What Makes a Good Metroidvania?

I play a lot of Metroidvanias, but what separates the good ones from the bad ones?

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Attributions:

WoW Footage:

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night footage:

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia footage:

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[ingeniousclown]

The game at 8:00 is The Messenger. I tried to put a label for every game I included in this video but I guess I missed one. Sorry!

[Anandgovender]

Step one: be Team Cherry
Step two: Profit
Step 3: don’t make enough profit to reach Kickstarter goal for a Hornet DLC
Step 5: Make it anyway, but as a full game instead

[kanrakiddler]

The best part about that specific ledge in Hollow Knight is that you actually can reach it early if you figure out that you can make a flying enemy nearby notice you, guide it to the ledge, and then bounce off it. Of course not many first-time players will do that, but it's the fact that this option exists for you that makes the world a bit more open.

[hirvox]

One of the things that impressed me the most in Axiom Verge was the "stealth tease": A blocked-off path that you _don't_ recognize as a path because you don't even know that it can be unlocked with an ability, let alone how that ability works. And when you finally get that ability, those blocked-off paths seem obvious in retrospect.

[moth]

The thing I love most about hollow knight in particular, is that the illusion of choice is sometimes actually choice, with all the ways you can go after greenpath it's insane, I've heard some people actually got the tram pass before even the mantis claw.

[chesterfieldtherd]

I know it's not technically part of what your saying but music plays a huge role in any game. A beautifully crafted metroidvania with horrible music is a game 99% of the time I wouldn't play. Music and atmosphere is a huge thing in these type of games. SoTN is a good example of a good game with excellent music etc.. It makes a difference. Hollow Knights music is good and the atmosphere is great. If both these games had horrible music and atmosphere I highly doubt they would be as regarded as they are. Just my opinion though.

[noxure]

The cliff in Hollow Knight is actually a very good example as it shows that you actually can deliver the message without requiring the player to backtrack. Requiring much backtracking is generally considered to be a negative aspect of a Metroidvania; it can fun the breeze through parts to give them a feeling of how much more powerful/skilled they become, or to go "secret hunting", but requiring from the player to do the same part over and over again to advance the main quest is not good.

Another cool detail about that cliff part is that it's actually possible to make that jump. You can kite a bug from below and use it as a platform to bounce off with a downward strike. Optional paths that can only be accessed by players who mastered the deep mechanics and giving them sense that they're somewhere where they're not "supposed to be" is also great design. Those are the kind of Metroidvania's that people can play over and over again and still learn/discover new things.

[KeyleeTamirian]

About Castlevania and Swords... there's a lot of unique weapons there. Greatswords with massive hit range but slow, spears that strike longer, knives that strike fast but short. And fists which have giant DPS but very short range. I defeated a lot of bosses using Holy Water and Fists/Baselard.

[DPadGamer]

I can't believe its not butte- *a metroidvania*!

[BainesMkII]

While the "just another missile expansion" fatigue eventually sets in for everyone in Metroid, the reason that there are so many missile expansions is so that you *don't* have to find them all. If you drastically reduce the number of missile expansions to make them more important, you end up making full exploration mandatory for all but the best players, and that will annoy more people than "just another" fatigue. That is a legitimate risk with exploration-based gameplay... Non-mandatory exploration means non-mandatory rewards for exploration, which can make the rewards for exploration eventually feel disappointing. But making the rewards more important makes full exploration mandatory. Many games even create a messy worst-of-both-worlds middle ground, where most rewards aren't big, but players feel they need to explore absolutely everything anyway because there *might* be things that are.

[memeses]

Hollow Knight ruined all metroidvanias for me, it's so good that playing any other game from the genre feels like a significant downgrade

[LupinGreenOfficial]

Good Metroidvania Games not mentioned in the video for those looking for something to play (in no particular order and based upon personal opinion):
- Ori and the Blind Forest (incredibly beautiful and fast paced)
- Salt and Sanctuary (Dark and horrorish; nice aesthetics; Dark souls-ish difficulty with no map, no tutorial and lots of praying; humongous skilltree)
- Axiom Verge (crazy arsenal of weapons and abilities; great secrets to find; lovely nod at retro gaming)
- Metroid Zero Mission
- Metroid Fusion
- AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake)

[anrk]

Game maker's toolkit talked about that one critique you had on Hollow Knight, but actually had it a something the game did well. The "stumbling into something important" scenario was an important and purposeful piece of the game. In the video he explains that with the true open world of Hollow Knight, they simply scatter things everywhere, some unimportant, some integral. whenever you get a new ability or "key" of sorts there are many places you can go, a few will lead to charms, shells, or other non important items, but at least a couple are important and very little signposting is used to lead players to those important discoveries. This may sound bad but it only contributes to the (in my opinion) good feeling of stumbling. Team Cherry said that they trust their players to be smart enough to be able to explore on their own, the game already has committed to a it's high difficulty which does make it to hard for some players, but this game was made with more experienced players in mind who probably also have the game knowledge to play the game. (please watch Game Maker's Tool Kit's video on this, he explained it way better)

[cinnamonnoir]

It's structure. That's the one essential part of any Metroidvania, because the genre is so tied up with exploration-based gameplay. Super Metroid does it so well that it practically substitutes for a story, by separating your experience into dramatic arcs defined by level design rather than plot progression. And yeah, the items you acquire to expand your horizons are closely associated with that, so having interesting ones (hopefully with more than one use per item) is a big deal.

By the way, I appreciate your visual shout-out to Alwa's Awakening. I've never seen a gaming Youtuber cover it, but it's really a fun throwback to the older style of Metroidvania we don't see a lot these days.

[ShinoSarna]

Regarding what you said about Castlevania - Castlevania KINDA does something like that - in Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow. The Tactical Soul System is almost exactly like what you describe. Some souls are better than the other, but almost every soul is useful in some way (while also adapting the 'subweapon' Castlevania concept in an interesting way). You do find them by fighting enemies though, but because of the extreme enemy variety - some enemies even only appear in one room - it is still worth exploring the entire castle to find all the enemies. In fact, the game doesn't even track completion percentage of items, but it DOES track percentage of souls you have, so it's pretty obvious what was the priority among designers.
And of course, Aria has an actually useful shop, so even when you find weak weapons, they're still useful as an extra source of gold. And some weapons are genuinely interesting and unique, like Positron Rifle, Silver Gun or Whip Sword.

[errorite]

You should check out "An Untitled Story." It's a freeware metroidvania from 2007 by the guy who made Celeste. It's not as long as most commercial metroidvanias (~5-10 hours depending on completion), but it's one of the most impressively large freeware games I've ever played.
(Surprisingly difficult, though.)

[TheOnlyWarman]

Symphony of the night didn't only have swords it also had staves, rods and I think axes. They had different attributes and strengths other than the different swords, shields and different armor bits.

And then there's always getting the different items that help push the story forward as well as the different spells and transformation upgrades and traversal upgrades.

[MichaelReznoR]

*"It's an illusion of choice conveyed through gameplay, rather than poorly written dialogue options."*
My favourite line explaining why I love metroidvania games and why I don't enjoy "classic" RPG games too much.

[glennrugar]

Hollow knights brilliance knows no bounds

[SoulGameStudio]

It's not rare that I have to pause your videos to open one of my game design document and add a few notes. Thanks for that!