Afterimage review talks usually start with everyone obsessing over the art style, but let's cut straight to the chase. If you pick up this game expecting a streamlined, tight Castlevania clone, you're going to get hit by a freight train of bloated maps and cryptically layered systems. I dropped over forty hours into Engardin, and while the fluid combat kept me hooked through some brutal encounters, the sheer scale of this world almost broken my spirit. Before diving in, make sure to read my breakdown in the  Afterimage Guide for setup tips.

 

 

Community feedback isn't lying on this one. The map is absolutely colossal, almost to a fault. You'll spend minutes sprinting across sprawling backtracks only to find a locked gate requiring an ability hidden three regions away. The localization also feels strangely disconnected, throwing hundreds of lore terms at you in the first two hours without giving you any emotional anchor to care about standard protagonist Renee or her floating companion.

 

Yet, when the combat clicks, it genuinely rips. Swapping between main weapons and off-hand magic while air-dashing around screen-filling bosses feels electric. It’s a classic case of incredible core mechanics trapped inside a game that desperately needed an editor to shave off twenty hours of padding.

 

 

Visually, Engardin is a hand-drawn masterclass. Every biome looks like an oil painting brought to life, complete with dynamic lighting and distinct environmental features. The animations for Renee's weapon combos flow seamlessly into one another, making basic movement feel crisp and responsive. The audio design backs this up with a sweeping orchestral soundtrack that perfectly captures the melancholy of a ruined, magic-infused fantasy realm.

 

 

 

 

 

The moment-to-moment action loop revolves around fast movement, multi-weapon combos, and aggressive dodging. You carry two primary weapons ranging from heavy broadswords and scythes to agile dual blades and whips, alongside a secondary spell focus.

 

 

                 CORE GAMEPLAY ACTION LOOP              
   1. EXPLORE      -> Uncover sprawling hand-drawn biomes 
   2. ENGAGE       -> Fast weapon combos & aerial dashes  
   3. UPGRADE      -> Unlock talent tree skills & gear   
   4. RE-TRAVERSE  -> Use new abilities to clear gates   

 

 

Here's how the core combat choices stack up when you're building Renee for late-game bosses:

 

 

 

 

Combat demands precision. You can't just mash attacks and expect to live. Bosses hit like runaway trains, often punishing greedy animation locks with massive chunks of your health bar. Resting at Confluence nodes restores your health and talent charges, but it also respawns every regular enemy in the zone. This creates high-stakes pushes through unfamiliar territory where every hit point matters.

 

How does fast travel work?

 

That's the number one complaint you'll hear from players, and for good reason. Early on, fast travel is brutally restricted. You get limited consumable potion items to teleport back to primary save hubs, leaving you to manually backtrack through massive zones. It isn't until much later in the story that unrestricted teleportation unlocks between all activated resting points.

 

How deep is the RPG progression?

 

Surprisingly massive. The talent tree features dozens of nodes granting stat increases, active weapon skills, and passive buffs. Matching your equipment bonuses with your active weapon talents turns Renee into an absolute force of nature by the endgame.

 

If you are curious about how the plot fits together, check out the full  Afterimage Lore.

 

 

 

Understanding the convoluted narrative requires reading item descriptions and tracking down obscure NPC sidequests hidden across remote corners of the map. If you step away from the game for a week, good luck remembering where you were supposed to head next.

 

Afterimage is an ambitious, beautiful, yet overly bloated Metroidvania that will test your patience as much as your reflexes. The weapon combat is fast, fluid, and deeply customizable, featuring some of the best boss encounters the genre has seen in recent years. However, its confusing narrative, restricted early fast travel, and bloated map design keep it from achieving true legendary status. If you love long, challenging games where you can easily lose yourself for 40+ hours, it's worth the price of admission.

 

 

What happens after hour 10 changes everything! Read our full House of the Dead review for the honest truth.