Thanks to INTI CREATES for the review code

Title: YOHANE THE PARHELION -BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE
System: Steam
Price: $29.99
Release Date: 11/16/2023

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Story

In this metroidvania based off a new anime from the Love Live universe, you take control of Yohane, who sets out with her partner Lapilis to explore a mysterious underwater dungeon in search of her missing friends! Even as one with zero familiarity with this universe, I found the simple plot here easy to pick up on, and the brief interactions between the characters was still pretty entertaining to read.

Presentation

Being made by Inti Creates, it should come as no shock that the pixelart is pretty spectacular, with a 32 bit style akin to the Gunvolt games being used here. The character sprites all look great, and the animations are pretty solid as well. Even the environments stand out in spots, with some of the later game areas really doubling down on the eyecandy, and even the first two areas were pretty great looking on my 4K display.

Likewise, it runs really well on Steam Deck, looking great both docked and in the usual portable fashion, with the pixelart scaling rather nicely. No complaints on performance for me in either display mode. The music also manages to be pretty good, even though I felt the OST burned out in energy by being really excellent in the earlier areas of the game before settling down to more basic tunes. There’s also voiced combat lines from Yohane and they’ll repeat a lot, which can get a bit irritating the further into the game you get. There’s other bits of dialogue here and there too, and the performances are fine.

Gameplay

Being a metroidvania, Blaze in the Deepblue starts off with a very well made opening area, guiding you into the game with a very typical control setup of jumping and attacking, along with being able to use a secondary attack by pressing the right trigger. Yohane also has a slide, and gains various abilities throughout the game such as double jump, grapple and swimming. However her biggest gimmick is the Darkness Point system, where outside of her trusty companion, every character and secondary weapon will drain a bit of her energy, like a typical MP system, only if you happen to run out of DP, you can still use those techniques, but at the cost of your own health. Thus, if you’re in a bind you can power through with those abilities for a little bit longer, but it’ll come at a bit of a risk. Likewise, this means you can’t just equip the strongest secondary items and spam them like crazy.

While your primary attacks are caused by the allies you recruit along your journey, the secondary attacks are what prove to offer the most combat variety, as these weapons are created via the many, many materials you’ll find throughout the world, and despite crafting systems usually being a sore spot for me, I found the high amount of dropped currency or items to be very helpful and leading me to always having something new to craft as I explore every nook and cranny or fight certain enemies; whether that be a useful accessory to boost your HP/DP or another secondary weapon like a whip, sword, bow or axe. At first I was getting really worried I wasn’t finding out the way to equip more than two items at a time, but eventually I realized that no, it just takes a long while through the game to discover the needed upgrades to use extra accessories, and during that long period you’ll have to juggle your accessories around a lot to find the right one to work for the current situation, since each new area has its own share of tough enemies, and as per tradition, getting from one checkpoint to another can be a bit of a hassle if you end up dying a lot, though if you manage to collect a rare musical scroll from an enemy, you can revive with a temporary buff, which can completely trivialize the boss battles.

Blaze in the Deepblue is rather generous in this regard in general, as each death will immediately send you back to Yohane’s Fortune Parlor, where you can use all the yen you gathered to purchase helpful items such as a healing potion or defense/offense buff. Even without using these items though, Deepblue is a pretty easy metroidvania, since you don’t really lose anything upon death outside of having to hike back to where you last were from a save point, and even then, you don’t lose actual progress at all.

Since you can warp between any save point at will, that means you can easily bounce around the entire game world, making it pretty fun to go back to earlier areas the minute you find a new upgrade, and believe it or not, there’s even some very slight sequence breaking potential here to go out of order if you manage to get crafty with the jumping, though the biggest break I was able to do was get the swim ability a boss earlier than I was meant to, and net myself a slightly later character by using that to clear a different world boss than the one I was meant to go to. It also helps that the game has some branching paths in spots to make the experience not too linear, though ultimately the end goal of rescuing all the friends remains the same. There’s also these weird areas which send you through a few randomly generated enemy gauntlet rooms, but they’re pretty forgettable.

Speaking of hidden stuff, you can even find lost items for each of Yohane’s friends, usually brought up in a conversation at the parlor after rescuing them. Upon learning what they need, tracking down their item is usually a simple task, and returning said item to their hosts will grant you an upgraded attack for each character, pulled off with the left trigger, though at the expense of more DP. Otherwise, Blaze in the Deepblue manages to be a very fun, if a bit of a short and easy metroidvania, and there isn’t really anything in terms of a major bonus mode to play around with. The combat is effective, the exploration is immensely satisfying and the map design is good enough that it’ll keep you wanting to explore the rest of it, but won’t blow you away compared to the other games in this style.

Conclusion

Surprising me out of nowhere, Blaze in the Deepblue ended up being a pretty fun, if typical metroidvania. The branching paths in the world won’t lead to anything too crazy, but do encourage exploration a lot more than a linear affair would, and being able to pull off a small sequence break was rather satisfying. The DP system is a bit weird to get the hang of at first, but eventually I found myself taking some pretty big risks near the end of the game, especially before I obtained the accessory upgrades. Crafting being relatively easy to do also helps matters, since I never felt the need to grind for needed material to make up for the lack of a traditional leveling system.

It may not do anything that new or spectacular, but Blaze in the Deepblue manages to be a very well made, gorgeous looking metroidvania that’s well worth your time for a 100% clear, even if there’s little here in terms of bonuses for the price. If you’re a fan of the show, or even just a fan of the genre like I am, then you’ll get a kick out of another well made metroidvania to tackle.

I give YOHANE THE PARHELION -BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE an 8 out of 10.