[Nine Sols is a +13 rated game. Do not play if you're not old enough. Just a warning.] When watching videos in YouTube, I would often see the name Nine Sols, so one day someone made a video about the bosses and I watched and said "Hey! That looks really cool. I should give it a shot." Hoo boy, what an experience I HAD with this masterpiece. It all begins from a character called Yi. Yi was one of the 10 "Sols", until he got betrayed by the other Sols and now his mission is to take revenge from them and bring justice (later down the road you will find out more reasons as to why.) This game is all about the world we are in, New Kunlun, and the race Yi and the Sols are called the Solarians. So these guys have a lot of weird technology and stuff. Let's not get into the lore here and begin talking about the game itself. Nine Sols is a Hollow Knight and Sekiro inspired 2D Metroidvania - Soulslike. Its world design and Jade system is inspired by Hollow Knight and the Charm system, and the combat system is inspired from Sekiro, so it means Nine Sols is a heavily parry based game. There are two attacks. The regular ones you have to parry, and there are the crimson attacks, which you can't use the normal parry and have to use Tai Chi kick (air parry) , Unbounded Counter (charged parry), or dash through them, and the rest of the game is with these type of attacks and your skill. Of course, being a soulslike game, it has very, very good designed bosses (except the damn Kanghui that made me genuinely raged), like Jiequan, Lady Ethereal, and of course, Eigong. Another great thing I can say is that the art style is amazing and the graphics are gorgeous, though I didn't really like the world design. It mostly felt really mechanical all around, and the areas looked really similar. Platforming is also not bad, with some traps around, ropes and climable walls which mainly made the platforming. Another great thing about Nine Sols is the lore and storytelling. Hollow Knight had storytelling by the environment, but Nine Sols does the traditional storytelling with dialog and cutscenes. The game has sci fi with traditional eastern Asia culture mixed around, which makes the story and characters very interesting. Music though was one part where Nine Sols didn't do bad but also not that amazing. I mean, Jiequan, Lady Ethereal and Ji were bosses that had great themes, and if the music in this game is good, it's amazing, but otherwise it would be a bit lackluster. You can listen to Lady Ethereal's theme here which I think is the best of the boss themes by far. One other part that Nine Sols didn't really shine was the Jade system, which has computing power and Jades like Charm notches and Charms in Hollow Knight. The thing they did absolutely great in was balancing out the Jades because MAN, Hollow Knight had broken charms, but some of the Jades are just so mid that it really doesn't matter if you get computing power or not, since there's only a few that are good and can improve combat quite a bit, so overall not good but not bad either. The early game of Nine Sols was honestly really brutal, since some of the great skills I could've had came late in the game, and well, I really struggled sometimes. Goumang (very pretty and cute design btw I like her :3) especially was really challenging for me, since there were two minions I had to fight to make her come to me and so I could get hits on her, but I feel like this combat system really isn't for two and more enemies, so I would sometimes get hurt, and getting hurt can be a big death sentence if you don't have the skill to get up with dash after getting hit, so instead of parrying and hitting, I just used Charged strike to end the fight easily, so I feel like the balancing could be done way better. Kanghui was the boss that really gave me the "get more health bar and cigarette upgrades idiot" feeling, and so after I beat Kanghui and went to the pavilion for the upgrades, I really didn't feel much of a challenge for the other bosses. Sure I would lose a lot, but after learning the patterns it wouldn't be that challenging (Fuxi and Nuwa are a great example of exploring so you don't get slapped around), and from this point you get some abilities that would be a big life changer, and since Nine Sols is a linear Metroidvania unlike Hollow Knight, bosses are good challenges that you won't struggle against if you have upgrades. So yeah, overall I think this game is amazing, and is my second favorite game ever. Even though I said some things weren't done very well, I still think the combat aspect hard carries the entire game, and I'm certain that this right here will forever be my favorite combat system ever. Great job, Red Candle Games! __________________________________________ So yeah, my nerdy review of Nine Sols! Thanks so much to the awesome Red Candle Games, and I will suggest you play the game as well! (if you are 13 or older, at least.)
FFXX for composing the music.
