Nine Sols is a platformer with a parry-centric combat system that follows the adventures of Yi as he chases after the Nine Sols. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Nine Sols Review Overview
What is Nine Sols?
The promised land of New Kunlun is the Solarians’ last sanctuary, and peace has been maintained across the vast realm for numerous centuries since the gods gifted it to the mortals. However, the inhabitants have been blind to the truths of the realm since its inception, as they need not go against the sacred rituals. However, a child alters the peace when they awaken the long-forgotten hero, Yi.
Follow Yi as he travels across the forsaken realm for revenge against the Nine Sols, the most powerful rulers of the world.
Nine Sols features:
⚫︎ Stunningly captivating artwork
⚫︎ An interesting story with many points of intrigue
⚫︎ Solid parry-based combat system
⚫︎ A wide variety of gameplay customization options
⚫︎ Appropriately challenging boss fights
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Nine Sols's gameplay and story.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
 Steam |
$29.99 |
Nine Sols Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Stunningly Beautiful Visuals Solid Parry-Based Combat Immense Customizability Appropriately Punishing |
Unskippable Boss Intros Stage Layouts Can Be Confusing |
Nine Sols Overall Score - 86/100
Nine Sols is an amazing game that combines accessibility, aesthetics, and customizability in a well-designed package. Its gameplay can take some time to get used to due to the lack of more common movement options, but the payoff is high, and the rewards are satisfying. It’s definitely a title worth checking out.
Nine Sols Story - 8/10
Nine Sols’ mix of science and mysticism manifests as a grim world full of culture and fascination. It has a gripping and emotional story delivered through tasteful cutscenes, curious characters, optional readings, and the occasional flashbacks. On top of that, these segments aren’t intrusive and are instead spaced out well between stretches of combat.
Nine Sols Gameplay - 9/10
Despite its claims of being a Sekiro-inspired platformer, Nine Sols has enough going for it to distinguish itself apart from other parry-based titles. The customizability of the playable character, its polished platformer gameplay, and its absurdly satisfying combat system all work well. It does, however, start off quite easy, although that really only helps with its accessibility.
Nine Sols Visuals - 10/10
Nine Sols’ art style is undoubtedly the best thing about it. To say that it’s charming is an understatement. I mean, just look at the screenshots. Look at the characters! Not only that, but the animations are incredibly fluid, and the visual feedback of your fights is immaculate and striking.
Nine Sols Audio - 8/10
While Nine Sols’ audio may not be as hard-hitting as its wild and wonderful art style can be, it’s still a force to be reckoned with. Its wonderfully satisfying parry sound effects aside, the soundtrack is very immersive despite not being particularly memorable. And while the game does have minimal voice acting, it’s just enough to add a bit of charm to the characters.
Nine Sols Value for Money - 8/10
As with any good platformer aiming to be a soulslike, Nine Sols is a worthwhile purchase. Despite being on the pricier side of things, the amount of customizability the game offers makes your first and almost every subsequent playthrough just as fulfilling as the previous ones.
Nine Sols Review: Parries The Competition Away
Before I start, I would first like to say that I did my best to not use “sols-like” in the title. With that out of the way—
As a big platformer fan, I was on the lookout for Nine Sols’ release early on when my friends told me about it. After I checked it out for myself, though, it’s the artwork that immediately caught my eye rather than the gameplay itself. Sure, the trailers also showed the amazing combat system, but that’s all delivered visually with its amazing art style.
The demo, of course, only made me enthralled with the game’s aesthetics even more. Seeing it on YouTube was one thing, but personally, experiencing it was entirely different. And, in a word, it was fantastic.
Nine Sols is a 2D action game heavily inspired by Sekiro (their words). To describe it succinctly, it’s basically what you get if you turn Sekiro into a platformer via tons of parry-centric mechanics. Now, that’s not an entirely new gimmick. Games like Death’s Gambit, Blasphemous, and other titles had them. But what separates Nine Sols from the others is its pace and verticality. They’re not wrong in a way, though. It makes use of several mechanics from Soulslike games, such as dropping your cash on death and respawning enemies at rest areas.
Being able to parry attacks while standing and in midair (albeit only certain attacks) is incredible. In a way, it feels similar to playing a fighting game. For those who aren’t well-versed in timing frames, dodging or creating distance are options as well. The game encourages you to be creative in your approach to defeating enemies — an aspect it supports with its very smooth animations and satisfying visual feedback.
There’s really nothing more satisfying than defeating a boss without taking any damage.
Strangely enough, there’s not a lot of buzz surrounding this game. Even though the developers have been working on this title for a few years, I can only find a few articles regarding its existence. There’s not much going on in its public communities, either. Hopefully, though, this game will get the attention it deserves soon, now that it has been released.
Pros of Nine Sols
| Things Nine Sols Got Right |
|---|
|
Stunningly Beautiful Visuals Solid Parry-Based Combat Immense Customizability Appropriately Punishing |
Stunningly Beautiful Visuals
The first thing you will encounter in Nine Sols, regardless of whether you started the game or watched the trailer first, is its art style. And you gotta admit, it’s exceptionally well-made. Not only is it easy on the eyes, but the plain designs actually exude a charm on their own. And, of course, the animated story cutscenes are something to behold.
