What do you do when greedy execs try to ruin gaming and you, a True Gamer, want to stop them? You could hop on your trusty llama and storm the offices, of course.
That’s the premise of SuperEpic, a Metroidvania where you play as a raccoon, riding a llama, and trying to Save Videogames.
Good Amounts of Action
So the main thing I noticed in SuperEpic is that the combat is really good. Unlike games like Blasphemous which have only one attack button, SuperEpic gives you three, each using a different weapon. Rather than differing attack speeds, the 3 attacks are a standard slash, an upswing, and an overhead.
With enough skill, it’s possible to do quite an impressive amount of comboing with this kit, especially once the game starts introducing rage moves. The combos feel very satisfying, and the game has the good grace to make sure an enemy doesn’t die until the combo drops.
Some of the enemies require experimentation to kill, such as overheads to counter their blocks. It’s a cool little thing, but can be frustrating as unless you’re used to fighting games I can see the case for it not being visually clear that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Boss fights can be frustrating since the combat is much more geared to fighting many enemies rather than one mobile one. They also have a bad habit of summoning adds that don’t really do much for the fight outside of making it longer. It’d be nice if they dropped health or something since dying in this game is quite a hassle.
Creative Side Objectives
The game has some great mechanics in it, primarily with QR codes. Some doors require a pass code to unlock, openable by scanning a QR code with your smartphone and completing a minigame.
I have mixed feelings about this, because it does make it feel like a bit of a student game. Because while the idea of scanning a QR code and having to get your code on your phone is great on paper, having to move to another device really breaks the flow of a game.
There’s plenty of alternate paths you can take, with various type of merchants, save points and treasure to be found. The map even tells you if there are more areas to explore in a direction, which is a great touch.
Weird Design Choice
One very important detail about the game is the way its levels are structured. While many modern Metroidvanias have adopted the Dark Souls style of bonfire checkpoints, SuperEpic has gone more old school with actual save points in the game that reset progress when you die.
The game makes no attempts to warn you about this, and dying because you haven’t found the save points in a level can be quiet disheartening, as you will straight up have to redo entire bossfights if you aren’t constantly on the look out for save points.
SuperEpic looks like it’s going to be a fun game, and its combo-based system is definitely going to help it stand out against the many other Metroidvanias out now. The game comes out December 12th, and will be available on Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox One and PS4.
Early review copy provided by Numskull Games, played on Nintendo Switch.