Among the subgenres that are reasonably well-represented on the Switch, Metroidvanias have done quite well overall. At the high end there are some absolutely earth-shattering titles like Dead Cells that have established the very high bar to be the best, but there are plenty of titles along the way down the spectrum as well. With much respect to the lone wolf developer who made it, Sugamenia is not at any risk of taking down even the mid-tier titles in the space, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t without merit either.

Jumping into the action without really any background to speak of, the general style of play will immediately feel familiar. You’ll need to explore a bit, take out some enemies, look for hidden upgrades, and work out puzzles in order to keep progressing through what are generally pretty straightforward areas in terms of design. On the positive side, most of the elements needed to work through puzzles are pretty common sense, which isn’t always something developers get right, but the stage design is also quite a bit more linear than your typical Metroidvania, with there generally being few reasons you’d want or need to backtrack overall for anything critical.

In terms of the general feel of play, the controls are at least responsive, but perhaps your character’s movement is a little on the stiff side overall. The good news is that in general the challenge level of play isn’t all that high, even when tackling the game’s bosses. There can be spots where the difficulty spikes a little every once in a while, but for the most part any genre veteran will probably feel overqualified for the job of putting the smack down on pretty well any enemies they face. This doesn’t have to be counted as a negative, as gamers who aren’t as hardened could use a pretty gentle spot to start from, but if you love the tough stuff this won’t be the game for you. In the end this isn’t too bad as an overall experience if you keep your expectations in check, but if you’ve played a ton of Metroidvanias on the system already it’s likely to feel a bit underwhelming.