All in all, DOOMBLADE excels as a Metroidvania and is worth your attention. I was incredibly addicted to its control scheme and its combat despite its few faults. By the time I reached the final boss, I felt challenged in all the right ways. Considering its disruptiveness, I highly recommend DOOMBLADE for Metroidvania fans who desire something new, especially those who're playing with a controller.
Metroidvanias can be formulaic in their progression. You begin in a new place, your movement is restricted, your power is minimal, and your path is determined mainly by where you can’t go rather than where you can go. As you play, you unlock additional abilities that grant you access to areas that were once blocked off, be it a double jump, dashing, super jumps, wall running, and so forth. Most often than not, the early game is one of the lowest mobility whereas the late game offers you hyper-mobility and oftentimes exhilirating platforming experiences. This progression formula is consistent and works, sure, but imagine if that formula was turned on its head by giving the player hyper-mobility right from the start?
DOOMBLADE does away with that typical progression formula, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pleasantly surprised to experience a hyper-mobile Metroidvania experience like the one it provides. Maro Studios describes DOOMBLADE as a disruptive and demonic Metroidvania with some never before seen controls, and I highly agree with it. Playing as Gloom Girl, players discover a sentient sword hellbent on revenge and embark on a vicious journey of vengeance to destroy the Dread Lords.
Over my nearly 13-hour playthrough, I’ve come to seriously enjoy the hyper-mobility of DOOMBLADE. It’s engaging to the point of being incredibly addicting. It’s refreshing in its approach for giving players access to typically endgame content, and it opens the door for nuanced gameplay that ramps up in difficulty. Because of hyper-mobility being available in the start in the form of dashing toward and through enemies, the world opens up quicker while also encouraging players to make thoughtful decisions regarding where to dash, who to dash to, and how chains of dashes should be implemented to keep Gloom Girl out of harm’s way.
DOOMBLADE‘s platforming shines bright, encouraging players to move vertically, horizontally, and sometimes through timed gauntlets featuring tight windows of safety. Exploring the world of DOOMBLADE involves flying through walls, chaining attack dashes on multiple enemies to reach new heights, and creating attack-able objects to assist Gloom Girl in her journey.
I conducted this review using my DualSense controller, and the controller experience was pretty unique, too. In fact, I found it to be enjoyable and refreshing. The attack dash and the movement dash (i.e., “Spectral Dash”) are bound to the triggers (L2 and R2) rather than the typical X/O (or A/B) buttons, and aiming was bound to the Right joystick. Getting through that learning curve was less steep than I imagined, and it made the game feel closer to a twin-stick shooter rather than a traditional platform.
All in all, the DOOMBLADE experience worked quite well for me. I often found myself testing out unique dashing combinations to maintain momentum and keep Gloom Girl safe. Boss battles were less of a button-mashing affair and more tests of Gloom Girl’s current kit. Whichever ability I had most recently unlocked generally came in handy in a subsequent boss battle, with later boss battles requiring me to utilize ALL of the abilities I’ve gained. My timing, patience, and dexterity were tested in new ways as boss battles involved multiple waves of enemies that grew in strength. Sure, I would become frustrated at how “cheap” some bosses would be, but once I figured out the bullet patterns and timed the windows with precision, I would succeed quicker.
I can imagine that some players may find DOOMBLADE to be difficult and/or jarring at first, and that’s ok. Having to unlearn years of muscle memory can be a frustrating affair, especially for those who are devout Metroidvania fans. I can very easily see a Metroid or Hollow Knight express disbelief with how early mobility is granted to players. However, once you get past the training wheels, DOOMBLADE lets you fly early and often with a gigantic talking blade in hand.
I have two concerns with DOOMBLADE‘s traversal-heavy gameplay. First, combat complexity takes a back seat to traversal complexity. Gloom Girl technically has a single attack with some additional abilities that are mainly used for traversal variety. Attack combos exist more in the form of timing a dash and timing the next attack rather than a blend of timing attacks/dashes and deciding between multiple types of attacks. I would have liked there to be additional types of attacks to vary up the combat. Second, some of the abilities could have been given offensive power, but lacked it. For instance, the Nightmare Onion is used to plant seeds and create plants to dash to. However, it carries no offensive strength. I would have loved to have a use for it other than simply scaling walls, especially since two other abilities unlocked later in the story render it obsolete.
