Another month coming and going, Ramadan being in full swing and with a lot of us branching out to new games, it’s time for another monthly round of recaps!
Unfortunately, it’s hard for this author to admit that not a lot of progress has been made in backlog land, not in gaming nor in any other medium. February was quite hectic if I do say so myself! But let’s not waste any minute and onto the list of games!
Record of Lodoss War
But don’t let that distract you from the star of the show here, Team Ladybug, an unsung hero of the indie gaming landscape, responsible for the equally stupendous Touhou Luna Nights, and as such I will not let their efforts go unnoticed!
Similar to Luna Nights, Record of Lodoss War is also based on a different license. In this case, it’s the classic 90s anime of the same name. This game does no disservice to the license and does a beautiful job paying homage to the classic high fantasy by making it come to life in this stellar action-platformer. Providing exhilarating fast paced bossfights that require split-second thinking and proper understanding of boss patterns as well as creative and original mechanics. It has been truly a phenomenal experience and one I can’t recommend enough!
Yohane the Parhelion -BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE-
Yohane the Parhelion is a fun one to talk about, buckle up because we have everyone’s nightmare right here; a spin-off of a spin-off (Kingdom Hearts says hi!). If you’ve never heard of Love Live before, first of all, I deeply envy you, second of all, it’s funnier to not explain what it is.
So I won’t.
What you really need to know is that Love Live eventually spun off into a high fantasy anime (yes really) which in itself spun off into becoming a Metroidvania (yes… really) and that’s the short version of the short version. But similar to Lodoss, this is a quality Metroidvania, only problem is that explaining its strengths may force me to repeat a lot of my points.
So instead, how about we open a lovely sidebar about genre definitions, shall we?
If you’ve been around the block long enough, you likely already know Metroidvanias come in two ice cream flavors, Metroid-likes and Symphony-likes. Explaining what differentiates the two would require a Bible of its own, but all you really need to know is that those subsets of game-design trends exist and and are very tangible.
Now, this is primarily a personal observation, but I spot with my little eye a frankly silly number of western indie devs swinging more towards the Metroid side of the Metroidvania pendulum, while JP devs sway more towards the Symphony kind. Coincidence? Might be, since both games are quite popular in both regions.
One key difference to note is that Metroid-likes have more focus on weapons while Sympthonyvanias try to offer a seamless merge of Action RPG and platformer elements, but we’ve been through this song and dance before. You don’t need the millionth explanation of what a Metroidvania is, the distinction here is solely made as to contextualize my endless indifference towards the likes Guacamelee, Axiom Verge and the likes. They are not bad games per se, just not my cup of tea.
An argument can be made if a lot of western Metroidvanias do actually follow the Super Metroid template or not, and while I’d likely agree with some of them, it wouldn’t change either the subconscious inspirations nor my indifference to those games.
But we sure dilly-dallied a lot here. What you really need to know is that Yohane is a phenomenal game and well worth a look! We now move on to our next entry, hopefully with less snark…
Gal Gaurdians: Demon Purge
Well, this is getting silly!
).We once again run into an issue of repeated praises here, so let’s open another sidebar why don’t we.
If some Metroidvanias are Metroid-likes, and some are Vania-likes, where does Shantae fall considering it predates the entire modern indie industry as we know it? Well, Shantae is a Shantae-like and all Shantes are Shantae-likes.
Enough said, go play Gal Guardians, it’s really good.
Last Notes 
So was it really a good to put all that here? Wouldn’t this cannibalize potential future talking points if I decide to write about Metroidvanias again? Excellent question, wonderfully pedantic reader! And that’s great, I want people get their head gears turning by asking questions like this, it means you are engaging with my writing and that is the utmost of flattery! To answer the question, no, you completely underestimate my ability to babble, for each point I bring up, I got thirty more to follow it up with and then some. “Running out of things to say” is not a concept for me and besides, Metroidvanias are a somewhat niche topic, and “pretty anime girl” thumbnail is still likely to attract readers, only for them to get jumpscared by my obsessive side tangents. 
That’s all we have for today, if you have any games you played last month, feel free to share! Hope you had a good one and Ramadan Kareem to all who celebrate, see you next issue!
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