Welcome to our review of Aggelos, a want-to-be Metroidvania mixed with Wonder Boy and Shovel Knight mechanics. How does it hold up with all the other 8- and 16-bit games out there? Let’s find out.
The Nintendo Switch is the perfect platform for said games. For most of these games, the controls work really well (and better than playing them with a keyboard) and lots of Switch owners once had an NES or SNES. So hitting in the nostalgia area is the way to go, it seems. Aggelos plays along with this set up and presents a classic adventure, straight from the ‘how to make a hero-sidescroller’-book. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Story of Aggelos:
The story is not that hard to understand and is standard as well. You assume the role of the silent and stoic hero, a young lad in search of adventure. Waking up in a Zelda-esque Link’s Adventure (II) house and explore the woods. You soon find a damsel in distress, in the form of Princess Lys, daughter of King Gentel, ruler of the land of Lumen. Lys sends you off to speak with her father who hurriedly explains that run-of-the-mill villain, Valion, is trying to fuse together elements of the worlds of dark and light. This fusion would create a hole between realms, wreak all sorts of havoc and generally make an absolute mess. Obviously, it’s your job to stop Valion and restore peace and tranquility. So, onwards and upwards!
Repeating the process:
For those who have played a Legend of Zelda, Metroid or even Shovel Knight game, the gameplay elements will feel like a pair of worn shoes. They fit and they do what they must do, but you have seen (or worn) better ones. Aggelos progresses as following: Fight enemies, upgrade your weapons and armor, gain a skill, explore a dungeon, fight a boss with gained skill and gainsaid element #1 till #4. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I felt monotonous, but that may be since we are spoiled. We have a flood of comparable games, and to me, Aggelos (although the high ranking debut on PC), just does not stand out.
I will give you an example. The first power you’ll come across in the game’s opening Earth is an earth ring which grants you a ranged energy attack. The catch is that it not only kills enemies, but turns them into platforms to reach new areas (comparable to Salt & Sanctuary, or even Super Mario Sunshine with the fruit-eating Yoshi’s). This skill is used in the boss fight at the end. Normally in Castlevania or Metroid the boss fights have a certain pattern. In Aggelos, the boss had an extremely random pattern, making it hard to use the new skills to finish him off. This feat repeats over the rest off the game. True, maybe I should have been practicing more, and more, and more. But after fifteen tries, I was tired of the randomness of the game. In Salt & Sanctuary, I died A LOT but had fun trying to clear that witch-boss in the swamp. I never felt this with Aggelos.
Conclusion:
Aggelos isn’t a particularly long game, around ten hours for an almost 100% playthrough on normal difficulty. It gets straight to the stuff you will need to do and almost instantly you’re chopping snakes, bats, and pink goo into ribbons and turning forest wisps into platforms to aid your quest. Don’t get me wrong, the game looks good, feels alright, but wasn’t the game for me. Overall, this is a decent little retro adventure that doesn’t outstay its welcome. It plays decently enough in the forest of side-scrolling dungeon crawlers. And presents you with the sort of gameplay you might expect from this type of game and serves it all up in a mediocre repeating pace that can become monotonous after a while.
