Possessor(s) review — Heart Machine needs a defibrillator

I get no pleasure from having to tell you that Heart Machine’s latest release, Possessor(s), is not a good video game. It exists more as a death knell than a piece of entertainment, a clear indication that a once-great developer has no gas left in the tank. Heart Machine’s debut title, 2016’s Hyper Light Drifter, is and will forever be an incredible game, filled with vibrant pixel art, creative combat, and a mysterious narrative told entirely through images. Hell, I currently have a gorgeous Hyper Light Drifter poster hanging above my bed; that’s how much I loved and respected this team. It’s a crying shame that Possessor(s) contains not an ounce of that promising spark everyone saw and erroneously thought could be recaptured. Solar Ash was a respectable deviation. Hyper Light Breaker was a swing and a miss. Their newest title takes no swings at all, instead proving to be their most safe and passionless project - not to mention the most poorly timed. 

Possessor(s) is, devastatingly, a Metroidvania (I won’t use the term “search action”; “Metroidvania”’s clunkiness and redundancy is its charm). It’s one thing to provide a disappointing game, it’s another to release your disappointing game not two months after Hollow Knight: Silksong, without exaggeration the best game to ever grace this decades-old genre. It’s impossible for me not to draw comparisons, so I won’t even try to resist. I will discuss Silksong juxtaposed to Possessor(s) and no, it won’t be a fair fight. It’s educational, though, to take a look at the wrong turns Possessor(s) takes and highlight the ways in which Silksong does it all better.

Possessor(s)’ intro is its zenith. You’re presented with abrasive neon images of demons appearing amid some kind of urban calamity, followed by a boy fleeing as an apologetic high school girl pleads for him to wait. The girl is Luca, your player character - and she immediately has her legs severed when a building collapses on her. Thankfully, one of the more benevolent demons is there to provide her with a deal: Luca gets new legs, and the demon, Rhem, gets to possess Luca as a satanic stowaway. We follow the unlikely duo as they try to find those responsible for Sanzu City’s demise. 

There’s a compelling premise here - a somewhat somber post-apocalyptic tale that, for once, doesn’t focus on a parent-child relationship. But it’s all bog-standard anyway, with pedestrian writing to match its repetitive characters. Rhem is undeniably reminiscent of Johnny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077 in concept and in execution, serving as the brooding, aloof foil to Luca’s headstrong juvenility. Their dynamic mimics that of V and Johnny but has little of the charm or emotional arc; Rhem is too one-note and humourless and Luca is too bland for their bond to ever blossom. Nothing stands out as being truly awful, but I never found myself rooting for the characters or investing myself in their efforts to avenge the condemned town. NPCs are given more room to be fun and quirky, with intermittent success. 

In theory, the emotional core of the game is presented in flashbacks of Luca and Rhem’s troubled pasts. The dialogue is simply too infantile to come across as anything more than a decent Supernatural fanfiction or a short story I might have proudly written as a 15 year-old. Could you have guessed that humans and capitalism were the real baddies the whole time? The ending makes it clearer that codependency was the game’s ultimate thematic target, but the Possessor(s)’ dialogue and characters struggled to move my emotional needle enough to land any blows. Outside of some rare instances where the game stumbles into a clever line or two, the game is generally preachy and shallow - much like the gameplay, you’ve seen it all before, better. 

This is a Metroidvania, so…there are non-linear, branching paths through the world. There are unlockable abilities that serve as keys for accessing previously inaccessible areas. These areas are interconnected. This is the bare minimum for the genre, and to its credit, Possessor(s) clears the bar. But to commend the game for these inclusions would be to ignore the shoddy level design, frequent dead ends, and uninteresting abilities that plague Sanzu City’s infuriating construction. 

Abilities are an easy entry point to begin discussing Possessor(s)’ design foibles: each one, save for the grappling hook that you get almost immediately, has no use outside of its “key” status. Movement abilities like wall ride, a downward dash, a nearly useless water dash - they could all have been replaced with an item called Key Card A or Access Disc D and almost nothing would have to change. They do not help in combat. There are next to no platforming challenges that incentivize you to use these abilities in creative ways. You receive an ability, you use it to bypass the locked doors (often in the form of a breakable wall or a wall that’s too high), and then you fight the same enemies you were fighting hours ago. Most damningly, there is no ability that makes backtracking any easier. Each time you wish to navigate an area you’ve already been to, you’ll need to perform nearly identical, painstaking steps to do so. Shortcuts are common but frequently frustrating, saving you mere seconds in some areas and being inexplicably absent from some of the game’s more sprawling biomes.

Let’s be annoying and compare Possessor(s)’ abilities to those in Silksong. Silksong doesn’t have a ton of them, but each one serves multiple purposes and grants the player more freedom to move about the world, including areas they’ve already explored. Wall jump and double jump are obvious; they fundamentally shift every aspect of the game once they’re acquired. Clawline is more unique and arguably more influential than any of the game’s traditional upgrades. Hornet throws her nail horizontally, propelling herself forward and allowing her to cling to airborne hooks, reach farther platforms, and close the distance quickly between her and an enemy with a rapid attack. It is a fundamentally perfect Metroidvania ability, providing use in each of the genre’s core gameplay facets - exploration, combat, and movement. 

Possessor(s)’ grappling hook is its closest facsimile, but feels downright pathetic in comparison. Its usability for traversal is constant, but its finicky controls make it unpleasant and slow, often resulting in a missed swing or awkward exit angle. In combat, you can technically grapple enemies to bring them closer or use grapple points placed within the arena, but I never found this to be any more effective or enjoyable than just smacking demons with the baseball bat where they stand. 

