December 11th, 2024. Nine Sols' Combat!
While taking my classes and not studying for my finals, I completed the 2024 video game "Nine Sols". It was very good!
It's a 2d metroidvania game, with heavy inspiration from games like Hollow Knight and Sekiro/Lies of P.
Basic gameplay: As a metroidvania, you start with some gameplay options, and gain more as you progress through the game. You start with a dash that has some I-frames and a parry. You can also clamber corners if you're close, and climb certain walls that are green. Throughout the game, you gain the ability to sprint, air parry, air dash, double jump, summon the Mystic Nymph, charged slash, charged parry, shoot your bow, and head bounce certain attacks. On the Mystic Nymph, it's a little drone you can use to scout ahead, and also enter some vents to hack open doors. A few secrets are just out of view, requiring the Mystic Nymph to fly up there. You also earn the ability to teleport between checkpoints. With an equippable Jade, you can also fast-fall.
This suite of options is not as gamebreaking as many other metroidvanias. Hollow Knight gives the Crystal Dash, infinite wall climb, and let's you pogo off of enemies whenever you want. Metroid Dread gives you incredible powers like the Speed Booster, Space Jump, Screw Attack, Power Bomb, and Storm Missile. At the end of the day, the gameplay will stay relatively grounded.
Combat: This is where Nine Sols truly shines. At the endgame, with your double jump, dash, airdash, parry, and charged parry, you have some defensive options to choose between. Defense is incredibly important. Bosses can attack very aggressively with some tracking of your position, requiring successive parries or well timed dashes. Just like the game's inspirations, practice and knowledge are key to overcoming many of these bosses, not just grinding. Attacks come in just two kinds, normal and red. Normal attacks can all be parried, which must be done facing the enemy if you're on the ground. Red attacks are "unblockable", meaning you must either dash through them, charged parry them, or headbounce them if they turn green(usually for some sort of charging attack).
For recovery, you just have your medicinal pipe. It is relatively quick, but you'll still need to be careful not to get hit during the heal. You have limited charges, and no way to earn them back besides going to a checkpoint or one of the few health stations on the map. By the end of the game, one heal should give about 60% of your HP back, with the final boss killing you in 3-5 hits.
As for your offensive options, you have the charged slash, basic combos, bow, and talisman attacks. The great thing is that all of these are actually quite viable against each other for all boss encounters. You could play a hit and run style where you rely on charged and talisman attacks, to put more of your brainpower into parrying and dodging. Or you could play a style that focuses on the bow, which gets ammo when you do a 3-charge talisman attack. Or you could use Jades to upgrade your basic combo, making them swing faster, deal more damage, and drain your health so you deal even more damage at low HP. You can do a bit of buildcrafting in this game, choosing between 3 different arrow options, 3 choices of Talisman style, and your loadout of Jades. Jades are the charm system of the game, very similar to Hollow Knight. When maxed out, you have 10 notches, and almost all Jades cost 2 or 3 notches to equip, so you can have 3-5 of them at a time.
It truly is astounding that everything is just... balanced. Even in Hollow Knight, using offensive charms like Unbreakable Strength and Quickslash are oftentimes the best option. In Sekiro, Firecrackers and the Mortal Draw are incredibly powerful, dominating options that you need to choose to avoid using. But in 9 Sols, all the Jades, arrows, and Talisman styles are pretty well balanced against each other.
Let's look at the Talisman styles for example. The basic Qi Blast Talisman will consume 1-3 Qi energy for its attack, giving you one arrow for landing a 3-Qi attack. This is the only way to earn more arrows during boss fights, so any bow playstyle will push you towards this Talisman. The Full Control Talisman will consume from 1 to 5 Qi for its attack, requiring more charge time for more Qi. If you find the time though, the 5 Qi attack does incredible damage in a single shot. Lastly, the Water Flow Talisman does not need any sort of charging at all. Like a sticky grenade, you stick and forget it, where it does a small burst of damage after a short time. Each attack only costs 1 Qi, so you can land them pretty frequently. Since you don't need to do any charging, you end up having more time, which you can use to do your own attacks, heal, or run away from the enemy.
In any other game with these sorts of options, which are pretty distinct from each other, you'd end up with some imbalance of some kind. Maybe one is so slow that it's just not viable, or does so little damage that it's not worth it. But no, they're tuned just right that they can all be competitive, while still having distinct playstyles.
The Talismans are important to another aspect of gameplay, Internal Damage, or red health. If you do a perfect parry, you take 0 damage of any kind. If you do a late parry, you'll take Internal Damage instead. If you can avoid getting hit, you'll gradually recover this health for free. But if you ever get fully hit, you'll lose all your Internal Damage as well. You can't die from Internal Damage, but if you ever get hit, you'll explode. You can also deal Internal Damage to enemies as well, mostly with charged parries and head bonks. This Internal Damage on them can heal over time if you stop attacking. The only way to cash out on the Internal Damage you've built up on an enemy is with a Talisman Attack.
The final boss, especially in the true ending, puts all your skills to the test, maybe a bit too much. The boss never stays still for more than a second, constantly attacking in some way. Despite that, many playstyles are still viable. You can try to be aerial and aggressive, or doing Qi Blast attacks and spamming arrows, or constantly using charged attacks, or nonstop parrying to build up Internal Damage and doing huge damage with talisman attacks. But while you're weaving in your attacks, you will still need to observe and react to all over her aggressive and fast attacks. The game's combat is just really quite good. My only criticism is that it might be too punishing. Even games like Sekiro and Hollow Knight give you time to breathe, but many bosses in the latter half like Jiequan, Lady Ethereal, and Eigong just don't never let up. You can also spend a lot of time parrying, waiting for an opportunity to attack. While basic parrying does build up Qi, it doesn't deal any damage to the boss, except for a small amount of Internal Damage with the Hedgehog Jade. Many of these bosses also just attack so fast that you never have time to spend all the Qi you accrue. Sekiro and Lies of P made you deal a good chunk of posture damage to enemies if you did all the parrying they asked of you, which would result in big damage opportunities later if you kept it up. While Nine Sols does do that, when you do charged parries or head bonks, the basic parry doesn't really build up to anything substantial.
Still, with all that being said, the combat is excellent. Nailing a bunch of parries in a row, then landing a charged strike into a Talisman attack for a bunch of damage feels really good. You feel like a Kung Fu master, parrying the flurry of blows from your enemies, taking 0 damage while standing your ground.