izigame.me

After finishing the game i can say that i loved it and for me is one of the best Metroidvania experiences i have had ever, but also some of the reasons i love the game are some of the reasons why some people will hate the game.
The most similar game to it is Hollow Knight a Metroidvania with RPG Souls Like elements and lots of plataforming, that description would be a buy for a lot people but i need to give some warnings and explain why even if you love Hollow Knight you may dislike Afterimage.
First and one of the most important reasons is the map, is not that it bad designed, on the contrary the map is well designed and intuitive i just got lost once in the whole game so what's the problem?, it's the sheer size of it, the map is ridiculously big i don't lie by telling you that is around 5 or 6 times bigger than Hollow Knight's map, one area of the map is around 1/3 of the size of the whole map of Hollow Knight, the areas are massive, which depending on the person for some this would be the best or the worst.
Adding to the size of the map, the games has no minimap so you will need to constantly open your map to move around, and even if Fast Travel is a thing in the game free fast travel is only available in the main saving points of the game, if you want to fast travel to secondary saving point you will need to use an item which is scarce until close to the end game and you find the merchant that sell them which fortunately are cheap.
About exploration depending on the person it would be good or bad, the game never tells you where to go, the biggest hint you would get is the name of the specific area you need to go, but that's it, there's no markers, no signals, no arrows, absolutely nothing to guide you, which i believe is the intention, because the first quarter of the game the progression trough the areas is semi linear, but once you get a certain item the map opens and you can just go to any of the next areas with almost 0 restriction, your biggest roadblock would be the lack of certain abilities that are needed to keep going, but also most of the time those roadblocks are positioned on a way that you could explore the majority of the area before you need to back track to find some ability you need to keep exploring, is not uncommon for you to ended up wandering on a late game area and managing to explore a really good portion of it even end up getting end game gear when you are supposed to be on early game, so like i said at the beginning some people will love this and some will hate it.
About combat is good but nothing super complex, you have 2 weapons your main and your sub weapon, a third weapon which is your magic attack, the weapons are divided in types, it comes from the most common like swords and daggers, to whips and scythes, magic scrolls and staffs, every weapon plays really different from each other so just use every weapon and find what you like, also every weapon has different skills which are unlocked through your talent tree, a problem that i saw with the skills is that i believe that all the weapons are balanced if the skills are not taken into account, but once they are there some really big unbalance, there's a particular skill combo with the daggers and the scythe that is busted and melts everything in the game, also some weapons skills are not particulary good, i believe the Greatsword and the Whip are the most affected by that. Something important you have a dash and a dodge, but bot have 0 invencibility frames until certain ability is acquired so that's a problem for a lot of people, also leveling in the game and the talent tree outside of the weapons skills is only stat boost, so the progression there is really lineal, also the difficulty is not high, i would not say is easy but is not hard either.
So about the plot, i actually don't know what the game is about, like it starts as a revenge plot of you avenging your village and your master, but then the stakes became bigger for some reason and it seems you are the chosen one but also you aren't....., in the end i didn't understood the plot, the lore works really similar to the Souls games which NPC , weapons, items and journal entries have most of the lore, but i would say that in the end the Souls games do a better job of at least giving you hints of what are you doing and what is the purpose of the whole thing even if you don't read any of the lore, Afterimage doesn't do that.
About technical stuff, first and the most obvious is that the game looks gorgeous everything is drawn and animated by hand, the areas, enemies, backgrounds, npc everything looks beautiful there's 0 criticism on that area this is one of those games that will look good forever, the sound design serviceable nothing bad but nothing great either it just works and does the job, the ost is good i would say that the songs from the areas are really good and complement the areas wonderfully but some songs in some areas have the problem that don't loop correctly, like the song just ends there's no music for a few seconds and then starts again, there's a particularly noticeable one in one of the early areas, and the music for the bosses is just forgettable i only remember one particular song and that's it, is not that it's bad but there's noting noticeable about those songs.
The game runs well i didn't have any problems with it i have a 3060 and i played in 4K on Ultra with no issue whatsoever also outside of render scale, resolution and screen setting, the only other setting the game has is graphics quality which goes from Low to Ultra and i didn't see how it look on low so i can't say if the difference is noticeable or not, i didn't found any noticeable bug nor glitch, nor the game crashed on me and the load times are almost non existent.
In conclusion i gave a recommended because i loved the game, but also based on the way the game is designed i can't just go and bluntly say to everyone to buy it, i didn't list anything as a pro or a con because and the end the quirks of this game are the reason why some people will love it and some will hate it, so if what you read is of your liking then go for it you will enjoy it a lot, if you art divided wait for a big discount maybe for you the quirks become more pros than cons or maybe is the contrary just don't buy it at full price if you are divided, and if what you read is not of your liking then just don't even try it you will hate the game.