forum posts and a wiki full of mostly blank pages. It was only by spending time carefully combing through posts and following dubious and often broken links, that I discovered there are suggested builds and stats for the game. (Although don't expect to actually find an explanation of these builds or a guide to stat upgrades. They either don't exist or are extremely vague.)

Anyway, three-fourths of the way through the game I discovered that because I hadn't done hours of research prior to even starting, I wasn't going to be able to progress. My stat upgrades, skill tree path, weapon upgrades, and the items I'd wasted unique currency on were all mismatched because I'd been stumbling around in the dark. Even the options to respec didn't help because I'd failed to achieve S-rank grades on boss fights, meaning I'd missed out on certain upgrades or bonuses I didn't know existed.

All in all, this game is a giant waste of time. If it bothered to explain even 1/10th of the information I had to carefully glean from internet forum posts like a prospector panning for gold, it might have been salvageable. It doesn't. Save yourself time and go into a windowless room, turn off the lights, and walk around bumping into things at random. It'll be the same basic experience.

IF YOU LIKE ACTION PLATFORMERS WITH RPG ELEMNTS (METROID , CASTLEVANIA, ZELDA II) BUY THIS GAME. I WOULD ALSO SUGGEST PLAYING THIS GAME WITH AN X-BOX CONTROLLER BECAUSE IT DEMANDS PRECISE INPUTS.

This game is very simmilar to metroid and castlevania. it follows the same baisic principles of using power-ups to to traverse new areas. The rpg meachanics allow plenty of character customization. The game's world is interesting, but the cliff hanger ending is mediocre at best. The soundtrack is absolutely divine. (hehe) The orchestrated pieces and a lot of epic flare to this already stylish game. The game took me about 8 hours to complete, but you can double that time if you beat the game with both of the playable characters.

I tried to play this game a year ago, but put it into my 'early access' category even though it wasn't labeled as such because it was obviously unfinished. Shortly after that a new patch came out adding the final boss (see what I mean about early access?), and there hasn't been another update in nearly a year since. Two of the four playable characters are still missing.

The game would still be enjoyable in its current state if not for some particularly rough edges. Most important among them, the game lacks immunity frames, so if you hit certain types of traps or get hit by certain attacks, you'll lose your entire life bar in a single hit (which is really a dozen hits landing all at once). Given the current state of the game I can't tell if that's a bug or by design, but it's terrible either way. Add onto that some extremely unbalanced bosses that make you feel underleveled even at max level, and the game just isn't any fun after awhile. It feels punishing in a very unfair way.

I'd say wait for an update before getting this game, but I've been waiting a year and it still feels like early access. Maybe get it on a deep discount, but full price is too much until they at least fix some of the more glaring issues.

Probably the best game that no one owns on steam. It is truly a diamond in the rough. I hope that the new curation system will result in it getting more recogniition for the unknown indie gem that it is.

I think its good and bad points can easily be esstablished by reading other user reviews. So i'll start with the good. The combat and boss battles. The game packed to the brim with amazing engaing boss fights. The rest of the game is basically filler surrounding a successtion of well executed boss encounters. The next bit of greatness in the game is the art design. The art in this game is a labor of love. Each inch of it hand painted with a careful attention to detail. So hats off to the artist.

Ok now the not so great stuff. The platforming is horrendous. The saving grace of the horrendous platforming is that most of the really painful platforming is entire optional. That of course comes with the caveate that you will probably need that option loot to take down the game's many challenging bosses. Another minor flaw is that the metroidvania design can lead to a good bit of replaying areas, which is just a draw back to that design style.

All in all a wonderful game. The flaws don't even come close to trumping the myriad of other highlights.

(note I have a lot more hours clocked in this game, but I originally owned it on Desura before it was even greenlit)

A highly enjoyable sidescroller with options, and a rewarding difficultly level. Got 100+ hours out of this game easily.

8/10

The Good:
- Combat is like a 2D Devil May Cry, done well
- Metroidvania aspects just enough to cure the itch
- Equipment progression based on gameplay decisions rather than flat upgrades

The Bad:
- Poor enemy variety
- Platforming sections may not be for everyone

Love Metroidvania? Join the club. Valdis Story is currently easily my favorite of the PC Metroidvanias I've played in recent years. It features excellent, tight combat mechanics that feel somewhat like Devil May Cry thanks to the mobility and attack options from the game's spell system. The world is mostly a joy to explore and new travel skills are given at just the right pace to keep the player interested in exploring more. Furthermore, there are two characters (with two more upcoming, but in very slow development) and some impactful storyline changes that can add a lot to the replayability of the game.

One of my main complaints about the game is the lack of enemy diversity, It's not a huge issue, and the game does change it up by giving existing enemies new abilities as you level up, but one of my favorite things about Castlevania SOTN was that just about every zone had its unique monsters that each added to the atmosphere of the zone. In this game, it just feels like you're fighting those angelic monk dudes all the time except in different places. Also, the game has a number of difficult platforming sections which can be very frustrating to some players. Thankfully, not all of them are required.

This game.. man, where do I begin?
This is my favorite side scrolling RPG of all time. The fighting is intense, the boss fights are epic, and the artwork is really cool too. I really want to see more by this dev, especially if they keep turning out games of this quality.

Really good platformer/slasher. Feels like Dark Souls 2D edition, if you play on hard (and you probably should). Bonus points for sick OST.

To make this review simple and not too analytical, this game is fantastic. It is at times very, very frustrating, but it is a challenging game. You will eventually get past parts through trial and error and will have to push yourself to get better. I am glad I picked this up. There are some optional boss fights, so if it sometimes seems almost impossible, just level up some more or progress through the story and try later. Really, just don't give up on this game. I have rage quitted once, and have wanted to many times before but had not. Regardless I keep coming back to the game. The art design is wonderful and it is a pleasure to find new parts of the world. I don't see enough games like this. Pick it up if you are up for a challenging adventure with many bosses.

This game is like doing meth. At first it's great and then it's over.

I feel that a platformer can be made or ruined by its soundtrack and the pace of this game is expertly maintaned and dynamic.