-
Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
-
Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!
StarTopic Metroidvania |ST| Navigation Aggregation
- Thread starter xghost777
- Start date
Stilt Village
GBA
It depends on what you expect out of the "genre" I suppose. I came to it from Metroid, so I was pretty shocked by how un-Metroid most Metroidvanias actually are in practice, since the whole definition is usually built on comparisons to how Metroid works.
In terms of navigation, Fusion trumps practically anything else on the small scale, you are genuinely "finding the path" through each area, which is something much more emphasized in Metroid than in most other games. You're rarely burrowing through walls and floors and ceilings to find hidden passages to progress in anything else. Even other Metroids don't usually take this as far as Fusion, which I think deliberately put a lot of effort into the moment to moment level design to make up for no longer having that larger scale navigation element (and was also probably able to do that more easily since the game didn't need to be as open and easily traversable).
Similarly, the item progression is the main attraction of every Metroid since Super, but despite being prominent in descriptions of the genre it's kind of an afterthought more than the driving force in most other Metroidvanias, which tend to take more after Symphony of the Night in that and other regards. Items in Castlevania or Hollow Knight are frequently something very simple that will get you into specific rooms, Metroid items are often like Link's Awakening and later Zeldas where there will be whole areas designed around their use and the world will close in around you as you travel through those areas until you get the item you need.
This sort of disconnected world design is more common among games that get called Metroidvanias than you might think though. The latter two DS Castlevanias are mostly composed of isolated levels, with the interconnected castle being a much smaller portion of the game. A lot of others will work similarly to this in practice even if they don't opt for a hub and spokes or disconnected area layout, Aria of Sorrow for instance is very "complete one area and move on to the next", the extent of the backtracking is mostly fast traveling back to the entrance a few times to enter a different area with a new ability you have. Ori and the Blind Forest did nothing with the exploration to the point where I wondered why it wasn't just a linear platformer. Touhou Luna Nights is more like a Treasure-style action platformer with the thinnest veneer of a Metroidvania; in each area you go down one path to get an item or a key, and then come back and go down another to continue, literally a single path branch per area.
Did Fusion get really popular lately due to nostalgia or something? I remember it always being sort of the black sheep of the modern games for its linearity. I like it more than the 8-bit games and Samus Returns (which somehow feels even more linear), but it's kind of a more limited game than the others, more of an okay straight action game carried by interesting level design and a surprisingly engaging plot. Also, it's weird you can get hundreds of missiles when most of the bosses are gimmick fights that only require like ten shots.Finally, some people on here that aren't too hot on Fusion either
It's fine but I would be lying if I said I didn't prefer almost every other 2D Metroids over Fusion.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I dunno if this is a thing on the wider internet, but at least on here (especially in the Metroid thread) I've seen a lot of people praising it and generally holding it in high regard. Of course this might just be nostalgia for the GBA/early 2000s, a resurgence in popularity after Dread, or it being on NSO.
I actually agree with you on this, and I think it's really more of an issue of how we define Metroidvanias more than anything else. Or perhaps one could argue that lack of interconnectedness of the map does not disqualify some of these games as Metroidvanias, it just makes them poor representatives of the genre.
Stilt Village
GBA
Oh, yeah, no, I put "genre" in quotes at the beginning because I really don't think most of these games have all that much to do with each other, at least historically. Like, the basic concept of the genre itself is built on a coincidence even, I've said it several times before but Symphony of the Night never had anything to do with Super Metroid despite having a similar-looking map UI. They said it was actually inspired by A Link to the Past, which makes way more sense if you look at the mostly open way the world is actually structured and how it treats items. Meanwhile very few of the indie ones really take a lot from either of them.
I would say it isn't that all of these games are too different to be in the same category; it's that the category doesn't support them very well. Most definitions I've seen just describe Super Metroid, except for the ones that make a distinction between Metroid-likes and Metroidvanias, which I think is also incorrect because RPG elements are usually cited as the defining factor when those appear pretty minimally outside of Castlevania. Like, does having currency and badges really make Hollow Knight an action RPG? Mario Wonder has those!
The idea of exploring a connected world and gaining new abilities is integral to the definition, but at the same time it's so rare that both of these are actually a focus that you end up with the weird situation where most Metroidvanias are also bad Metroidvanias, including the majority of the most acclaimed and iconic examples of the genre. I don't know what to make of it.
I sometimes wonder if circumstances were different how Zelda might have gotten roped into this too, because a Metroid game is effectively just a sidescrolling Zelda with no overworld/dungeon distinction. It's brought up sometimes, but it's usually considered a separate thing. The line between a sidescrolling Zelda and a Metroidvania is basically invisible though, which is made apparent through the later Wonder Boy games, and conversely the idea some people have that a Metroidvania is inherently a 2D platformer is very strange to me because... How is Metroid Prime not a Metroidvania?
