Faerie Afterlight Review | Enchanting Wonderland (PC)

Brought by Mastiff and Clay Game Studio, Faerie Afterlight brings challenges to players in a Metroidvania game. Venturing inside Lumina’s infested cavern, players will face off against various enemies and ferocious Titan to bring peace into the world. Presenting its exciting gameplay and beautifully crafted art, enchanting the players to keep striving till the book is fully closed.

Faerie Afterlight is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch for $14.99 and $19.99 respectively.

Story | Savior of Lumina

Wispy finds Kimo unconscious in the Cavern of Lumina. The pair ventures into the darkness to battle through the evil lurking within. Battling against fierce monsters is inevitable due to the need to absorb the dark while making Kimo and Wispy become more powerful to bring the world into its balanced state.

Plunging into the depths of the sea, avoiding obstacles inside ancient ruins, solving puzzles, and meeting with locals is basically what the story has to offer to the audience. The premise is simple but successfully presents itself with its art and background music (BGM). it’s more intriguing when jumping into the gameplay section.

The Beginning of the Journey.

Gameplay | Classic Metroidvania

As the title goes, Faerie Afterlight depicts classic Metroidvania gameplay. In brief, this game focuses on the player’s experience when navigating through lots of platforms, puzzles, and obstacles while fighting against monsters to gain more abilities and skills to proceed deeper into the cavern.

Combat Mechanic

Kimo is equipped with a basic slash as its main attack in the game that’s not upgradable. But, Wispy is coming to help with its ability to shoot a light bullet, detonate a light bomb, and throw a trajectory light bullet. Although Wispy’s ability doesn’t add much to the general combat scene, it shines when fighting enemies in specific biomes, like bombing enemies while submerging underwater, or hitting certain boss parts.

The exciting part of the combat is learning the enemy’s patterns, especially in boss battles. Combining the learned fighting styles with Kimo’s movement ability, players can try out various approaches to achieve glory, or even find the most efficient way to get rid of the boss. In conclusion, combat is more like reading your opponent rather than trying different arsenals to take down enemies.

Massive Spider.

Skills and Shop System

Deeper into the skills, it’s quite simple for both Kimo’s and Wispy’s. Most of Kimo’s skills are suitable for exploration, like spider legs to stick on the wall and beetle horns to dash onto far ledges. On Wispy’s side, most of the skills are for both traveling and fighting enemies although the damage is similar to Kimo’s basic attack.

As per the writing of this Faerie Afterlight review, there’s a shop to upgrade the energy and life meter to help players fight the darkness. Also, there’s a teleport bell to gain access to fast travel between checkpoints in one region.

Skills Tree.

Exploration

When there’s a way, there will be one. Faerie Afterlight offers players various tools to transverse across the Lumina depending on the landform. A grappling hook to reach far grounds or walls, diving fins for exploring underwater, and sticky legs to hold onto a wall are several of Kimo’s abilities that need to be utilized to progress through the main stories. There are also Wispy’s abilities to manipulate the surroundings, like making a series of platforms disappear or controlling the state of a bridge, to solve puzzles and progress through the story. Also, there are collectibles across the Lumina to unlock a secret ending (need players to keep their eyes peeled off though).

Despite having a fun time using all the movement abilities and collecting things, the game still lacked navigation tools. Backtracking in this game is subjectively hard because players are provided with a map, but with a minimum sense of where to go. Objectively said, there should be a quest marker to pinpoint where we need to go to proceed through the quest. Plus, it would be more convenient if the map could mark the collectible that’s sighted but unobtainable due to a lack of movement abilities.

Map System.

Graphics and Sound | Soothing Inside, Artsy Outside

Beautiful and calming, those words could describe what Faerie Afterlight has to offer. Presenting the story with its colorful pastel graphics, making the exploration progress amusing as we walk into different areas. The music scoring also complements the awaiting Kimo’s journey and tense atmosphere while fighting different bosses. Visually eye-catching and soothing tunes immerse players into the world of Faerie Afterlight.

While enchanting, there are slight performance issues, as per the writing of this Faerie Afterlight review, where I encounter bugs during quests, rendering me unable to continue, and must restart the game before fighting through the quest. Other than that, Faerie Afterlight offers solid performance throughout my playthrough and I don’t have any major complaints about them.

This Faerie Afterlight review is possible thanks to Mastiff for providing a review code to us.