Nine Sols review

Six months. That’s how long poor Red Candle Games spent trying to come up with a combat move for their debut metroidvania that was as unique as Hollow Knight’s downward slash. Personally, I would have given up after six minutes.

Thankfully these developers were made of more disciplined stuff and their efforts have paid off magnificently. Because I’m struggling to think of a combat system I’ve enjoyed in a 2D game more. A lucky Dead Cells run might just beat it for moment-to-moment pleasures, but for the satisfaction of mastering the fine art of slicing and blowing things up, I think Nine Sols’ swordplay had every Soulslike of 2024 beat (yes, even that one).

You play as Yi, a feline samurai who looks cute, but is actually as shadily motivated and untrustworthy as my actual cat. After taking a seemingly fatal tumble off a cliff, Yi cashes in one of his nine lives and recovers in a village full of humans. But when the village engages in a spectacularly violent ritual seemingly conceived by someone who’s seen Hereditary one too many times, Yi abandons the village and starts exploring a mysterious facility. From there he’s basically seeking out a series of wonderfully charismatic utter bastards worthy of a Metal Gear game so he can slice them all into ribbons.

Red Candle Games’ first major achievement is successfully squashing Sekiro’s parry-or-perish combat into two dimensions. Incidentally, if you’re not a fan of parrying, take 90 points off the review score. You can muddle through for a while with the dodge button, and there’s a small window of forgiveness either side of a perfect parry where you'll still take the damage but very slowly regenerate it back (Wow. Thanks.). But these small concessions aren’t going to save you for long. Refuse to learn that parry properly and the game’s first boss will absolutely call your bluff, merrily decorating the walls with your insides.

Luckily you have an ace up your sleeve worthy of Balatro. Nine Sols’ masterstroke is that simply pulling off a parry isn’t just a reward in itself here. It also fills up your Qi, which Yi uses to slap deadly talismans on his enemies. So long as you keep that slap button held down uninterrupted, the talisman will then explode, often a fatal experience for the poor sap you slapped it on. You’ll find enhancements for these too, like one that briefly freezes enemies in place when you talisman-slap them, or creates a more powerful explosion depending on how long you can keep your finger on the trigger.

It's immensely rewarding to have an enemy go in for the kill, only for you to successfully interrupt their attack, dash past them with a talisman slap, then blow them up for daring to ever think they could hit you. Bosses are naturally made of sterner stuff, with their gigantic health bars and—sigh—'surprise’ second phases (actually, maybe I want to take 90 off the score too). In time-honored Soulslike tradition, these bosses start off seemingly impossible. But stick with it, and you’ll gradually master the parry timing and rhythm of parry-talisman-boom-repeat. When you finally ricochet and detonate your way through a boss without taking a single blow, it feels like taking down Ornstein and Smough blindfolded. With a guitar hero controller. That’s not even plugged in.

When you’re not repeating a boss fight five million times, you’ll find plenty of tight platforming challenges, clever puzzles, and well-hidden secrets that make it a pleasure to explore. That this studio has never made a Metroidvania before is just ridiculous. Nine Sols is so good that a certain charismatic genius recently called it the second best Metroidvania of 2024.

The combat is the main draw, but it also knows how to tell an entertaining story, full of intrigue, humor, and terrifying moments worthy of the studio’s horror roots. Even its initially slightly tired setting (can we ban the word ‘warehouse’ from level designers' vocabulary?) gets increasingly more surreal and inspired with each new area. I might mod a meme of the Chinese president into the game just to get this studio cancelled again, purely out of professional jealousy.

Nitpicks? Well, it can be a little overly chatty, especially when you get back to your main hub and find every NPC wants to monologue at you. Still, when the dialogue is so consistently entertaining, it's easy to swallow. Particularly in the case of Shaunshuan, Yi’s surrogate son. He's an adorable human child that Yi saves early on, and he's the beating heart that makes Nine Sols’ gruesome body horror go down a little easier. He doodles on the walls, writes fan fiction of your adventures, and even occasionally does something useful. The precious little guy also hero worships Yi, despite increasing evidence that Yi is far from deserving of such treatment.

Ah, but I’ve already said too much. Go find out for yourself how great Nine Sols is, even if it’s just so you can yell at me in the comments section that it’s nowhere near as good as Shadow of the Erdtree (oh yes it is, teeheehee!). Hold out for Hollow Knight: Silksong for another year if you must, but I highly recommend picking up one of 2024’s best games in the meantime.