So. Many. Metroidvanias. This used to be a novel genre with the occasional entry but now it’s a swiftly deepening pit of games that you can barely get a chance to look at before five more come out. That doesn’t mean they’re all bad though and we’re here to look at one more Metroidvania and see if it’s worth your time. Today we’re looking at 9 Years of Shadows, an interesting indie title from Halberd Studios and publisher Jandusoft. Previously released on the Switch and PC, it has now made its way to PS5 and Xbox Series X. The game focuses on a world that has been devoid of color for almost a decade, sucked away by a curse in Talos Castle.
You play Europa, a girl who lost her parents to the curse and is fighting to break it. You’d think that would be the main focus of the game, but you’d be wrong, because weirdly, Europa almost immediately manages to break the curse, filling the castle with vibrant color again. That was the first of many odd surprises with 9 Years of Shadows. This is a music-themed exploration game with piano segments in the save rooms, various performers waiting to be rescued around the castle, and a stage theme for the main staging area. While you’ll be visiting various performers regularly, the vast majority of the game is exploration based, not a big surprise with the genre.
Levels are fairly labyrinthine but nothing compared to the complexity of the recently released Shadow Laybrinth (review here). As Europa, you’ll be gathering up resources in order to upgrade your powers and free the world permanently from the influences of those who created the curse. Helping you out is a magical teddy bear that heals you when you take damage. Yes, you read that right. A magical teddy bear. Why? Who can say. It’s not like it fits with the theme of the game or anything but hey, roll with it. If you have taken enough damage, your shields drop down to zero and then Apino the bear can restore three quarters of your shields. Since the game depends on you maintaining those shields and hits kill you fast without them, it’s best to use this handy but weird ability as much as possible.
Unfortunately, there’s a small window where you are vulnerable while Apino heals you. When you need a shield boost in heavy combat, sometimes taking it means you fail because the enemy can get a shot in while you’re trying to refresh those shields. That means paying close attention to timing, something that 9 Years of Shadows is very focused on. Everything is about timing in this game. Timing enemy shots, timing healing, timing, jumps and attacks. Boss fights in particular are strongly focused on timing and you’ll be hard-pressed to beat many bosses the first time around because of it.
This is a particularly challenging game and the bosses can be incredibly frustrating. That’s because in addition to tight timing issues, there is no difficulty setting and your hit box is huge! For those of you who don’t know what a hitbox is, it’s an invisible box that shows the edges of where you can hit enemies and they can hit you. In 9 Years of Shadows, your damage hitbox is gigantic, meaning that enemies can hit you when you think they shouldn’t be able to and you’ll have to get a bit too close for comfort to enemies to attack them as well. That’s incredibly frustrating when your character already has a fairly large sprite. Add a whole bucket of precision in there and you have a recipe for frustration.
In addition to the magic teddy bear, Europa slowly gains music songs that she can exchange for armor and abilities. Each armor has different affinities such as lightning or water and you can also expand your shields and enhance other things with the music sheets you find. It sounds like a neat system, but aside from armor, it’s difficult to find the songs to expand and the red ones are particularly difficult to get, leaving you upgrading very slowly as you play. Metroidvanias are supposed to be fun to explore and progress steadily, but 9 Years of Shadows bucks that trend and opts for an almost glacial pacing with a limited number of expansion options available.
On the upside, actually using your armor abilities is remarkably easy, as you can switch between them at the press of a button and enemies are color coded in order to allow you to select the proper armor to do maximum damage. Expansion abilities like the lightning blast and the water spout are easy to use and Europa looks pretty darn cool in armor as well. You might get stymied by bosses and stronger enemies and have more than a few rage-outs but at least you’ll look swanky doing it!
The gameplay loop is pretty simplistic here. Zip about exploring, go back and talk to the performing troupe here and there, kill some bosses, go back, etc. It’s all about the exploration and the visual vibe for 9 Years of Shadows and the game definitely manages some breathtaking scenery as you move from area to area. The castle is extremely colorful, as are the monsters and everywhere you look, care has been taken to maximize the visual impact of the game. The creativity of boss and character design is high here, but the fine detail is a bit lacking, something that definitely could have been improved. There’s more of a retro-16-bit vibe to 9 Years of Shadows than you might expect though, so that detail level is probably intentional.
Audio is where the game shines. This is a music-oriented game so as you’d expect the tracks and sound effects are excellent with a variety of interesting music and a solid soundtrack. The only weird thing about the sound is the odd piano playing at save points which clashes strongly with the background music of the game. It’s honestly an affront to the ears to save due to dichotomy between musical pieces. Fortunately, the rest of the songs really do make up for this odd choice and the sound effects are quite well done too, making for a soundscape that does a lot of heavy lifting for the rest of the game.
You might be wondering where the story is, but there’s really not much of one in 9 Years of Shadows. There’s a cohesive plot but you only get tiny dribbles here and there. Most of the dialogue you’ll see is instead in elevators, where Europa is slowly going over her past and what’s going on in her head while the game loads. It’s an odd choice but kind of neat because load screens between areas are never quite the same each time. These asides manage to modernize a game that otherwise feels like more than a bit of a throwback title. There are no markers on where to go, missing clues can leave you lost, and there’s just not much of a helping hand being given in the game. That might not appeal to gamers that are used to more modern games where there’s a bit more hand-holding.
That issue also extends to the difficulty of the game. There are no difficulty settings in 9 Years of Shadows. Instead you’ll just have to use brute force to progress and a lot of patience. That’s particularly frustrating on bosses which have multiple forms and a number of high-powered attacks. The regular enemies typically aren’t too bad once you get the hang of fighting them, but even with your shield blasts and all the skills in your repertoire, it’s still a struggle to beat some of the more vicious creatures in the game and you might end up just putting down the controller and walking away more than once.
All in all, 9 Years of Shadows is something of a mixed bag. A lot of love went into the design work and sound in the game, but the gameplay is not nearly as fun as it could be and the level design, while decent, is not particularly spectacular, even if the enemy designs are pretty cool now and again. There’s a bit too much focus on style over substance here and it definitely won’t resonate with anyone. That’s not to say that 9 Years of Shadows is a bad game – it’s not. It’s just that it could be so much more than it is with a few minor tweaks to gameplay and accessibility. At only $20 though, you might be willing to forgive some of those issues because underneath it all, there’s a decent game waiting to be explored.
This review is based on a digital copy of 9 Years of Shadows provided by the publisher. It was played on a PS5 and on the PS Portal and played equally well on both. 9 Years of Shadows is also available on PC, Xbox, and Switch.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.