Skelethrone: The Chronicles Of Ericona Review – A Lackluster Metroidvania Experience

When I first looked at Skelethrone, I thought to myself… “ooh, a Dark Souls + Metroidvania mash-up that isn’t called Blasphemous, or Salt & Sanctuary… or Hollow Knight?” Sign me in!

As someone who absolutely loves Souls and Metroidvania games, even I have to admit that I’m getting pretty sick of these. But the question is…can Skelethrone manage to stand out from the crowd?

Set Your Expectations Accordingly

In Skelethrone, you play as a skeleton named Skeleton who, after rising from the dead, must walk right, then left, and then right again in order to navigate a largely bland set of areas each of which contain a boss.

Through these adventures, you will gain ‘souls’. I’m sure it had a unique name, but I earnestly can’t remember what it was. These souls are then used to upgrade your stats; however, if you die, they will be lost unless you can retrieve them from where you last died.

Throughout the game, in typical Metroidvania fashion, you will also unlock traversal skills which can help you navigate later areas, as well as find hidden paths in earlier areas. If all of that sounds like an AI blurb for a generic Soulsvania action-platformer, it’s because it is. This game has so few unique features that’s it’s easier to just get all of this out of the way at the beginning.

Take What You Can

This game is very derivative. It’s pretty shameless about it, even in its marketing material. There are any number of references or allusions to Soulsborne games (one of which practically borders on infringement), but the game doesn’t seem too keen to create any identity for itself outside of this.

The grim-dark, gothic DNA it takes from games such as Blasphemous is supplemented by the loot gathering and convoluted story of Souls games; whereas everything else is either a stock Metroidvania mainstay (double jump, hidden passages, mini-map) or is just lifted from another game or genre (what I like to call…the sphere grid).

In some of those aforementioned hidden passages, you can find Essence Shards. These shards give you knowledge points which allow you to purchase skills from the knowledge menu. Despite this monstrous grid being littered with passive buffs and incremental changes, it serves as a good system.

The weapons and gear have the same problems as everything else: they just feel unecessary overall. Armor is just for chasing stats, and I hoped they had put so much effort into the designs with at least some flavour text (similar to Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow), but alas, that isn’t the case here.

Personally, it just feels as though there’s no reason for these weapons to even have designs or names and that it should just chop the confetti and tell you how much damage it deals. It’s not as though the game has complex combat or deep player expression anyway. Gameplay is simply not flexible. You hit the thing, you jump, you roll, you win. Next stage, please!

Fundamental Faults

Now, I realise that a lot of my criticisms so far have been subjective. But now, I would like to mention two fundamental issues that Skelethrone has, and might even be a deal-breaker for those who aren’t typically into this genre.

The first is that…the combat in this game is bad. Really bad. Incoming and outgoing attacks have no weight to them, and winning any given boss fight feels limp, for the lack of a better word.

This is often due to how the sound design in Skelethrone is. Every action in this game has such a gentle sound cue that it can often seem impossible to tell whether or not one of your attacks has made contact.

The enemies are also just bad to fight. They seem to share the same problem I had with Blasphemous, wherein they would just put enemies on this 2D grid and just expect it to work without taking into account how flaccid those more ‘realistic’ encounters would feel without a Z-axis.

Every model in the game has these hideous white outlines that are jarring to look at. The environments range from serviceable to ugly and I imagine these white outlines are to help you to distinguish the background from the foreground, but they certainly don’t do it any favors.

There is the occasional boss which you fight on flat ground where all you have to do is roll through them and hit them from behind, but most fights have some variety or take a modicum of platforming skill. I don’t think any of the bosses are really good, but they’re oddly enjoyable compared to all the other enemies in the game.

A Game Not Worth its Price of Admission

Overall, I don’t think Skelethrone is worth the money. It has an okay art style, but it’s riddled with stiff animation and terrible sound design. It feels like a proof of concept for a game that would have come out 5 years ago.

The music is so unnoticeable that I haven’t even mentioned it, and I couldn’t even squeeze any fun out of the levelling, looting, or secret hunting that’s on offer here. I’ve squeezed this stone as much as I can and I just need to put it down. My hand hurts.