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Scroll through the eShop any week, and under the new releases section, you are bound to find a Metroidvania, if not several. The genre is packed with so many games that few manage to break out. However, Red Candle Games’ Nine Sols did manage to make a name for itself earlier this year on PC, and now that it has come to Switch, it is clear to see why.
It fuses the intense, precise parrying system seen in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice with satisfying skills, abilities, and upgrades that are all accentuated by strong sound design and visuals. While the worldbuilding and design didn’t particularly grab us, its combat is enough to make it stand out when compared to its 2024 Metroidvania competition.
As Yi, you are betrayed by your peers, left abandoned. Many years in the future, you are awoken by a boy, Shuanshuan, and revered as a long-forgotten hero. After recovering your strength, you disrupt a sacrificial ritual in order to save Shuanshuan and take revenge on those who left you for dead, and you (as the player) must set out to discover the truth of the land for yourself.
Described as ‘Taopunk’, Red Candle Games calls the world design a mix of cyberpunk and Taoism, the latter a philosophy and religious belief originating from China, where animals and humans live in harmony with the universe. This gives the game’s narrative and art style a traditional, ornate aspect that didn’t work for us as much as we had hoped.
The two halves often clash rather than interweave nicely. For example, the futuristic areas, robotic enemies, and cyborg bugs sit alongside environments and backgrounds that feel at odds with these techy enemies. Additionally, an earthy, airy soundtrack that makes use of traditional Chinese instruments doesn’t always work for a similar reason, despite it being rather excellent. Overall, the cyberpunk and Taoism styles just don’t gel well, and a more focused design would have felt more memorable and engaging.
Despite that, the art and animation here are fantastic, with incredibly smooth movement, well-telegraphed attacks, and clear visuals, whether it is the glint of a spear about to attack or the way Yi’s cape flows after a grapple. The overall revenge narrative and Yi’s character arc are one of the game’s strongest parts, too, and carried us through those moments when the world design wasn’t working.
Combat was also a huge part of what hooked us. Compared to some Metroidvanias, Nine Sols strikes an excellent balance. It isn’t as finicky and precise as something like Hollow Knight, but it isn’t a complete breeze either. Instead, the closest alignment is actually Sekiro, as mentioned. Nine Sols is a game about playing defensively, blocking and parrying attacks, only to then unleash powerful flurries or special abilities to destroy your enemies in one fell swoop.
While this can be done through your main attack, you also have access to a variety of Talisman abilities through the skill trees. These broaden your options as you play. The first one you get, Qi Blast, allows you to hold down the ‘R’ button to dash through an enemy, apply a Talisman to them, and charge a huge explosion while they recover from their attack.
It is all very stylish and extremely satisfying, thanks to some great sound effects, like the clang of a parry. It’s also challenging, especially as you progress, requiring better parrying skills and timing from you in a natural way. Nine Sols’ combat never feels unfair, but it is fairly unforgiving if you are new to demanding Souls-like combat. The ‘Jades’ upgrades available as you explore can help here a bit, offering passive buffs that boost your attack capabilities. These can include making you uninterruptible during a certain move, damage increases, or slight stat boosts. Even, with these upgrades there is still a high skill floor.
These abilities expand as you progress and explore new areas (such as being able to jump on enemies that perform unblockable attacks to counter them). You can change these attacks by obtaining new skills, such as being able to hold down the explosion charge for longer to deal more damage. The skill tree is expansive, with options that actually matter. It’s not too big, and the choices you make don’t feel like small incremental stat boosts or tweaks. This provides a lovely sense of progression throughout and as you move from boss to boss throughout the 20-or-so-hour journey, alongside the traversal and exploration abilities you get when moving between each area.
Speaking of bosses, they are often highlights and focal points in between combat encounters, as you would expect. From large knights, mysterious sorcerers, ancient samurai, and hulking techno-infused monsters, they make for inspired designs and really stand out from the rest of the game whether they are core fights or optional. The fusion of cyberpunk and Taoism tends to work slightly better in the boss fights, although not flawlessly. Nine Sols also takes another note from Sekiro’s book here, allowing you to do anything you can do to a regular enemy to a boss. Whether stacking Talisman effects or stunning enemies out of unblockable attacks, this decision is the right one and creates an epic duelling atmosphere in every fight.
However, the map to get around these areas in New Kunlun isn’t great. While the individual area map is okay, the larger world map that links areas and shows connecting paths is difficult to navigate and unclear on where and how to actually move between each one. While it doesn’t outright ruin the experience, we did get frustrated fairly often when having to backtrack to a healing spot or the game’s main hub to upgrade and buy new items. Those feelings quickly dissipated, however, as soon as we began fighting enemies again.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the game feels built for the Switch. Scenes are crisp and the visual effects look stunning, especially on the Switch OLED. The game manages to maintain that resolution while running at smooth frame rates, delivering fluid gameplay that never saw any distracting performance drops in our time with it.
Conclusion
Combat and progression are the best parts of Nine Sols, and they manage to rub away the blemishes occasionally found in the game’s map design and exploration. It’s a really great blend of systems from other games with a fantastic revenge narrative. While aspects of the world design and ‘Taopunk’ style feel mismatched, there is always another enemy around the corner to fight, reminding you just how good the core gameplay is.