Backlog Bingo 2025: Nine Sols

Ender Lilies and Hollow Knight are dethroned for me: this is a clean 5/5.

I've had this on my radar for a while, but I played it ninth this year because a friend made a joke like "I didn't know you'd finished the first eight Sols games already" and I realized that this actually would be the ninth game I've finished this year, so here it is, Nine Sols, ninth game, har har har.

When I heard that the Detention devs were making a (sighs) Sekiro-like Metroidvania in which you play as an anthropomorphic cat (it's a Metroidvania with a cute protagonist, this won't be horrifying at all and will definitely just be a cute animal game, oh hello Laika: Aged Through Blood, I didn't see you over there), I was immediately piqued, because, well, I'm me, and I couldn't not be. And, honestly? With the exception of some dubious checkpointing in a couple of spots (particularly the mandatory stealth section, which is also I think a candidate for "worst segment in an otherwise immaculate game"), and a couple of janky hitboxes (so, it's a Soulslike then, lol) leading to getting grabbed or bonked when standing behind something, this game is a masterclass of the genre.

To be clear, this is absolutely a game in the vein of Sekiro, not one of the other Souls games. If you don't want to learn parry timings in Dark Souls, you can just equip a bigger sword and try to go full unga bunga on things in a way that Sekiro just...does not allow. This is also true of Nine Sols: multiple bosses will just throw down hard walls until you agree to play by their rules, for the most part. Some people like this (and those people tend to like Sekiro) and some people don't, but Nine Sols isn't pretending to be something it's not.

I honestly find it difficult to talk about why I liked this as a full package as much as I did, so I'll just...ramble about some things that worked for me.

• The attention to environmental detail is generally immaculate, but I particularly want to give props to the fact that the Fuxi and Nuwa boss music is diagetic, played by the band at the party that they're hosting
• the "good ending" is the one in which the protagonist dies, and the "normal ending" is the one in which he lives
• the true ending forces you to watch every cutscene with a couple of the friendly NPCs, so you're really extremely steeped in the relationships with them, and what they've started to mean for the protagonist, so that by the time you trigger the true ending route and have to watch them all board a colony ship back to Earth without you, it hurts that much more
• Eigong's lightsaber comes out of the hairpin she's been waiting for the entire game
• the level of ludonarrative resonance (at this point I'm just going to force that phrase into as many of these posts as I can because it will make Reach either smile or yell at me) in the Ji fight is peak: he's a diviner, so he telegraphs his attacks via the seals that he draws, but you, the player, can choose which seal to break, forcing Ji to give you the "attack" that's free healing every time he goes for this divination ability. After the fight, it's revealed that he was lying about who was foretold to win the fight, and that he knew he was dead no matter what. The fact that he spends the entire fight optionally healing you in light of this may not even be intentional, but it's really neat?
• almost every cutscene with Shuanshuan, the child that becomes the main character's ward, is adorable; this also makes the ending where you have to call him to say that you're not actually going to be able to see him again that much more heartbreaking
• The boss run from Lady Ethereal to the end (her, Fuxi and Nuwa, Ji, and Eigong) is four absolutely incredible bosses in a row. I spent three and a half hours on Eigong, more than I've spent on any single boss fight in a long time, and I loved every second of how it slowly went from "how the literal fuck" to "oh, not so bad actually" to "yeah I'm fine" back to "wait but how the actual fuck" after reaching a new phase was measured in a way that feels so good
• a decision that felt extremely dubious at first (putting a second better parry on negative edge of the parry button) eventually became second nature to a point that I'd do it reliably every time despite my complaints about how absurd it feels to use at first, because the game incentivizes mastering it well enough that I wanted to engage with a part of my moveset that I initially hated instead of just finding a way to not use it

I just...kinda like so many of the tiny details of this game that I can't end up not liking the total package, I suppose? It never stopped being fun and engaging from moment one, and I mean, experientially I just don't put that much time into a boss without saying "this isn't worth my time" if it's not uniquely captivating me somehow. So, props to the devs, can't wait to see what you do next, and I hope China stops giving you shit soon.