I’m a big fan of both metroidvanias and roguelikes, so the more games I can my hands on that are part of either (or both) of these genres, the better. I was excited to give Storm Lancers a shot when it was first announced because of this reason, as it was oozing a Dead Cells-esque vibe. From the offset, everything rang true to what I was looking for, permanent upgrades to make the starts of runs easier, always having access to a melee and ranged weapon, even having special abilities like launching a fireball or laying a trap for enemies. To be honest, everything about Storm Lancers feels like something I should absolutely love. The issue is, I don’t.

Every run starts in this crashed ship, empty ship.

First impressions weren’t positive. Sure, the intro cinematic was decent, but it was easy to notice that the graphics, as a whole, weren’t very impressive. As someone who has been playing a port of a game from 2009 on Switch 2 as we speak, the idea that said game looks less ugly than the modern Storm Lancers is just concerning, to say the least. Environments look bland (with special mention to the first area; you know, first impressions are the ones that last and whatnot), with underwhelming foregrounds and backgrounds. I have to say that I was also disappointed by the overall variety in enemy design, with a good chunk of them being simple pallet swaps of a handful of templates just to showcase different elemental types.

Oh boy, I’m on fire again..

So besides the areas and character models being ugly, what’s the issue? Well, honestly the actual gameplay is an issue. It doesn’t matter if I’m playing in docked or handheld modes, I was able to notice some really frustrating amounts of input lag. My initial thought was that there was some kind of backwards compatibility issue with the Switch 2, so I made sure to redownload the game on the Switch OLED model, but nope, same exact problem.

Since part of this game involves platforming, although nowhere near as much as you might expect from a metroidvania (the game doesn’t feature a lot of verticality), feeling a delay to all of your jumps is not a nice experience. The combat is quite awkward at first, but when you get used to it, it’s insanely easy. Most enemies stagger really fast, then they keep their attack loaded during their stagger phase so if you just move behind them you can keep beating on them while they attack the completely wrong direction.

On top of this, and I’m not generally one to complain about a game’s balance being “unfair” or “broken”, but the burn damage enemies do to you cause 50 damage per second, and you only have 800 health points at the beginning of each run. When one of these hits you it’ll take away nearly half your health easily and there doesn’t seem to be a way to prevent this besides obviously not getting hit, which is a bit easier said than done when the hit box is a bit further than the actual animation.

It’s weird because this tells me the sword is just as fast, but stronger, and neither of those stats are true.

I wish I could say that there was a saving grace with the music. I absolutely love a good video game soundtrack, and prefer a game with an OST over licensed tracks for the most part. The OST to Storm Lancers isn’t particularly bad, but it’s not memorable. I suppose that fits in perfectly with the rest of the game though, below average, and forgettable. What a shame, This had so much potential to be a cult classic, but instead, just fell slat on its face at the first platforming section.

Storm Lancers is available now on Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Switch

A copy of Storm Lancers was provided by the publisher.