The Messenger is a sidescroller action-platformer, developed by Sabotage Studio and published by Devolver Digital. It draws inspiration from the Ninja Gaiden series and other retro games.
Plot:
The game begins with a village of ninjas being attacked by a Demon King. It is then that a supposed "Western Hero" appears and gives a scroll to one of the surviving ninjas, appointing him as "The Messenger" and telling him to deliver it to the top of a mountain. During his journey, the Messenger is aided by a mysterious blue-robed shopkeeper, who provides him with upgrades, and a demon named Quarble, who helps to save him from death. After traveling through various areas and meeting a variety of foes turned friend, the Messenger arrives at the Tower of Time and encounters more blue-robed figures, who send him 500 years into the future to defeat the Demon King's general, Barma'thazël. Upon doing so, the Messenger loops around the world to the ninja village, where he, having reached the point of a cycle where he becomes the Western Hero himself, passes the scroll onto a new Messenger and takes up the role of a shopkeeper providing him with upgrades.
When this new hero ends up dying due to the previous shopkeeper's negligence, however, the blue-robes aim to break the cursed cycle, tasking the Messenger with collecting the notes of a mysterious music box in the Tower of Time. After the Messenger succeeds in this task, defeating the Demon King in the process, it is revealed that the music box is the prison of a man known as the Phantom who had become inflicted with a curse and created the time-traveling scroll in an attempt to stop it. This resulted in a 500-year-old mission passed down to several Messengers from various eras. Venturing inside the music box, the Messenger finds the Phantom, defeats the curse possessing him, and rescues him. The curse breaks loose, but the Messenger and the blue-robes team up together to destroy it, putting an end to the curse.
Gameplay:
The Messenger is a side-scrolling action-platformer, inspired by the classic Ninja Gaiden series. Players control a ninja known as "The Messenger" as he goes on a quest to deliver a scroll. The Messenger initially possesses a technique called "Cloudstepping", which allows him to perform an extra jump in mid-air after attacking an enemy, object, or projectile. As the game progresses, the Messenger gains new abilities such as climbing walls, gliding in the air, long-range shuriken attacks, and using a grappling hook to propel himself through obstacles and enemies. By collecting Time Shards earned by defeating enemies or hitting lamps, the player can purchase additional upgrades such as health bonuses or extra attack moves. If the player dies, however, a demon named Quarble will appear and automatically claim any Time Shards the player collects as payment for a short amount of time.
The game initially presents itself as a linear level-based adventure split across two eras; the past, which is presented with 8-bit graphics and audio, and the future, which uses 16-bit presentation. Later on, however, the game becomes a Metroidvania-style game, in which the player revisits past eras in any order and direction in order to find key items. In this section of the game, the player can use special warps to instantly move between the past and present, instantly changing the layout of each level and allowing them to access new areas. Hidden in some areas are green medallions (called Power Seals), earned by completing a challenging platforming section, with a bonus unlocked for collecting all 45.
The Verdict:
For any fan of Ninja Gaiden-style NES style action, look no further than The Messenger. The first half of the game is clock full of action and platforming heavily inspired by that series with a few great boss battles to top off each level. When you reach the end of this portion of the game and defeat the "final boss" of sorts, the entire game opens up completely, Metroidvania-style, to revisit the previous areas of the game to retrace your steps and discover things you may have missed while accessing new alternate paths with the abilities that you have acquired along the way. What really makes this portion of the game truly unique is the ability to switch between the past (8-bit graphical style) and future (16-bit graphical style) and take stock of how the environments have changed as a result of the passage of time.
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| Once you gain the ability to travel between the past and future, that's when the game truly opens up to you in terms of exploration. |
As unique that the past/future gameplay element brings to this game, it's also a tad problematic in a sense as this Metroidvania portion of the game is the most problematic. Where the first half of the game was linear in terms of going to point A to point B, the second half gives players no sense of direction nor idea of what the hell that they should be doing. You're tasked with collecting all of the music notes to play the music box, but offered little to no idea on how to find them. Players can purchase "hints" from the shopkeeper, but they are as vague as the in-game texts that describe your objectives in this portion of the game. Eventually, I grew tired of aimlessly wondering around the previous locales and resorted to referencing the good ol' Google machine to consult a walkthrough guide to complete this portion of the game. I understand that the developers wanted to recapture the magic that made games, such as Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night so iconic for this genre, but that archaic gameplay style of not providing the player with any concrete idea of where or what they should be doing is a bit much for gaming in 2020. Not every player is going to appreciate that deal of retro/old school gaming nostalgia, especially when modern players
Quarble's jokes to comment on every single one of your deaths range from hilarious to downright infuriating. I was at least 250+ deaths in the game and they definitely recycle some dialogue, but never did they not suit the occasion. The only thing you can do is shake your head and keep going. Quarble disappears out of fear during boss encounters, so you don't have to worry about him eating your precious currency in those encounters.
