Aeterna Noctis is one of the most beautifully created 2D games to date. Its Metroidvania nature doesn’t provide anything new to the genre, but it poses the player with enormous amounts of content, challenge and fun, even with its sometimes clunky gameplay and irritating gameplay design choices. A must-play, and the best metroidvania of 2021.
Aeterna Noctis is the closer metroidvania to Hollow Knight you could get, delivering an experience that is clearly inspired by the best game of the genre. Its enormous world map and myriad of secrets will keep you entertained for tens of hours, but you should beware that its high difficulty means that it aims at players who really want to test their reflexes and lightning-fast combination of special powers.
Aeterna Noctis is an amazing example of how a developer can mix together gameplay elements from many popular platformers of the past few years to construct something greater than the sum of its parts. While it owes a gameplay debt to games like Hollow Knight, Dark Souls, and Castlevania, Aeterna Noctis’ fascinating setting and enjoyable gameplay make it easy to appreciate on its own. Its beautiful world and gorgeous soundtrack make exploring Aeterna is a joy, even when its high difficulty is knocking you down over and over. If you’ve been seeking your next Metroidvania fix, Aeterna Noctis is definitely worth diving into.
Huge and challenging, Aeterna Noctis it's a metroidvania experience just for the most skilled players. Being so hard can be a problem for those with less experience with platforming games, but if you love great challenges you won't be able to put down the controller.
It does a lot of things that I genuinely like: It has excellent boss fights, some creative levels, an absurdly huge amount of content, and the platforming mostly works well. That level of heartfelt dedication makes it all the more frustrating when you get caught up on the areas where it still needs polish. I enjoyed a lot of the game, but I remember the annoyances more than the enjoyment. If you're willing to work past that, there's a lot to play in Aeterna Noctis, but it's easy to imagine someone reaching a particularly annoying bit of platforming and moving on to something else, especially because the game's long length can make it feel more exhausting than exhilarating. Metroidvania fans should absolutely give it a shot, but don't expect something as easy to pick-up-and-play as some of the genre greats.
Aeterna Noctis is a product that is all in all enjoyable, but one that wastes the potential in the useless attempt to chase Hollow Knight too closely. The good artistic direction, the excellent combat system and the well-conceived boss fights end up being suffocated by a linear and tedious progression, a victim in turn of the desire to fill the game with content even when there is no need for it. A great pity, because if the team had managed to effectively streamline the proposal and better balance its components, we would have had a much more satisfying title on our hands.
Aeterna Noctis retains enough of the best parts of its inspiration that it should satisfy undemanding players with time on their hands. [Issue#368, p.122]
SummaryAeterna Noctis is a challenging 2D Metroidvania drawn by hand, with intense combats and skill-based platform sections. Taking the role of the 'King of Darkness' you must help him regain his power across 16 different and connected areas in an epic journey with environmental storytelling.