The design of the levels themselves, as well as their visual presentation, are yet another source of constant aggravation. These levels twist and turn and sprawl outwards - your overarching goal is to gather four eyes from four corners of the map, and it’s staggering to see just how far away these points of interest are. Along the way, you’ll repeatedly be met with disappointment as the game punishes, rather than rewards, traditional Metroidvania exploration. Dead ends pervade Sanzu City, some presenting you with a paltry reward, others stringing you along for tens of minutes before stifling your progress with a wall you don’t have the ability to bypass. Any better game in the genre would at the very least offer you a shortcut or a major reward - not here. You will do the walk of shame right back to whence you came, and you will often come away with nothing to show for it. 

When backtracking through Silksong’s Citadel, you’ll catch little details. You’ll admire the architecture. You’ll consider the lore implications of certain symbols deliberately placed in the background or particular enemy placements. There is no opportunity to be bored; backtracking is a fundamental pillar that Team Cherry has built their game upon. In Possessor(s), backtracking is a necessary evil. Despite what you may have seen in trailers and promo images, the game lacks a visual personality outside of its character and enemy art, populating its drab world with sterile office spaces and static forests. The lack of background details and the haphazard placement of platforms make the game feel decidedly game-y - perhaps unintentionally exhibiting the platform-fighter style the game touts. The cruelly spaced-out checkpoints and occasionally brutal boss runbacks force you to frequent the same locales far more often than you would ever want. Say what you want about Silksong’s runbacks, their bench placements were downright generous in comparison. 

Possessor(s)’ enemy and character designs feel ripped from an entirely different game. Frankly, they’re stunning. Nearly every enemy is a hideous (or, occasionally, adorable) amalgamation of a common object and a twisted demon - there’s a possessed filing cabinet that attacks you by opening its drawer-mouth like a Xenomorph, need I say more? Character portraits during dialogue often contain more personality and colour than the characters themselves. Luca looks far better than controlling her feels, with a low-framerate set of animations that will at the very least seem smooth and stylish to any observer. 

If you’re ever at risk of feeling immersed in Possessor(s), an errant bug will promptly assuage you of this sentiment. Bugs, bugs, bugs. Just when you think you’ve found the last one, another rears its ugly head. Possessor(s)’ technical state is passable, with next to no frame drops on Steam Deck following its day one patch. An abundance of glitches remain, though, making an already frustrating game that much more exasperating. Little things like choppy room transitions, problematic enemy behaviour, and annoying ladders are minor in a vacuum, but add up to a game that never goes too long without exposing its guts. It’s significantly better than it was pre-patch, but many fixes are still in dire need of addressing. 

Finally, the last of Possessor(s)’ innumerable shortcomings: combat. Possessor(s) boasts that it takes inspiration from platform fighters like Super Smash Bros., which is an excellent pitch and a unique take on the Metroidvania formula. But, as with everything in Possessor(s), we’re faced with execution significantly overshadowed by its influence. It’s easy to see where the Smash Bros.-ness begins and, sadly, ends - after a certain amount of attacks, most enemies and even some bosses may be juggled in the air, allowing you to perform extended (but lackluster) combos. 

While initially intriguing, the glaring lack of moveset variation hinders your ability to experiment. The extremely limited weapon arsenal resulted in me choosing a certain set of moves and executing them over and over and over until the game was…over. Neutral attack, neutral attack, neutral attack, up-special, rinse, repeat. The depth of Smash Bros. combat lies in the sheer breadth of its characters as well as its bespoke moveset for each one; unfortunately, Possessor(s) can’t quite aspire to the depth of even a single Smash character. Special moves can be mixed and matched, but they too are limited both in quantity and in usefulness. 

While it’s easy to criticize Possessor(s)’ combat for what it doesn’t do, there is fun to be had in what little it does. The baseball bat should be your weapon of choice; it’s impactful and satisfying to send an enemy flying across the room with a dinger once it’s staggered. The game’s parry mechanic could do with some improved timing consistency, but when you parry a volley of bullet-hell-esque projectiles and send them flying right back at a boss, the game clicks for a moment and you may sense a glimmer of what could have been. Bosses tend to serve as the game’s most consistent highlights, serving up high-tempo encounters with visually impressive demons. 

Gameplay innovation is not necessary for a game to be great. One could argue that the original Hollow Knight contains very little innovation, succeeding only in its mastery of the genre fundamentals. Silksong is more ambitious, but its only form of clear innovation comes with its Crest system (and feel free to correct me if that’s been done before, as well). This is to say, Possessor(s)’ gameplay does not fail because it isn’t new. It fails because it’s doing the same thing dozens of games have done before and doing it almost uniformly worse. It would be impossible to recommend this game to, sadly, anyone: a Metroidvania fan (such as myself) would have no interest in rehashed ideas presented this sloppily, and a newcomer to the genre should instead play the original Metroid or Metroid Dread or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Guacamelee! (1 and 2) or Cave Story+ or Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown or Blasphemous or Animal Well…the list goes on. 

Possessor(s) yearns for a raison d’etre, never displaying any passion for the Metroidvania genre. Its alleged focus on platform-fighter-esque combat sounds great on paper, but the final product is not indicative of a team that has a solid grasp on that genre, either. Its story largely fails to connect, leaving only sporadic moments of enjoyment amidst a sea of mediocrity. The game may look pretty at times, but don’t be fooled - this game is a demon in sheep’s clothing.