There are so many Metroidvanias released per minute these days that it’s hard not to describe each new one as “this” meets “that”, but Solateria really does feel like a combination of Hollow Knight, Nine Sols, and Mio: Memories in Orbit.
In it you play as Tott, a “Litt Pyron” warrior with a blue flame for a head. The story follows your quest to restore the king of your people as a terrible plague ravages the land. It’s not bad, but it throws pepper nouns at you in quick succession, and none of it is spoken in English. Instead it uses a made-up language that just began to grate on me after a while.
What you should know going into Solateria is that it’s hard. Even if you mess with the difficulty sliders, it remains hard. It’s entirely parry-centric, with massive bosses and a huge variety of enemies. Parrying is made harder by the fact that enemies will attack with large hit boxes, and you will be I-frame dashing through them a lot. If they switch directions while you’re dashing and hit you in the back, your party won’t work. Situational awareness is important. I say this because the parry animation appears spherical, and for a while I couldn’t understand why I was still taking damage until I realised it wasn’t a parry dome, and I had to be facing every attack. Makes sense, I know, but it took me a moment to catch on anyway.
The progression is fairly standard for a Metroidvania, as you unlock new skills like an air dash and double-jump, and will unlock new elemental attacks as you clear our bosses and expose all the corners of a hidden world map. Outside of the combat, there’s little in Solateria to make it stand out. Which is not a criticism, necessarily, but rather a tacit statement of fact. Solateria puts most of its eggs in the combat basket, while keeping the actual exploration fairly simple.
But it’s still a hell of a challenge at times. There are screen-filling bosses, enemies that will poison or freeze you, and if you get wet and don’t have room to dodge you might as well accept your fate. Being saturated is a death sentence if there’s nowhere to go as it makes you ten times heavier than you should be.
A parry will set up a counter attack that does multiple hits and feels incredibly satisfying. Staggering an enemy will also leave them open to a high-damage special attack. Death will cause you to drop your “inflare”, which is this game’s version of souls, naturally, necessitating tense corpse-runs through minefields of enemies. The environment can be just as deadly, with hazards and traps scattered throughout.
Story isn’t really a strong suit here, but you’ll meet a large selection of characters including a fair few fellow Pyron warriors, most of whom look more badass than little old Tott. They’ll impart wisdom, guidance and skills, as well as backstory and context for the world. It’s not a large game, but does a lot with what there is, presenting a wealth of different biomes that pop with colour and detail.
Solateria may not present anything you haven’t seen before in one manner or another, from the amnesia chosen one protagonist to the beautiful but decaying world, and even the combat isn’t anything new, but the overall package is in incredibly charming despite the steep difficulty, and Soulslike Metroidvania fans would do well to add it to their collection.