Metroidvania Analaysis

Depending on who you ask, metroidvanias are either the first or second most obnoxiously named genre in close competition with soulslikes. The term is completely meaningless to most and the best you can hope to understand about metroidvanias is that they are inspired by Metroid and Castlevania. What is a metroidvania really? Does it have to be limited to such a static and boring amount of inspirations? Let’s talk.

First off where exactly does this stupid name come from? Well, Nintendo made Metroid, and Metroid had an interesting gameplay style that was based around getting powerups and using those powerups to unlock new areas throughout a giant level. Was Nintendo the first to do this? No, and many people who despise Nintendo’s reputation for being “innovators” will mention this in response. However, Nintendo hit an important metric with Metroid, and that’s making people actually give a shit.

If you disagree, please feel free to talk about your favorite pre-Metroid ‘metroidvania’ games that you definetly didn’t look up on Wikipedia. Moving on.

Castlevania, up to that point a very traditional arcade platformer, later decided to experiment with exploration elements that many people saw very similar to those of the Metroid series, and these Castlevania games were dubbed ‘Metroidvania’ in an effrot to separate them from their arcade counterparts.

This was very much in spite of the fact that the main director behind these decisions states that The Legend of Zelda was his main inspiration, and that these Castlevania games really don’t play much like Metroid at all aside from the “2d platformer with open exploration” elements. At that point you might as well say that Huxley and Orwell were effectively writing the same dystopias.

Originally I was gonna talk about a lot of different ‘metroidvania’ games that I played recently, but fuck it. I haven’t felt like making detailed reviews on any of them and also don’t feel like making some 5 second review that amounts to “mmm was nice”. Instead I’ll just bring them up to talk about inspirations and what not.

So yeah. Castlevania and Metroid don’t play similarly at all. Castlevania still takes its very straightfoward arcade experience and attempts to spice it up with the exploration elements, Metroid is a shooter all about examining the environment, taking in context clues, and trying to leave no stone unturned.

So how exactly do people reconcile the fact that ‘metroidvanias’ are talking about two entirely different games with maybe one or two uniquely shared mechanics between them? Simple, they always just take 100% of their inspiration from just Castlevania.

It was Castlevania that introduced many of the pseudo-RPG elements that you see in metroidvanias, Castlevania introduced stats, a levelup system, new equipment, an economic system… you can really see where the LoZ/JRPG influence starts to show its head.

In contrast, very few of these more modern metroidvanias are about interacting with the environment as heavily as Metroid is, probably because that shit could get really tedious when it wanted to. LEAVE NO SQUARE UNBOMBED. That being said, I still haven’t actually bothered playing La Mulana that much, I should get around to that.

A lot of these elements would get really toned down after the subgenre left the grip of Castlevania, in particular the JRPG-like levelup system doesn’t see as much use. The big problem is that such a system rewards killing everything that moves, which is very good for a JRPG where you want to encourage the player to take on as many random encounters as possible but is far less encouraging in this action environment where everything essentially becomes free kills and the player becomes way too overpowered way too fast.

One thing I’ve seen done is an increased importance placed on the monetary system. Hollow Knight did this, enemies dropped a lot of money and this money was used to buy the upgrades that made your numbers go up. You could buy pins for extra abilities, or if you obtained some metal you could use it to upgrade your weapon to deal more damage. This only went so far, so grinding wasn’t a very ideal strategy a majority of the time.

Nine Sols had both the economic and levelup system, with the economics working similarly to Hollow Knight. The levelup system for the most part was based around giving useful, but non-essential abilities, such as different ways to use already present abilities, and giving notable buffs to very specific stats such as your ki. Levelups were made around a skill tree instead of a stat system, giving players choice in how they spec.

Also what’s very notable about both of the games I just mentioned is that neither of their main inspirations are Castlevania nor Metroid. They actually took inspiration from Fromsoft games. I bet you just thought the dreaded ‘soulslike’ was just in the opening for shits and giggles, didn’t you?

Hollow Knight very obviously takes inspiration from Dark Souls. Its depressing abandoned fantastical medieval architeture is very similar in appearance and the whole system of currency dropping on death and needing to be recovered is directly taken from it. Not the heaviest inspiration anyone’s ever taken from the game, but it’s notable.

Nine Sols is the Sekiro to HK’s Dark Souls. It’s a much more direct and straightforward experience based around parrying and honing a set of innate abilities rather than edging the system with clever stat boosts. Its exploration elements are much less apparent in order to place more importance on a dramatic story and a ramping up of mechanics.

It was also one of my favorite as far as abilities went, because every new ability you got in Nine Sols changed the way you interacted with the world as a whole, and could redefine combat mechanics you’ve become used to. I really enjoyed each new one I got.

Hollow Knight was pretty similar, then Metroid had a lot more abilities that just felt like they were there to gate off progress, then Castlevania topped off the annoyance factor here in having pretty much every single one of its notable abilities be used entirely to gate off progress.

In SotN, you get a fog ability. This fog ability is used for getting past gates, and like nothing else. Maybe it can dodge attacks, but the game is way too easy for me to bother. Right after getting the fog ability, you get the bat ability, which is used entirely for flying up to places you can’t reach.

It feels annoying and disjointed. Only the doublejump and maybe highjump abilities really changed how I played normally. Everything else felt like it just disconnected you from how the gameplay typically worked up to that point.

If they were taking Zelda inspiration they should’ve taken note of how every ability sort of stacks on top of each other up to a point, giving the player a wide breadth of mechanics to use overtime. The bow isn’t just some thing you occasionally pull out for the ‘bow section’, it gives you a ranged attack that can be very useful. Not every Zelda item acts like this but you can see where I’m going here.

Abilities should be designed around redefining the gameplay for the player, not around getting past arbitrary gates. You can come up with any stupid fucking design for a gate that blocks off progress and even make them as arbitrary as possible, like a certain dash ability directly countering them. Important thing is that the abilities are actually useful.

I won’t say that ‘betterer the abillities betterer the game’ but it certainly helps. SotN had dissappointing abilities but was still pretty fun and punchy in spite of this.

Back to that whole Metroidvania thing, what is a metroidvania? Well, it’s a 2D sidescrolling exploration platformer, and the term simply comes from the fact that indie devs are incredibly uncreative.

It’d be best to change the genre’s name to something that fits more along the lines of what it is, ’exploration platformer’ could be a good start. If you wanted that to be short and stupid like metroidvania is, you could say it’s an explatformer.

Why do I think the genre’s name is so dumb and needs to be changed? Because ‘metroidvania’ makes it seem like a stupid static genre. It’s like, you HAVE to make it like Castlevania/Metroid or else it’s not an real metroidvannnyo!

But no, a lot of more recent entries have very much derived from different gameplay styles and it’s proof that metroidvanias don’t even need to be primarily Metroid or Castlevania, begging the question of why the genre’s name has stuck for so long.

If you do make your own Metroidvania, just remember that the name is a suggestion and not a rule. Who the fuck really cares how much you stick to genre conventions other than yourself and pasty nerds? What’s more important is coming up with unique, novel ideas that make your game stand out from the tradition, not following it to the letter.

It’s why people remembered Metroid and Castlevania and it’s why people would remember any ‘metroidvania’ that comes after them. It’s not about following what’s been done but trying to do what people have yet to.