Who doesn’t enjoy a good Metroidvania? It’s a genre with enough artistic freedom to offer medieval backdrops to sci-fi epics to explore. As such, there are tens of thousands of games to scratch that itch. And the latest game to join the pack is AfterImage by Aurogon Shanghai, a striking hand-drawn 2D action-adventure set in a high-fantasy world.

AfterImage wraps this up in an interesting and hard-to-follow tale. You play as Renee and her floating companion. The pair awaken to find their world in ruin and they also have a spot of amnesia too.

BeginningImage

Afterimage starts out with the pair laying the souls of the fallen to rest, in hope that they will be able to go to the afterlife someday themselves. But after a fatal encounter with a wolf, it leads to Renee finding out she can actually come back to life.

With this new-found power, you return to your village to find it all but destroyed and from here the game and tale opens up.

Renee tries to recover her lost memories by embarking on an epic journey to rescue her mentor. And this path ultimately will set into motion a series of events that will determine the fate of the world as a whole.

Be warned that AfterImage is a bit of a hard tale to keep track of. The game hides a lot of its lore and this opacity is a theme throughout.

Exploration is King

Gameplay is classic Metroidvania fare. You explore areas where you’ll find locked off sections that you will have to revisit once you have new skills and abilities. All of this is broken up with a healthy dose of platforming and combat.

Combat in AfterImageis fast, fluid and fun. You dart around the screen wielding a number of different weapons from swords to hammers and everything in-between. AfterImage is always throwing new toys of devastation at you to try and each has their own pros and cons that you’ll have to work out.

There are also a number of spells that let you cast fireballs or make pillars of rock and dirt. Using these spells will give you a beefy attack buff. But it all comes at the price of your mana bar.

Knowing when to use them can often be the difference between victory and defeat in a fight.

Web of Skills

As you play you’ll level up through a number of skill trees. It’s a bit of a clunky system that looks to be locked behind skill levels but really isn’t. But you won’t know this, because the game doesn’t teach you how it all works.

And that’s AfterImage’s biggest issue that it never really takes the time to explain enough of its systems, the world or the tale. The game ultimately leaves you to do it yourself. For example, if you find an area or something you can’t do just yet, it’s up to you to mark it on your map.

AfterImage and AfterAudio

Visually, AfterImage is stunning and striking in equal measures as the 2D art on show is amazing and is packed with details, which also bleeds into the world as well as the enemies you find within it.

Though the backgrounds, as jaw dropping as they are, do sometimes get in your way and block your view. AfterImage features an epic soundtrack with a mythical tone that adds a haunting vibe to the world. The grandness of the din also add a true sense of wonder.

Voice acting, however, is just a little bit too weeb for me. Some may find it charming or amusing but it is not my cup of tea.

Rich Combat

Afterimage is a solid Metroidvania that looks amazing and features a fun and frantic combat system. But the game is dragged down a bit by its vagueness and opacity around everything else.

Look beyond that and there is an interesting time to be found for fans of the genre.