Akatori, or red bird, depending on the kanji used, is an upcoming Metroidvania(?) on Steam, releasing sometime this year. From Contrast Games, behind titles such as Undying, Pacer, and Vasilisa and Baba Yaga, this is one game you want to keep an eye out for if you’re a fan of the genre. Me? Not so much.
The Steam page does list this as a Metroidvania, and I feel that it qualifies through its levels of difficulty. It’s not brutally hard, but enough of a challenge to cause some self-doubt involving patience levels and abilities. In context, this was more to do with having to swap the key bindings out on the Steam Deck as they weren’t matching on the on-screen prompts and resulted in a few balls-ups.
It’s not that Akatori is complex in its controls – far from it. The challenge here is that timing and jumping, landing, and performing combos are essential to progress. In other words, if you’re a button masher or novice speedrunner, you may end up in the dirt early on. Right, difficulty barrier exposed, what’s it actually like?
The developers have that Japanese itch like so many others and given their own spin on the culture with an abundance of sakura and temples that make Akatori a very busy place. Busy, but beautiful. There are many ways a game can attempt to stand out amongst a relatively big crowd. For the Metroidvania, sure – the challenge is a draw for most. For me? The art is brilliant, and it’s a place I’d prefer to visit over that Hollow chap any day.
Storywise, you play as Mako – a girl raised in the Firebird temple, trained with a jo, balancing her martial prowess with a healthy blend of meditation (a practice that will replenish health and serve as a checkpoint). Unfortunately, the Amber Storms are stirring up a kerfuffle with ‘all living things’, so she’s going to hit them with her stick.
Combat in Akatori is straightforward to begin with: a healthy tap of the attack button mixed with some evasive dashing. Through defeating enemies, Mako can unlock new moves and combos, plus buy medicine from a vendor. The latter is pretty darn expensive, so I’d suggest squirrelling it away for a rainy day. As mentioned, you can’t button mash, and this is more to complement the rather lovely animations – they can’t keep up.
From my perspective, it’s the precision platforming that’s more appealing. You can pre-empt your fall by checking with the right stick, then smashing through the flooring to find alternate rooms and rolling through the crevices. However, the two best features are being able to wedge your staff into the side of objects when you’re oh-so-slightly out of reach of the ledge, then jump up, followed by a glider you can trigger on command.
Again, what’s really going for Akatori is how good it looks and feels when moving around and platforming. The combat wasn’t really my thing, and having to repeat sections due to taking some time getting familiar with the slight delays in movements was mildly off-putting, but again, a Metroidvania I’d happily choose over Hollow Knight. No dig at Mr Knight, it’s a great game, but I prefer this.