As a Metroidvania, DOOMBLADE‘s map is gigantic and emphasizes backtracking, almost to a fault. The levels are designed well, foreshadowing places Gloom Girl should return once she’s unlocked a future ability. Thankfully, there a network of Void gates that easily help Gloom Girl teleport across the map to specific areas, so returning to a prior area is less of a chore. The best Metroidvanias encourage backtracking, and DOOMBLADE executes it well. Exploring an area for the first time gives Gloom Girl a taste of what to expect while also filling in the map halfway. I found myself repeatedly backtracking and retracing my steps each time I unlocked an ability, just so I could try completing a map in its entirety and finding new secrets. Luckily, I could, and my time was almost always rewarded.
However, there came several points where I found myself lost and/or unsure how to proceed. Usually, I would look for an in-game hint, an NPC, or a questlog in the menus to remind me of my path and/or where to go. In DOOMBLADE…there’s very little guiding you. Sure, you could argue that this is reminiscent of an older generation of games that lacked such in-game guidance. However, it would have been nice for something to be available, even if it was tucked away to discourage folks from relying on how to advance. Allowing players to add custom waypoints on the map would be helpful in the reminding process.
My decisions to spend time exploring the world was rewarded in various fashions, albeit less meaningful than I was hoping. I would have liked to be rewarded in the form of customizing Gloom Girl, unlocking additional content, and/or something that meaningfully impacted gameplay. As it stands, the small side quests that exist reward you in the form of additional endings. As much as I loved playing this game, I didn’t feel compelled to replay portions to get the other endings. Of course, this may be because I had taken the time to explore the world to the fullest extent and insure that I had taken the completionist route, but rewarding replayability should be made evident in the form of making specific choices that can meaningfully impact the outcome of the game.
DOOMBLADE‘s story feels familiar in a lonely yet gritty way. For those familiar with Hollow Knight, you’ll be treated with a story of a lost family, an unfamiliar world, and a seemingly hostile apocalypse. Gloom Girl’s journey as the last of her kind in an unfamiliar world is told through drips and drops until just past the halfway point when an upgrade lets you read seemingly unreadable inscriptions that you’ll walk past multiple times in the early game. Once you can read those guidestones, however, the mood leans heavily into sorrow. No spoilers here, but Gloom Girl’s path of vengeance is one that becomes justified.
DOOMBLADE‘s original soundtrack heavily emphasizes the grittiness and establishes the game’s tone well. The Power Sector’s music became one of my favorite tracks in the game because of how well it blends rock and techno influences into a cohesive track. Brian Skeel’s audio choices are all perfect in emphasizing the themes of loneliness and vengeance throughout the game, and I found myself intuitively “attacking” (dashing) along to the beat of multiple tracks. I highly recommend keeping the volume on while you play, as it complements the gameplay quite well.
If you’ve gotten this far in this review, you’ll clearly notice that much of my critiques of the game are minor. Yes, it would help for some light in-game guidance along with combat variance to liven up the gameplay loop a smidge and keep folks on track. But in the end, the current state of DOOMBLADE is enough to hook players for at least 12 hours of tense combat and fruitful exploration. The game stakes a claim in a doomy-and-gloomy territory that piques players’ interests and undivided attention. The disruptiveness of the gameplay loop is original despite some minor learning curves.
All in all, DOOMBLADE excels as a Metroidvania and is worth your attention. I was incredibly addicted to its control scheme and its combat despite its few faults. By the time I reached the final boss, I felt challenged in all the right ways. Considering its disruptiveness, I highly recommend DOOMBLADE for Metroidvania fans who desire something new, especially those who’re playing with a controller.
A review copy of DOOMBLADE was provided by the publisher for the sole purpose of this review.