But what really takes the experience to the next level is the way your character’s animation looks so bold despite the game’s remarkable pace and abundance of enemies. There’s never any visual clutter, even when combat takes place in feature-rich environments.
It’s also worth noting that the developers have done an excellent job of providing the animations with plenty of variety. For example, Yi, the protagonist, has multiple parry set-up animations. This is easily more than most games where parry mechanics exist.
Solid Parry-Based Combat
You can’t call a game Sekiro-inspired without being centralized around parrying. While it is certainly possible to build Yi in such a way that he relies more on dodging, it’s difficult to escape situations where parrying is the only way to survive. After all, regardless of your timing, you can theoretically escape death for long periods of time by simply attempting to parry enemy attacks.
Fortunately, Nine Sols does a great job of incentivizing you to adopt the way the game is meant to be played. This is done through several mechanics ranging from the majority of enemy attacks being susceptible to parrying to basically turning you nearly immortal, even if you mistime perfect parries.
There’s even a more magic-based method of combat that, you guessed it, also relies on parries.
But what really makes the parries so satisfying is the audiovisual feedback. The developers have made it such that parrying multiple attacks becomes a cinematic experience. And for them to do so in a 2D platformer is an amazing feat. It’s thanks in part to the exceptionally responsive controls of the game, as well as how quickly Yi can transition from recovering from an attack to adopting a parrying stance.
Of course, you’ll have to keep a couple of things in mind. First of all, parrying on the ground can only be done if you’re facing the direction of the attack. This is a logical design decision, though. Imagine being able to parry an attack from where your character can’t see it. Secondly, dashing is mostly limited to when you’re on the ground.
While both factors certainly hurt the game’s dynamism, I think it only adds to the game’s depth. After all, while becoming a literal omniscient parry god that can zip around the map quickly sounds fun and all, that's not actually what most players look for in these types of games.
Immense Customizability
Yi has access to several ways to change his style. Notably, you can give him alternative weapons, equip him with different runes, or unlock additional skills and upgrades.
Each of these interact differently with each other. For example, hardcore melee enthusiasts would likely prefer unlocking more ways to fight up close, as well as investing in skills that let you get back to the fight faster. Meanwhile, those who prefer parrying everything can unlock skills that let them deflect bullets, use jades that lengthen the parry timing, etc.
The various equipment, spells, and skills are a way for you to express yourself in the game. And although parrying is heavily recommended, there’s no reason for you to strictly adhere to the game’s design philosophy. After all, the game itself provides you those tools.
Appropriately Punishing
The developers behind Nine Sols certainly didn’t pull any punches when designing the enemies and stage layouts of the game. As with many Soulslike games, facing multiple enemies at once is effectively a death sentence in most scenarios. And you’re going to encounter a lot of areas with more than your fair share of targets.
Fortunately, the game was also designed so that it’s almost always possible to force one-on-one battles against multiple opponents. There’s also always the option of relying on brute force and hope that you can stunlock groups of enemies together. However, enemy attacks can overlap, which would easily drain your health if you aren’t careful. And besides, that's not a very stylish way to approach the problem, right?
The boss fights, on the other hand, are noticeably much less of a problem than forcing your way through a stage. The first few bosses were quite easy, really. On top of that, while they are quite strong and can easily take you out in three or so hits, the feeling of getting defeated by them a dozen times is far less frustrating than dying from a group of mooks. Plus, defeating them is simply a matter of memorizing their pattern anyway, while fighting groups of enemies have a lot of randomness in play.
Cons of Nine Sols
| Things That Nine Sols Can Improve |
|---|
|
Unskippable Boss Intros Stage Layouts Can Be Confusing |
Unskippable Boss Intros
While most soulslike players are completely fine with repeating the same boss fight several dozen times, there are a certain number of them who can’t stand watching the same opening cutscene from the boss that many times (me). Oftentimes, those people just want to get back into the fight as soon as possible. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to skip it. Most of the time, at least.
Oh, and story cutscenes are also unskippable. But, hey, the story’s great, so why bother?
Stage Layouts Can Be Confusing
While you can purchase map data for every stage to get a layout of the land, the features are very barebones and don't actually help you much with navigation. You can use the map to determine the general location of entry and exit points, as well as elevators and other details, but actually getting there can be an exercise of patience. This is especially true if you’re the type of person who keeps resting on this game’s equivalent of bonfires, which ends up making every enemy respawn.
Fortunately, most stages have very simple layouts. But for those that don’t, well, you better get to exploring.
Is Nine Sols Worth It?
Slightly pricey, but worth it in the end
Nine Sols is a great platformer that can offer a challenge while also being accessible. Plus, the art is absolutely fantastic, and the combat is quite solid. Hence, everybody should at least try it out.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
| Steam |
$29.99 |
Nine Sols FAQ
Is Nine Sols releasing on consoles?
As of now, Nine Sols is only available on PC for both Windows and Mac.
Is Nine Sols difficult?
Not quite, particularly at the start. However, enemies become much more varied both in design and in combat further on in the game.
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Nine Sols Product Information
 | |
| Title | NINE SOLS |
|---|---|
| Release Date | May 29, 2024 |
| Developer | RedCandleGames |
| Publisher | RedCandleGames |
| Supported Platforms | PC(Steam) |
| Genre | Action, 2D Platformer |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| Rating | Not Yet Rated |
| Official Website | RedCandleGames Official Website |
