Steel Mantis is a two-man development team that impressed a lot of people with their action platformers Valfaris and Slain: Back From Hell. Our own Eric Layman reviewed Valfaris just a few months ago, and wrote a superb write-up about it that you should read. He also reviewed Slain! in 2016, though the game was so poorly received it was re-launched as Slain: Back From Hell. Anyhow, fast-forward to repsent day and publisher Big Sugar has made the wise decision to re-release both games in a rarely-seen Double Pack, available on the Nintendo eShop. Valfaris really caught my attention more than Slain, and in my time with the games these past two weeks, I have managed to complete Valfaris, but am still grinding my way through Slain. Both titles (though Valfaris especially) represent excellent side-scrolling action platformers with intense combat, cool boss fights, excellent presentation, and stout challenges (sometimes to the detriment of the experience).
Valfaris puts players in the bloodied boots of the protagonist who is on a mission to free his homeworld from the corrupt rule of his father. The heavy metal influences in the artwork, music, animations, weapons, character designs, names, is apparent and wonderfully executed. As a fan of metal music, I appreciated the continuous instrumental riffs of the skillfully presented soundtrack. Just as impressive is the artwork. Though the game has an older pixelated look, the attention to detail in the art is excellent. It seems like in every background scene there is always something moving, something to give the world a more potent atmosphere and sense of immersion. Character animations and anything else not of the background was also done in impressive style. In fact, looking back at my notes, I think my only complaint about the presentation is that sometimes there is so much colorful stuff going on that it can be tough, rarely mind you, to discern enemy attacks from everything else going on. This requires that you stay focused, but the combat is tough enough that you can never really let your guard down anyway.
Armed with two ranged weapons and a melee weapon, and several of each are found as you progress through the game, there is never a shortage of ways to inflict pain on the enemy in Valfaris. In fact, I found myself stressed at times in deciding what weapons to upgrade using the precious Blood Metals you can find hidden in certain areas or that are earned upon defeating certain enemies. Every weapon in the game — and there are about a dozen — can be upgraded two to four times, but it’s very costly to do so and you cannot re-allocate your upgrade points once spent. Given the difficulty of the game, this made decision-making kind of stressful, and ultimately limited my choice of weapons to upgrade and carry to about half of the total available.
Weapon upgrading and selection can only be done at the checkpoints. Checkpoints can also restock your health and energy meters, but at the cost of a particular pickup item (which, thankfully, are always provided just before the checkpoint object is reached). Now, you can also bank these checkpoint pickups and in exchange you get increased health, but, should you die, you’ll be sent all the way back to the last checkpoint that you used. For the last third of this game, I can tell you that it became practically a checkpoint-to-checkpoint grind, and I was ready for the game to be over. Certainly there were tough areas before the final third, but, wow, once I got into roughly the last third of the game it sometimes took me dozens of tries to clear an area or boss (those Tomb Guardians were a severe pain).
Valfaris prides itself on its difficulty, and I get it, but as an older gamer with a full time life, I would have appreciated the option to unlock some kind of rewind ability or something like that to keep from having to engage in some much repetition. Although, I do commend Steel Mantis on mostly-great checkpoint placement. You can always expect to find a checkpoint right before and right after a boss fight, but sometimes the checkpoint before the boss fight has you fighting a few other enemies first, or traversing an area before you get another crack at the boss, and you will sometimes spend more time doing this than you actually get facing off against the boss, which gets frustrating in a hurry.
Though Valfaris is very frustrating at times due to its endless pursuit of difficulty, all of the other great elements and mechanics about the game combine to make a worth-the-struggle experience. Don’t get me wrong, Valfaris is excellent in many ways, but for me the focus on difficulty sometimes took the spotlight and fun away from the experience and soured it — even though the difficulty was technically fair. Nevertheless, the overall experience was worth it, but, I do not see myself playing through it again.
Slain: Back From Hell is a very similar game in some respects, and it actually released about two years before Valfaris. I am still grinding through it now as I am finding it to be much tougher than Valfaris, and also not quite as compelling. I think Steel Mantis might have learned from some of the mistakes of Slain when they went to making Valfaris. The theme here is less futuristic sci-fi and more so dark fantasy, like Castlevania type themes, and that’s great and all, but the difficulty at times has made me quit in frustration many times. On the plus side, you can count on an impressive presentation and some good level design and gameplay ideas. However, I found the timing of the charged melee attack to be frustratingly precise, practically to the point that I didn’t even want to use it. At least getting precise with block-timing wasn’t quite as difficult to get used to.
Anyway, in sum, if you enjoy linear, side-scrolling action platformers with beautiful presentation and a stout challenge, the Valfaris & Slain: Back From Hell Double Pack is an excellent offering. Be prepared to be impressed but also frustrated with the difficulty spikes.
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