Afterimage, the review – Multiplayer.it

For years, China has been becoming increasingly relevant on the international gaming market, with multiple projects increasingly localized and distributed in the West, sometimes even with the help of large-scale projects such as the China Hero Project of PlayStation. Starting today – April 25, 2023 – a very interesting new Chinese game will be available: Afterimage.

We are talking about a massive metroidvania entirely hand drawn and created by Aurogon Shanghai which we reviewed in the PC version, but also available for PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.

After our positive experience, we were able to throw ourselves into this adventure and find out in detail how much good there is in the game. Find out everything in our Afterimage review.

Chaos to Ergardin

Afterimage tells the Renee’s story, a young girl with almost no memories accompanied by the sprite Ifree, who always seems to know a little too much about what is happening. The setting is Ergardin, a fantasy land created by a Goddess who populated it with Goliaths and Humans, with the first posts to oversee the world and punish anyone who tries to break its balance. It seems needless to say, but the humans did it and the Goliaths were forced to declare war on them. The battles have long ended, but Ergardin is not at peace and Renee, following the destruction of her village, sets out to find out what is happening.

It is a not particularly original beginning, unfortunately weighed down by some bad texture exposure choices. Immediately the player is bombarded with place names, characters, references to Ergardin’s past, mythological references and rules on how the world works (there is a cycle of death and rebirth, with an extremely oriental flavour). However, everything is really too much in too little and we end up not understanding exactly what is happening. As you progress, you gradually understand a few things by repeating them to yourself, but most of the new information that we will receive is transmitted through notes that are hidden in the maps and that cannot be collected. If you wanted to re-read a text to understand how that detail of the mythology fits together with the rest, you should go back there. The bulk of the plot is therefore poorly accessible, let’s add the fact that all in all we are not talking about a particularly impactful narrative: we believe that many players will soon forget the details and be satisfied to understand the contours.

It’s a pity that the narrative is not more interesting, because the game world it is indeed. Ergardin is a collection of large and varied lands, woods, plains, frozen caves, castles, towers with strange technologies and much more. There really is everything and every place is magnificent to see, with intense colors, very detailed backdrops that on more than one occasion make you want to stop and simply look. Metroidvanias are often dark, but Afterimage doesn’t give in to custom and stakes everything on a bright world that, even in its darkest moments, never comes close to the darkness of Hallownest or Dracula’s Castle.

Also enemies they are beautiful and original, with different designs for practically every area. Spiny crocodiles like cacti, goofy little golems, mechanical warriors, flying demon lizards, fungal crabs, misshapen abominations, and more. There is a lot to see in Afterimage and even the bosses do not disappoint in terms of visual design, even if even in this case they often don’t have a clear narrative place, but they are creatures that for some reason were there and had the misfortune to challenge us.

Run, girl, run

The eye wants its part, but controller in hand how much fun is Afterimage? Very. Most of the time it’s not particularly original, but Aurogon Shanghai knows how to make a fun game out of to explore. Ergardin is a truly large world, made up of often labyrinthine maps with an enormity of crossroads, shortcuts and areas that can only be accessed after acquiring new powers.

Renee will get regular new movement-related capabilities, such as a slide, aerial dash, additional jumps, wall bounce and more. Initially the exploration is linear and the platforming isn’t complex, but as you progress further you realize that Afterimage wants to see you jumping and dashing left and right as much as possible. The game is littered with secondary or directly secret sections that require good manual dexterity and will often take more than a couple of attempts to overcome them. Persistence and the desire to complete each map 100%, however, are absolutely rewarded with treatments, equipment, upgrades and even new skills. More than once we’ve found ourselves exploring an area they’ve left behind only to find that it includes a power-up needed to advance somewhere else. So get ready to go back and forth, trying to figure out exactly which is the right direction, also because in the second half the clues are very minimal. There are a variety of missions as well, but mostly it’s about getting items from enemies.

The heart of Afterimage is therefore exploration and platforming, but clearly there is no shortage of combat. Renee can use two weapons at a time, among six categories, together with a magic too. The latter actually has little impact on the game balance, dominated by white weapons. These have a simple base combo plus special moves, unique to each weapon type. Air combat is also affected by weapon choice. In general, sometimes there are more comfortable weapons to use in certain fights, but in our game we practically never had to change sets. Different speech instead for the accessories, which give various bonuses to become more powerful, giving priority to the cure, damage or resistance. To all this are added the talents, mostly passive enhancements that are acquired with points donated by level increases. There’s also a souls-style mechanic that causes us to lose experience points in the event of a KO, but doesn’t cause us to drop in levels, so the loss is never massive and can be recovered by returning to the point of death.

In principle, Afterimage is not particularly difficult, especially since we can really do great damage if Renee is at the right level for the area (the level of each region is indicated at the entrance). In the second half, enemies can drop your life points in an instant, but the authors have already anticipated that a patch will arrive that will debuff monsters, so in principle we expect that you will not make too much effort. THE fights they’re enjoyable, quick, and reward the use of the weapons’ unique abilities. Against the bosses, however, most of the time the victory is more the result of our great power and the exaggerated use of healing, rather than careful combat. The bosses also have many attacks, but are often a little too difficult to avoid: the fact that they don’t do too much damage makes the fights balanced and honest, but we have repeatedly realized that we have played badly despite having won. There are few fights where we really had to learn the opponent’s moves.

The soundtrack is also excellent and for all hours of gameplay it is pleasant, accompanying exploration and combat. Speaking of “hours of play”, the longevity will be determined by how much you want to find. If you wish, you could reach a first “false” ending after less than twenty hours, but the truth is that you will not be satisfied and you will want to go on: with at least ten hours of content still available, you will have much more to discover. For a true 100%, surely it will take more than 30 hours.