El Shaddai Ascension of the Metatron Review

This was a weird one, I played on PS3 a few years ago and I recall dropping it pretty quickly, I might've learned that the game was one of the PS3's most expensive games at the time or later, but that doesn't really matter since the game now has a Nintendo Switch remaster while getting a PC remaster beforehand, and after beating it? My thoughts are pretty much the same, I can see why myself from a few years ago did drop the game and the only reason I was able to get to the end at all was because it checkpoints well and for the combat, you restart exactly where you died from pressing the L, R, and A buttons at the same time, more on that later. Outside of that, I find the game to be painfully mediocre in almost every respect. I intially played it at all because some called it an "underrated" game while terms like that are nebulous at best, I still don't think it's a good game or a game deserving of that reputation.

The good thing about El Shaddai or at the very least is the visuals, it might be the only thing about the game that geniunely stands out. If you are one the seemingly many people who love to complain about 7th gen games being "brown", "grey" and having "ugly" color palletes, this might be a game from that gen to capture your interest since everything is vibrant, colorful and has a nice cel shaded look to it. The environments have a dreamlike design to them and some of the visuals are so bizarre yet awfully eerie. If you are the kind of guy who really wants a game to look very nice and care about that more so than the gameplay or love to go on and on about how a game looks visually then check the game out because now I transition to the negative and not so good things about El Shaddai.

Before I do that, I'll also say music and voice acting is passable enough if nothing standout.

I'll start with the combat, and it's interesting on paper, the game apparently uses a rock, paper, scissors system of enemies being weak certain weapons but the problem I noticed right away was even back when I first played is that enemies are massive damage sponges, they take forever to die and taking them down just takes way too long, and btw, I played on easy and this is still an issue.

Veil was by far the best weapon since it does the best job at staggering enemies and it has a dodge command that is somewhat reliable, it's esstentially the Nemen Cestus from God of War 3 in that it's a pair of magical boxing gloves and it allows the character to move like a boxer but due to the enemies being damage sponges, it never feels as awesome or empowering as GOW3's Cestus.

Arch and Gale never really feel that great and just feel weak, especially the latter, I just whailed on the attack button with Gale and it chips away at enemy HP very slowly and it felt like what was supposed to be a 5 minute fight went on for 10 minutes. Arch just feels like a typical sword with not much standing out from it.

The enemy roster is also pretty weak, outside of the fact that the game stops introducing new enemies after you get Veil, their only threat to the player is how hp spongey they are. I wonder if having the ability to switch between the 3 weapons could make the combat more dynamic and enjoyable but I'm not sure.

So with all these issues, what helped me get through the game? Well, it's the fact that during combat Enoch can't get a traditional game over, like I said before just press L, R, X and A and you can keep respawning without redoing any content, this also works on bosses. They are also HP sponges and some are required to lose in order to progress the story but it doesn't really matter since you can keep respawning with no consequences.

However there is one problem, you can keep respawning after death during combat but not during the platforming, and this leads me into my second big issue with El Shaddai is that the 3D platforming is really terrible. There is 2D platforming as well, and these parts are okay, if nothing special but it does make the game feel confused on what it tries to be since the 2D platforming can feel jarring compared to the 3D sections and they go away entirely over halfway into the game.

The 3D platforming is just awful, some of the worst 3D platforming I can even recall, there are late 90s 3D platformers that control better than this. The best way of describing it is that what if Devil May Cry 1, had more platforming? This is what you get, the camera doesn't do the greatest of job giving you an angle on where to jump and the jumping physics never feel precise, half the time if I want to make it to a platform, it's a 30-50 guessing game, sometimes I'll land and at other times I'll fall off if I nudge the analog stick a little too much, and the game doesn't just have you jump to platforms, no, you got to dodge traps and moving platforms as well and it takes what was already bad and makes it worse since these controls weren't even good for the 3D platforming in the game without hazards. The game does checkpoint mostly well to make this bearable all though before a combat section with some of them and getting back to the platforming section can be tedious since combat is long due to the aforementioned issues of enemies being damage sponges. 

Old God of War also had 3D platforming with a follow cam but Kratos' jump arc actually feels like I can predict where I'm supposed to land and it doesn't feel like 30-50 guessing of whether or not Kratos will land on the platform or not. 

Overall, El Shaddai could've been so okay, it's average but the platforming just makes me dread playing it. Remove these sections and it could've been just that.