Vernal Edge

Genre: Metroidvania

Players: 1

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Review:

Vernal Edge is a Metroidvania (sort of, but we’ll get to that later) released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This game has you playing as the titular Vernal, a young girl exploring islands floating in the sky in a search for her father, so she can kill him.

As for the “why”, the game isn’t extremely forthcoming about this from the start. In fact, Vernal herself is a pretty unlikeable character, being dismissive of everyone she meets, smug and arrogant, and frequently insulting. This isn’t the worst protagonist I’ve seen in a game, but it comes close.

It’s a shame too, because the world within this game is interesting, with the islands only recently having ascended to the sky, a religious organization extending their domain over much of this new land… there’s a lot of potential for world-building here, but it’s lost on a protagonist who has no interest in learning anything about it, or stopping to talk to anyone for a second longer than she thinks it may directly benefit her.

The rest of the presentation here is pretty decent too, with lovely, detailed 2D pixel art visuals for much of the action, and an overworld designed to look like a PlayStation One game, complete with low-poly, low-resolution pixelated scenery and a nice, subdued soundtrack. It overall gives this game a wonderful nostalgic feel, and makes it seem like this game really Could have been a lost game from that era.

And on the surface, the gameplay seems to have a lot of potential – a combat system with a lot of unlockable abilities, interesting environments and some challenging environmental puzzles, and some decent traversal abilities are all well and good here.

However, there are some large, frustrating problems just under that surface. The “floating island” concept is really excellent for most games, but it makes for an underwhelming Metroidvania. It creates much the same problem that Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse had, in that you’re not exploring a large, interconnected world that you’re gaining greater access to with new abilities, but multiple much smaller ones. It works, but it fails to make the best use of the Metroidvania formula.

However, Shantae and the Pirates Curse still managed to be a great game despite that flaw. No, Vernal Edge’s real problem is its combat. As I say this, I know that some players will totally dig this game’s combat system, but personally I found it tedious and frustrating.

Enemies in this game are damage sponges, with even the most pathetic early enemies taking seemingly dozens of hits before they finally go down. What’s more, most enemies have “super armor”, meaning that they don’t even flinch at your attacks. To break them out of this, players must use charged attacks, which are slow, and when your enemies are moving around it can be easy to miss. What’s more, enemies will often dogpile you, making it easy to get hit by an enemy when you’re trying to weaken another. The game really wants you to use a parry system to counter these attacks, meaning that you need to not only learn the timing of enemy attacks for each enemy, but often account for multiple enemies descending on you at once.

Also, I thought the platforming in this game was okay, but felt finnicky. It’s not absolutely horrible, but I felt I should mention it.

In the end, I really want to like Vernal Edge. The presentation is lovely, the world is interesting, the puzzles are well-crafted, and there seems to be some good upgrades available. But the split-up world design, the tedious and frustrating combat, and the extremely unlikeable protagonist all add up to an experience I have no interest in continuing when there are countless other better Metroidvanias on the Nintendo Switch.

tl;dr – Vernal Edge is a Metroidvania set in a world of islands floating in the air, where players take the role of the titular Vernal, a young woman searching for her father so she can kill him. Yeah, Vernal is really unlikeable, and really sours this game’s story. Likewise, the tedious and frustrating combat and broken-up world design ruin the otherwise enjoyable Metroidvania elements. This game has some genuinely good parts to it, but the whole is a mess that just doesn’t work like it should.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Metroidvania

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