Nine Sols is a banger from start to finish. It'll take you roughly 25-30 hours to 100 % this game, maybe even longer depending on how much time you need to learn certain bosses or less if you play in story mode (adjustable difficulty which can be switched to at any moment of your playthrough).

While the dialog might be considered lengthy by some for a metroid vania, I highly recommend to not skip through it and read every diary entry and log you get. You'll find yourself with quite a compelling narrative mixing sci-fi elemts with east asian mytholigy, namely taoism.

You're going to encounter some combat related roadblocks because as other reviews already mentioned, this game is hard.
The first boss funnily enough is one of the mentioned roadblocks, testing your skills with the games most important combat mechanic, parrying. While it's not 100% necessary to parry every attack in the early game it's part of what makes the combat so much fun, I highly recommend learning it because later on certain enemies and bosses definitely require you to be competent with it. I would also suggest that you play in "Standard mode"
Utilising every combat mechanic the game throws at you is a must if you want to experience the highs Nine Sols has to offer.


As a side note that's neither a positive or a negative really:

I must say I think it's quite funny that Nine sols age rating is 6+ in my country (I was expecting 12 when I looked at the steam page) considering the amount of gore this game presents you with, don't get me wrong you wont be presented with anything too grotesque but certain story elements are quite brutal and there are even some tame suggestive depictions here and there but nothing too raunchy.

Very satisfying to play once you understand the movement and combat, I would probably not recommend the game for people that want a concrete story layed out for them, you have to put the pieces you get through enviromental storytelling and the few textboxes that are in the game together to have a clue of whats going on lore wise.
The game world is decievingly big I'm like 17/18 hours in and I wouldnt suprised to go for atleast another 3 or 6 just to finish the game without going for all the achievments, discovering all of the map or hunting for lore bits.

I initially put the game down my first time playing expecting not to play more since I didn't really had a clue what to do and just feld completly help less in the harsh bio mechanical jungel you are confronted with. But I started over on a fresh file tried to just explore for the sake of survival of that adorable little slugcat and the game grew on me stronger by the hour. Once you get a feel for the movement and get your first lizard kill the game just becomes an amazing experience with a lot of attention to detail.

Best way to experience the game is to know nothing about it.

goodd game

there is a bug, if u kill a warriors grave and u die at the exact same time u dont get dream nail points.