Nine Sols Review – Review
I have been quoted in the past as claiming Hollow Knight to be my game of that particular console generation. To me, it’s quite literally the epitome of a near perfect video game. The phenomenal art work, perfectly orchestrated music, and high precision mechanics made for one of my all time favorite metroidvanias. It’s a game I try to revisit for at least a few hours yearly, just to be re-immersed in the world of Hollow Nest once again. While I anxiously await its long lost sequel Silk Song, I may have stumbled into something on almost equal footing to one of my favorite games of all time.
Nine Sols is described as a mix of cyberpunk and Taoism to create a unique new style called Taopunk, and it’s something I never knew I needed. In the world of Nine Sols, we play as Yi, a cat life form known as a Solarian. His race of people came to the blue planet to use the Apemen for their own purposes. Yi is betrayed and is left for dead amongst the Apemen. It’s here that we start our Journey, awakening and being rehabilitated by the Apemen he grows a kinship with them. It’s from here that he decides to go against his people and take down the 9 Sols of the Solarian council, and find the true meaning behind his betrayal. Throughout the game you will unlock a central hub with a lovable cast of characters like Shuanshuan, a child of the Apeman tribe that has taken a liking to Yi as a role model. I was always excited to return to my hub after every boss battle, if only to see what new dialogue had been unlocked with my friends.
The story is told visually through gorgeously hand drawn graphic novel scenes and animated cutscenes. It’s from the very beginning that 9 Sols doesn’t hold anything back. Starting with Yi’s initial betrayal, we are presented with some pretty intense gore, which took me aback, but also prepared me for the intensity and brutality to come. Less so in the gore but at the level of action and story that was to come. I read over every single log entry and focused on every NPC conversation out of pure awe of the world they were building. I was enthralled. Learning the backstory of every member of the Sol council and their histories with Yi was such a wild ride. Though not without trepidation as some of its writing has a tendency to punch down. Specifically on one particularly heavy character that has a tendency to be mocked for his weight. Nine Sols should be better than that, and it more often than not is. It just kind of sucks when it’s not.
It’s here that I really want to dig into my favorite parts of what make 9 Sols so special. First of all, it has the picturesque refinement and allure of Hollow Knight, in the way that if you just stopped at any screen, you could frame that image as a painting. There were several moments throughout my playthrough of Nine Sols that I would screenshot for desktop backgrounds. It’s just that scenic. There are so many small details worth admiring, to the sway of Yi as he would float aimlessly through combat to a boss would eat eyeball looking fruit in the background of a particularly difficult encounter. I found myself re-watching my own footage or watching videos on the game just to see more details in the animation that I missed due to being hyper focused on the combat. This game is a living breathing world to admire that lovingly mixes its eastern Tao influences with a mechanical cybernetic aesthetic.
Speaking of combat, it’s something that many have compared to the From Software Souls-Like game Sekiro. That comparison is an apt comparison in that it’s highly focused on the parrying aspect. In combat you utilize your dodge, and parry but parrying is really a deflection that builds energy for you to use your Foo Charms, that you attach to an enemy and explode for more damage, which the developers call a reverse deflection. So while it’s perfectly fine to dodge, the real mechanics lie in figuring out the perfect timing to deflect. If you aren’t perfect on your timing you still deflect but you take a little bit of a damage. That damage then can heal over time.
What makes combat so fascinating is that there really isn’t any kind of benefit to hacking and slashing your way through it. Every enemy can do a sizable amount of damage to you, and you have a healing pipe that has only a certain number of charge uses, so really the only solution is to take every encounter slowly and methodically. Eventually you unlock shortcuts to avoid some of the normal enemy fodder but in the boss battles there’s really no other solution but to learn it. While you can level up and upgrade through the skill tree, or get use of parry attacks and arrow blasts, those don’t matter enough to brute face any encounter. You just have to die, and you WILL die plenty. Luckily there are respawn points outside of every boss room, so there’s almost zero retracing of steps there, just banging your head against the game’s difficulty.
As far as upgrades, there is a skill tree that enhances new abilities or adds additional abilities to others. There’s also a jade system where you can install new parts to Yi that can enhance his combat to add new features like stunning enemies when using his Foo charms, adding a level of customization to your play. It’s fun to experiment with different Jade builds, especially when it comes to the boss battles. The boss battles are an absolute stand out, with really unique mechanics. One early fight had me working against two different enemies. One strong and slow, one weak but quick. Once they were defeated, the main boss would resurrect them, leaving themselves open to attack. I was able to then figure out that by killing one, I could have the main boss on the field open to attack almost all the time by killing the enemies one at a time. It became a very focused dance of varying my attack targets and dodging the others. This example is a perfect snapshot of my experience with the bosses. Figuring out a plan through trial and error, then executing it. A boss encounter starts with flailing, but eventually my vision clears and I can see the path forward. Like a well fought chess match, Nine Sols is tough but fair.
Outside of the art and combat, 9 Sols is an entertaining enough platformer with a sprawling interconnected map that enticed me enough to explore every nook and cranny. You’ll unlock wall running, stealth sections, jumps, double jumps, and grapples in your traversal kit. These always aided in finding new areas I had missed, usually rewarding me with currency or extra upgrades. You WILL have to backtrack though, because unfortunately Nine Sols really doesn’t have any kind of waypoint system. Initially, an NPC will tell you where to go for the first boss, but after that it’s up to you to explore in every direction, unlocking new traversal mechanics that allow for further exploration. Coming off of recently playing Ender Lillies, another similar Metroidvania without a waypoint system, I wasn’t really as irked by the amount of backtracking, but still it’s a quality of life addition that helps respect a players time and Nine Sols simply doesn’t have it.
I’ve spent a lot of time recently re-discovering my love of the Metroidvania genre by digging into lesser known titles like Ender Lilliies or Pronty but Nine Sols sparked something inside me. It rekindled what was a smoldering ember to a roaring fire. The beautifully realized Taopunk world, and chess-like combat are a match made in heaven. The superbly orchestrated soundtrack matches the eastern mythology depicted throughout the game to a T. The performance on the Switch is also largely good, with some elongated load times or slow down when entering new areas, but those are mostly subdued enough to move past without much notice or corrected themselves quickly. Nine Sols as a whole was such a delightful experience that it is quickly moving up my Game of the Year list as I take further reflection on my time with it. I, of course, would have preferred a waypoint system or some stronger writing with the handling of some character NPCs, but I’m finding myself largely still thinking about how much I enjoyed Nine Sols. Its overall score is firmly planted in my brain, but where it stands in the larger Metroidvania hall of fame is yet to be seen. I think I need to take some time to meditate on it.
