The Messenger is a platformer developed by Sabotage Studio, and is also their first game. The game plays similar in controls to Ninja Gaiden (NES), but borrows significantly from other NES and SNES game styles.
You play as the titular Messenger, an 8-bit ninja tasked with carrying a scroll from the western side of his island to the east. You'll play through a variety of colorful levels on your way to deliver your message, but at the far eastern part of the island lies the real hook of the game. It's been spoiled in just about every review so far and is shown in the trailer, so I don't feel bad revealing it here. Once you progress through the first few levels, your character will jump through time, changing not only the look of all of the levels, but also your character! He'll go from 8-bit ninja to 16 bit ninja, and the music will all change to the appropriate time period. It's all very tongue in cheek and meta, but the effect is really nice.
The game really shines in its controls, which are the absolute best for any game in this style, rivaling games like Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, and Shovel Knight. Everything you do in this game feels exactly right, from the wall jumping to the grappling hook to pull you to distant walls to the great new mechanic invented for this game, cloud stepping. This is basically a double jump with a twist. Any time you hit something with your sword, you get a cloud to jump off, making it so that you can basically stay jumping and slashing around for eternity if you're skilled enough (there are plenty of non-enemy objects to hit). The cloud stepping is insanely fun, and never, ever gets old. They also use it in some skillful game design scenarios that will ask you to use your abilities in new and more challenging ways, which is a delight. The hit and hurtboxes are exactly right, and you'll never find yourself blaming the game or the controls for your failures.
The game's approach to learning is tremendous as well, giving you low risk opportunities to try out any new skills you obtain as you go, and gradually increasing the challenge of using those mechanics throughout the levels. By the end, you'll be mixing and matching all of these skills you've trained and will absolutely feel like a real ninja. Scratch that, real ninjas were never this cool.
In addition to the flawless controls and skilled level design, the game also has some of the finest action platforming bosses ever. There are a few that aren't so fun sprinkled throughout the game, but for the most part these would be absolutely iconic boss encounters for any NES game, and they still are magnificent today. There's also a free DLC with two additional levels and extra bosses that are a ton of fun.
The look of the game is fantastic, particularly the 8-bit style. The 16-bit looks a little like an 8-bit artist's best attempt to translate from one to the other. The 16-bit graphics are not on the same level of other 16 -bit style platformers like Shantae or the more recent Castlevania handhelds, but they're good.
The music is good, if not great. There are a bunch of really good tracks here, but a couple of snoozers as well. Arranging all of the music at least twice was quite a feat, though, and the composer deserves some significant credit here. The Tower of Time song is particularly excellent.
My main complaint is that the game is simply too broad in its scope. It plays like a game from a developer doing their first game with the fear that they would never have a chance to do a second. They jammed this game full of as many homages and gameplay styles as possible. Once you change from 8 to 16-bit, the gameplay changes from linear platformer to Metroidvania, and the Metroidvania parts just aren't as good. For one thing, the fast travelling between levels is extremely cumbersome. There are fast travel points to several levels, but not to others. Additionally, sometimes parts of the levels are inaccessible from the fast travel points due to the way the levels are laid out. You'll sometimes need to trek through three full levels to get to the specific point you need to collect whatever upgrade or item you'll need to advance in the story. Fortunately, the actual process of getting from point A to point B is really fun in general. Because you're a ninja with excellent controls. But you can only slog through the same level so many times before it starts to get a little tedious.
There's also sections of the game that feature horizontal shooter mechanics, Turtles in Time style water skiing levels, and even a Punch-Out!! boss fight (note: I did enjoy this one). In general, these sections take away from the things the game does well, and shifts the focus to genres with which the developers are not quite as skilled at executing.
The resulting addition of tons of extra features took a game that felt a little short at about two hours and stretched it out to closer to ten, which is certainly too long for a game in this genre. And if you, like me, tried to 100% the game (I succeeded), it's probably closer to twenty hours, with most of the time spent cloud stepping around the map in the Metroidvania part. I would have greatly preferred if they would have made four more linear platformer levels with four more platformer bosses and had the game up to four or five hours.
The game's story and dialogue are also pretty ponderous. The writing is not great, and attempts to walk the line of parody without becoming goofy, but it rarely hits the mark. I laughed very little, and found the serious attempts at plot development a little confusing, as almost all non-Chrono Trigger time travel tales are. But plot and dialogue aren't the first things I look for in a 2D platformer, so it didn't bother me much.
On the whole, this is a really good game, and a very impressive effort from a new developer with a ton of promise. Their love of the classic games that inspired them shines throughout, and their dedication to creating a character that controls seamlessly will keep you playing this game longer than there's new content to enjoy. A too-long experience with too much trimmable fat keeps like from being an all-time classic, but it's well-worth picking up if you enjoy any kind of 2D platformer. Just play Shovel Knight first for the definitive modern retro-styled experience. I'll give it a 9.0/10. See below for a teaser for my next review, for a game I finished this weekend!
-TRO
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