The "genre" is more of an accident than anything. "Metroidvania" wasn't coined as a term to group games that shared elements with Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night, it was to give a term to separate Symphony of the Night and the games that followed in its footsteps from its predecessors. The "Metroid" in Metroidvania was a descriptor for the Castlevania half of the word, and was contrasted with "Classicvania" to refer to the original Castlevania style.
That got lost somewhere along the way, and now we're left with an ill-defined 'you know it when you see it' word to define a genre. The fact that the genre leans towards SotN makes some sense, as you can argue that was the definitive take on the original meaning of the word. It doesn't explain why the game industry at large trends towards games that share elements with that instead of Super Metroid.
BlackthornOrion
#theprocessbroke
see, this is why "exploraction" is the superior term. but folks aren't ready for that conversation
Oh I definitely support this Exploraction movement.
Interesting stuff! No wonder the parameters of this Metroidvania categorization have been rather ill-defined.
That's actually pretty decent wordplay on 探索アクション, which is the term used to describe the genre in Japan. It's generally translated as "search action", but machine translators also seem to support "explore action".
(Fun fact, this is where Famiboards gets it's name for the search button!)
Stilt Village
GBA
Well, it does trend that way, but only a little. I would say Hollow Knight for instance does have more SotN in it with how it's structured. Very sprawling and open, much bigger emphasis on combat in the moment to moment gameplay, even starts by sending you all the way across the map like SotN did. But there are a few notable bits from Super Metroid too like the ability to sequence break and the shinespark-esque crystal ability. Ultimately though it has neither Igavania's emphasis on RPG mechanics with a huge variety of different items, equipment, and weapons to try out; nor Metroid's emphasis on a constant stream of new abilities and somewhat more puzzle-like room design where you often need to use bombs or something to find the path forward. It's mostly doing its own thing, and like a lot of modern Metroidvanias makes combat a much more important part of the game.
I think the frequent resemblance to Igavania level design and Igavania-type abilities like double jump, slide, etc. is frankly because these are a lot simpler and easier to make than their Metroid equivalents. But there are just as few games that try to replicate the hard parts (and actual selling points) of Igavania as Metroid.
It was a really funny experience stumbling onto a forum thread of Igavania fans complaining that all of these indie games are like Metroid, we don't have any like Castlevania. And like, as a Metroid fan, they definitely came to the wrong conclusion, but they had a point! These games don't particularly serve either fanbase. But I guess if "Mariosonics" were a thing to describe that type of platformer, it would be much the same situation. The distinguishing design qualities of a particular series are rarely replicated elsewhere outside of blatant clones. At best someone will take half of them and you'll have yourself a genre.
Looking at it through that lens, I'd say that the main issue with Metroidvania, aside from it being kind of historically inaccurate, is just trying to be too specific. Saying all Metroidvanias are about getting new abilities to progress is like saying all Mariosonics have power-ups. It's sort of correct, but power-ups are a big part of Mario and mostly just an extra hit or invincibility period in other games. I actually like that Exploraction is much vaguer, although it's also kind of just reinventing "action adventure" as a label without the baggage of the "adventure" part. Not that these aren't already classified as a type of action adventure game anyway. Which I've always felt was kind of like gaming's wastebasket taxon, if you've got a character running around doing combat and also other stuff and it doesn't fit into another category, then throw it into action adventure. GTA, Zelda, God of War, doesn't matter. But that's neither here nor there.
- Pronouns
- He
Hm, I don't know, I definitely think there's some discernable important differences between Action Adventure and what people would usually lump in with Metroidvanias. Admittedly those differences are pretty thin and change a lot based on the game; for example back when I used to like classic Zelda but not love it, a big stipulation of mine was that powerups in Zelda were essentially meaningless since you only used them a few times before they basically became irrelevant, they were too contextual. This isn't really a thing in any of the mainline Metroids, at least the ones from Super onwards, powerups are either pretty much omnipresent or serve so many uses that they are always useful. I guess you can say that stuff like the Shinespark has been dumbed since Super in almost every mainline game, but that really has more to do with how freeform Super's exploration was, or that Prime already streamlined items multipurpose designs, but I think that has more to do with the contraints of 3D.
Now obviously the biggest problem is that this can't be the main distinction because Igavanias exist, which basically use powerups in some of the most superficial ways imaginable. Once you start getting to games like Aria of Sorrow, you really see how they just start throwing one ability gate and then forget about powerups moments later, and honestly Symphony was not much better. Although Igavanias also alternatively tend to reward you more for exploration than action adventure games in other ways, like the RPG elements that tend to augment your game considerably more than getting some minor sword buffs or spells in Zelda. But I guess what i'm saying is that I think there is a collective whole that makes a Metroidvania game recognizably different from an action adventure game, even if there isn't any one consistent differentiator. I think this is also why I thought for a long time that stuff like Resident Evil or Souls games are more similar to Metroidvanias than Zelda games, an opinion I'm not sure I agree with now, but the way those games handle map design is much more similar in that the entire world is the dungeon and there's a lot more looping. Maybe map design just ticks off more boxes for me than powerups, which are badly implemented in most non-Metroid Metroidvanias anyways.