In relation to Ninja Gaiden and retro gaming in general from the NES era, this game shares a lot of beats with the sheer brutality of how "cheap" and punishing some of the platforming and enemy placement in certain areas of the game are laid out. It's fortunate that players have crisp, responsive controls to fall back on as you have no one but yourselves to blame for not being able to maneuver through those areas with pinpoint accuracy and precision.
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| A small glimpse of this game's movement and platform in action by use of the Rope Dart to accelerate vertically. |
Movement in this game is a thing of beauty to behold once truly mastered and something that's required if players hope to collect all 45 Power Seals. Each one is safely hidden in various portions of the map throughout the game that require players to navigate a challenging platforming section to obtain the Power Seal. Once you obtain all 45 Power Seals, you can open the green treasure chest in the shopkeeper's room to obtain the Windmill Shuriken. Take it from me that completing all of these trials and obtaining all of the Power Seals is no easy feat. I found and obtained 28 out of 45 as of this posting and I seriously doubt that I'm motivated enough to hunt down the remaining 17 Power Seals.
I will definitely applaud this game for its wealth of unforgettable boss encounters that put your skills to the test one after another. Each one requires you to put whatever new ability or weapon that you have acquired to the test, similar to how The Legend of Zelda series does with the bosses of each dungeon. Kudos to the developers to how creative they were with a lot of the bosses' weaknesses too as that crap wasn't obvious for a lot of them.
There's a lot of love for the Metroidvania genre as a whole too here, from the Sun and Moon Crests operating like the Clock Tower in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to the Ordinary Wax Candle to navigate your way through the Dark Cave (which ironically made me think of the multiple visors in the Metroid Prime series). If that wasn't enough, there's a wealth of hilarious and insightful stories to listen to from the shopkeeper if you have the time to chat with them during your adventures. A lot of that dialogue is worth the price of admission to play this game alone. It's great that the blue robes don't lose that sense of humor when it comes to their role in the game's overall narrative either.
I would be doing this write-up a disservice if I didn't mention the excellent soundtrack to this game.
One of my favorite tracks in the game - only one of many memorable tracks in this excellent soundtrack.
Downloadable Content: "Picnic Panic" Add-on Expansion
As of this posting (10/5/20), I'm still playing through this additional content in an alleged alternate timeline from the events of the game's main quest line. It provides more of the same, but with some new enemies and challenging bosses to overcome.
I will update this post with my thoughts upon completion at a later date.
UPDATE (11/10/20): I finished the DLC add-on last night and I'll offer my thoughts on it briefly.
The DLC can be accessed at anytime in any of the shopkeeper's huts and interacting with the corresponding idol. You will be teleported to an alternate timeline, similar to the one of the main adventure with slightly different outcomes to events to hilarious effects. It's better that I don't spoil them but the new region has it's own challenges to conquer (mask fragments and feathers) to collect in terms of optional challenges like the Power Seals, but the new adventure offers some new challenges that will test your mastery of the skills you've acquired in the main adventure to their limit. You don't gain any new powers/abilities here, but I felt that this DLC add-on almost forces you to master all of your abilities by the time it's all said and done. I thought the bosses here were some of the most challenging in the game, but at the same time, they were the most fair - to an extent anyway. The developers maintain their callbacks to NES-era gaming, with the final boss of this DLC taking a page straight out of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!! in terms of mechanics to that final climatic battle.
Once the adventure is over, you can play through the adventure again to your leisure after accessing the idol again in the shopkeeper's hut.
To my knowledge, this add-on is FREE to all owners of the game for no additional price. That's a steal for something that easily adds a few more hours of playtime for anyone who has already cleared the main adventure's quest line.
Play It or Don't Bother?
