Nine Sols

A masterful metroidvania that builds on Sekiro-style combat and tells a great sci-fi story too. Unmissable.

Nine Sols is an enthralling combat gauntlet with death-defying moves and sleek systems for a rapturous experience, let down only slightly by its somewhat lacklustre pacing and focus, and tired fat-shaming quips.

Building on Sekiro's parry system in a layered and fascinating metroidvania world, Nine Sols is a punishing but encouraging 2D soulslike spilling over with personality and creativity.

Nine Sols will test you, but the atmosphere is stunning, the combat is thrilling, and the story is a fascinating mix of mysticism and sci-fi — so you'll meet the challenge happily. This is the best Metroidvania out there right now. Don't miss it.

Combat and progression are the best parts of Nine Sols, and they manage to rub away the blemishes occasionally found in the game's map design and exploration. It's a really great blend of systems from other games with a fantastic revenge narrative. While aspects of the world design and 'Taopunk' style feel mismatched, there is always another enemy around the corner to fight, reminding you just how good the core gameplay is.

Taking cues from Hollow Knight and Sekiro, Nine Sols offers a metroidvania that seems perfect for RPG fans when paired with its excellent story and worldbuilding focus.

Nine Sols is a Metroidvania that does what many have failed to do within the genre and actually creates an experience that feels like an authentic, grueling, atmospheric and unique 2D Souls game. Artistically, it's hard to find any fault with it as the blend of Tao Tradition and Cyberpunk dystopia is captivating. The narrative is gritty, mature and uncompromising, which leads to an engaging story from start to end, and the gameplay is a refined showcase of combat, platforming and puzzle-solving. The difficulty settings may be a little askew, and some may feel that the central themes are too graphic and unsettling at times. But all in all, Nine Sols, in a stacked year, as far as Metroidvanias are concerned, does more than enough to force itself into the conversation, as it could be a contender for indie game of the year.

Nine Sols feels at odds with itself, trying to tell a more traditionally constructed story while also trying to appease the “lore sickos” of the world.

If you're a Metroidvania fan who loves challenging combat then adding Nine Sols: Fangamer Physical Edition to your collection is a must with its excellent core experience and high quality physical goodies that are lovely to put on display. 😺

Arriving at the conclusion of the experience Nine Sols offers, what lingers most powerfully is not simply the sensation of having played an excellent metroidvania or a particularly refined action-platformer, but of having traversed a work built with creative awareness and design maturity rare in the contemporary independent landscape. Nine Sols is not only a well-made game: it clearly results from a clear, coherent vision its authors have profoundly understood — a title that knows perfectly what it wants to be and builds every element to serve that precise identity without ever losing compactness along the way. What strikes most is the confidence with which Red Candle Games managed to reinvent itself. Moving from creating narrative and psychological horror to designing a technical, demanding, and heavily mechanical action-platformer would have represented an enormous challenge for any studio, yet the Taiwanese team confronts this change of direction with surprising naturalness. They not only demonstrate an extraordinarily solid understanding of the genre’s rules, but also manage to reinterpret them without sacrificing their own authorial identity. This is perhaps the most admirable aspect of the entire production. On the gameplay front, the title represents probably one of the most accomplished recent interpretations of combat design built on technical precision and rhythm. The combat system achieves the not simple feat of being simultaneously deep, satisfying, readable, and spectacular, offering a demanding but extraordinarily rewarding learning curve. Every important victory, every defeated boss, every finally understood pattern returns that sensation of real growth that only the best skill-based games manage to provide. This is not simply a matter of advancing through statistics or upgrades, but of improving personally as a player, understanding and internalizing the very language of the system. In parallel, Nine Sols also excels in everything that productions of this type normally consider “secondary.” The narrative, for example, surprises through maturity, depth, and relevance, offering an emotional and reflective component that one rarely encounters in titles belonging to this lineage. The game does not settle for being mechanically brilliant: it also wants to tell something, to interrogate itself on larger themes, to build credible characters and moral conflicts. This narrative ambition adds weight and meaning to every clash, transforming Yi’s journey into something far more personal and engaging than simple boss-to-boss progression. Artistically too, Nine Sols manages to leave a very strong impression. Its Taopunk aesthetic is not only an excellent exercise in style, but one of the most original and coherent artistic directions seen in recent years in the indie landscape. Every environment, every character, every architectural structure contributes to building a unique and immediately recognizable imaginary, capable of imprinting itself in memory well beyond the actual duration of the adventure. In a sector where many titles risk resembling each other visually, Nine Sols emerges with a sharp and distinct visual personality. Naturally, this is not a universal game, and I think it right to recognize that openly. Its difficulty, the rigidity of the combat system, and the strong demand for technical adaptation make it a relatively selective experience. Not everyone will enter its gameplay philosophy, and those seeking a more relaxed metroidvania, more oriented toward simple exploration or more permissive, may find the title less welcoming than expected. Similarly, the strong narrative presence might not suit those who prefer an exclusively action rhythm without more reflective interruptions. But precisely here, paradoxically, resides one of its greatest qualities: Nine Sols never seeks to dilute its identity to become universally appealing. It attempts no compromises in chasing all possible audiences, does not simplify its vision out of fear of seeming too demanding, does not renounce complexity to appear more immediate. It is a work that prefers to remain deeply itself rather than to become generically pleasing to everyone. And in a market increasingly dominated by cautious formulas, this kind of creative confidence is something extremely valuable. If I were to summarize my final impression, I would say that Nine Sols is one of the best recent examples of how the indie landscape can still surprise — not only through conceptual originality, but through pure executive excellence. It does not completely reinvent the genre, but takes known elements and assembles them with such competence, personality, and refinement that it manages to elevate them to a higher level. It is a game that demonstrates how quality does not necessarily derive from inventing something never seen before, but from profoundly understanding what one wants to do and executing it with extraordinary precision. We are talking about a title that stands out as one of the most complete, mature, and artistically successful productions of its genre in recent years. An intense, refined, demanding, and memorable experience, capable of leaving a mark both on the gameplay front and on the emotional and visual one. It will not suit everyone, but for those willing to embrace its philosophy it represents without doubt one of the most gratifying and brilliant experiences the landscape has recently offered. Absolutely recommended.