Afterimage is a beautifully hand-drawn Metroidvania-style adventure that launched on Xbox this week. I’m almost at the end, but the poor pace of achievement leaves me with only 7 out of 46 to show how hard I’ve worked so far.
We all love the sound and feel of great achievement pop. But every now and then, a game comes along that feels like it’s being held out to you, and the downright afterimage is guilty of doing just that. I want to preface this by saying I didn’t just get a hump. Reciprocally, things like the system-level achievement system provide a way to fill the downtime between major progression points in the game with a consistently satisfying chime. I’m over 30 hours deep and almost level 80. We’ve picked a few areas that are perfectly clean, but we only saw one achievement that you really can’t miss, and a few others that are probably pretty tricky to at least avoid getting.
Afterimages: beautiful, charming, stingy
Afterimage’s achievement list feels like too much backload. I had been sitting at 4/46 for so long that I was afraid the achievement was breaking me. Looking at the list, the majority of achievements seem to fall into several different categories. One set is for a boss kill with a specific name, and he’s for the first boss, and they’re all endgame encounters, except for one (which knocks him down). So far, both in the last few hours of play and in the corners of the map, tick one and find another. At least with something like Elden Ring, when you explore and defeat the main threat, achievements like this happen fairly often, so there’s a huge gap between the first boss pop and his next hour and hours later. feels a little strange. .
Then there is the achievement of “doing everything”.Defeat all bosses, find all Shinies, collect all gear (wow), complete the Beastiary [sic], reach max level, eat all kinds of food, learn every skill… you don’t get any of these until very late because you get the gist and it seems to apply to every aspect of the game (I have one). Most of these are linked in some way to both main and side quests, and some even require rare drops from enemies just to add some RNG to the mix. The quest itself also has a selection of related achievements. Specifically, it’s for getting to the final part of each side story that unfolds as you find different characters in strings of increasingly improbable locations around the world. is not particularly friendly when it comes to tracking these events. Journal entries often simply mention things that have already happened, rather than what the next step is, and if you haven’t paid attention to one thing – take your time in cutscene dialogue or take a moment out of the game. If you leave and then come back, you may have to trek across the land just to start the next part of the questline, and questionable translations don’t help with this either. I’m still not entirely sure if some can be missed.In the log there are quests that haven’t run into the relevant NPCs forever.Map…unless you’re hiding somewhere unknown you can’t go back It’s possible that a point in (or doing things in the wrong order) is blocking progress, but you won’t know for sure until you’re around. when finished.
Before we get into the final subset of achievements, I want to take a small detour and explain exactly why having to re-explore large portions of the map is such a frequent problem with Afterimage. As in, fast travel isn’t free either in the sense of cost or in the sense of actual freedom. Each absolutely huge area contains one A main checkpoint that’s part of a network you can hop freely, but it’s something that’s not unlocked until you enter the game the right way. The only vendor selling these is also in the super late game area, unless you’ve missed something, use one of these rare items It seems that it can only be found where it needs to be reached by If you run out of them all, you might even be out of luck. This shortage is often enough to drive you to another slow cross-map walk. , is to reach the nearest “main” node (some of these are not unlocked until you are deep inside a certain area. Zoom to the nearest point to your destination, then walk to your destination You find your way around, but often you realize you’ve gone to the wrong place and have to repeat the process.
In an age when game maps tend to be splattered with icons of all kinds, Afterimage’s decision to let players mark up maps themselves is certainly a breath of fresh air. However, it’s also a system that you won’t realize its importance until it’s too late unless you know it and join the game and actively leave the icon from the beginning. Good luck finding the chef who asked you to find the again. Always enjoy revisiting old dead ends if you don’t mark them as required keys, abilities, or anything else. You find them first. Even the markup process isn’t ideal (the icons are gigantic even compared to the map’s max zoom level), but it shows how important it is when faced with a lack of guidance from the rest of the game. Once you understand it, it does the job.
After one expensive teleport, return to the final set of achievements, leaving only the cryptic behind. These mostly take the form of musical references in the description — the likes of Pixies, Alice in Chains, My Chemical Romance, Eurythmics, etc. are all here for paid lip service. I’ve received — but I’m not sure what the actual situation would be without it. ‘Riddles’ achievement, but unless there are more frequent rewards on the list, at some point (which no one seems to have yet), or all you need is Gamerscore. Save until the end to pop most of the other achievements. This is a genre where a sense of constant progress is paramount to avoid the feeling of wandering aimlessly. A lot can be said about the cumulative achievements in a game like this (assuming the numbers aren’t ridiculous) that constant validation that this system has made us crave for years. Intermittent unlocks between other events to help out.
There’s actually one final achievement on the list that doesn’t fit into any of the other categories, and it’s pretty silly. The Number Of The Beast asks you to land a hit that does 666 damage (as expected), but even if you do more damage with the spicy greatsword’s crit counter, you can be sure that’s not the case. increase. at least 666…it is that’s right 666. I’m sure we’ll see some big brain strategy around this, combining specific gear and perks in endgame builds to make triple 6s somewhat easier to find, but it’s still a bit of a crapshoot It’s possible… and another achievement with no chance of unlocking until the power finally rises to the required level after dozens of hours. It’s something that offers unlocks, and as mentioned, it also helps fill in when the game itself doesn’t really offer anything new. many Larger lists are a great example. Its huge list hosts many permanent and temporary unlocks and upgrade achievements, making it very easy to focus on doing and achieving something in minutes.Here: On the other hand, he won two early participation medals. timethen pop a few more times before starting to knuckle down and aggressively scraping all other endgame achievements.
To be honest, I really enjoy afterimages. There may be an argument that the map itself is too big, but this is without a doubt one of the best Metroidvania games I’ve played.The good-looking, simple combat feels tight and satisfying, and thanks to several different weapon archetypes and supporting gear and abilities, the buildcraft has a surprising amount of depth and variety, making it unusually packed. there is a bestiary tons of different creatures and companions to fight, not to mention countless bosses. But in a game that’s all scattered about, it feels like a missed opportunity to use system-level tools like achievements to help fill in the blanks, where many other greats of the genre on Xbox are already very do it well
Is Afterimage your kind of game? How important are things like achievement pace to you? Let us know in the comments!