....Also, maybe it's just me, but I think it's interesting to see Action Adventure called gaming's wastebasket, because while you might see it used a lot in professional publications, I .... actually don't see it used that much by actual gamers? Like, for a long time it was a genre that I saw as somewhat "lonely" in the sense that the only premiere big franchise that consistently ticks that box is Zelda. I guess technically Uncharted and GTA might count, but they feel more like third person shooters where you just happen to do other things. God of War is also an interesting one because while I think it's connection to Zelda is actually pretty underrated (there used to be a lot of discourse back in the 7th gen that Darksiders was "actually also a Zelda clone alongside GOW", as if God of War 1 didn't spend half the game in a long dungeon with a ton of puzzles), that game is primarily considered a hack n' slash by most fans. I think you might be able to consider GOW or Uncharted as action adventures given the puzzle and dungeon focus, outside of that I don't really see pretty much any franchise ticking that box. And even GOW's later entries start stretching it.
Now obviously the biggest problem is that this can't be the main distinction because Igavanias exist, which basically use powerups in some of the most superficial ways imaginable. Once you start getting to games like Aria of Sorrow, you really see how they just start throwing one ability gate and then forget about powerups moments later, and honestly Symphony was not much better. Although Igavanias also alternatively tend to reward you more for exploration than action adventure games in other ways, like the RPG elements that tend to augment your game considerably more than getting some minor sword buffs or spells in Zelda. But I guess what i'm saying is that I think there is a collective whole that makes a Metroidvania game recognizably different from an action adventure game, even if there isn't any one consistent differentiator. I think this is also why I thought for a long time that stuff like Resident Evil or Souls games are more similar to Metroidvanias than Zelda games, an opinion I'm not sure I agree with now, but the way those games handle map design is much more similar in that the entire world is the dungeon and there's a lot more looping. Maybe map design just ticks off more boxes for me than powerups, which are badly implemented in most non-Metroid Metroidvanias anyways.
....Also, maybe it's just me, but I think it's interesting to see Action Adventure called gaming's wastebasket, because while you might see it used a lot in professional publications, I .... actually don't see it used that much by actual gamers? Like, for a long time it was a genre that I saw as somewhat "lonely" in the sense that the only premiere big franchise that consistently ticks that box is Zelda. I guess technically Uncharted and GTA might count, but they feel more like third person shooters where you just happen to do other things. God of War is also an interesting one because while I think it's connection to Zelda is actually pretty underrated (there used to be a lot of discourse back in the 7th gen that Darksiders was "actually also a Zelda clone alongside GOW", as if God of War 1 didn't spend half the game in a long dungeon with a ton of puzzles), that game is primarily considered a hack n' slash by most fans. I think you might be able to consider GOW or Uncharted as action adventures given the puzzle and dungeon focus, outside of that I don't really see pretty much any franchise ticking that box. And even GOW's later entries start stretching it.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Metroid Prime is 100% a metroidvania. It’s just that 3D metroidvanias are so rare that they usually aren’t even classified as such by most people
BlackthornOrion
#theprocessbroke
Yeah, anytime I've pointed out to someone that, for instance, Arkham Asylum or Jedi Fallen Order are metroidvanias, there's always this little lightbulb moment of "oh huh, yeah it kinda is, isn't it"
I guess for most people, if you take the basic metroidvania loop and put it in 3D, it doesn't really register as anything other than that nebulous "action-adventure" genre (unless you're literally playing as Samus, that is)
OP
OP
I definitely prefer the more broad definition of Metroidvania as just "games like Super Metroid and Castlevania Symphony of the Night." It gives people a basis of expectations and even if many games in the broader definition don't have all of the features / sensibilities of either of the two big games exactly (as those big two are also quite different from each other) chances are good people are aware of what's compelling about these types of games and will be at least interested in hearing about them even if certain ones won't be to their tastes exactly. I view this thread as a great way for people to point others towards games they'll enjoy and a good part of the fun is discussing the games that really capture those features and sensibilities and also discuss how they chart their own paths.
- Pronouns
- Any
Metroid games aren't Metroidvanias, they're just Metroid. They don't have any of the vania elements that SotN introduced. But I get what people are saying when they call them that.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I would say they definitely are. Metroidvania was coined with SOTN but that doesn’t actually mean that all metroidvanias need to have Metroid and vania elements, even if that sounds counterintuitive at first - it encompasses the full gamut of the genre.
It’s kind of like squares and rectangles. All Metroid games are metroidvanias, but not all metroidvanias are Metroids (or Metroid-likes)
