Nine Sols is a 2D action-platformer that trades traditional Metroidvania exploration for a brutal, rhythm-heavy combat system modeled directly on Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. You play it for the boss fights, not for getting lost in a sprawling map. If you hate strict timing windows and animation locks, this game will frustrate you. If you want the tightest 2D dueling system in recent memory, where every victory requires genuine mechanical mastery rather than stat-grinding, start downloading.
The Sekiro Illusion: Why Dodging Will Get You Killed
Most players look at the hand-drawn 2D art of Nine Sols and immediately assume they are playing a sci-fi Hollow Knight. They enter the first major combat encounter, see an enemy wind up a massive attack, and instinctively press the dash button to get out of the way. That assumption is the first major trap of the game. Nine Sols is explicitly designed to punish evasion. The developers built the entire combat engine around standing your ground, reading telegraphs, and pressing the parry button at the exact right frame.
This creates a massive asymmetry in how you handle incoming threats. If you choose to dodge, you might avoid the immediate damage, but you gain absolutely nothing. You remain on the defensive, your resources stagnate, and the enemy continues their assault. If you choose to parry, you stop the enemy's momentum, build your own offensive resource (Chi), and open a window for a counterattack.
The game enforces this through its "Internal Damage" system. When you miss a perfect parry but still manage to block, you do not lose raw health immediately. Instead, your health bar fills with a phantom color representing internal damage. You can recover this phantom health by successfully landing hits on the enemy. However, if you take a clean, unblocked hit while carrying internal damage, all of it instantly converts into permanent health loss. This mechanic fundamentally changes the math of a boss fight. It forces you to stay aggressive even when you are losing. You cannot back off and heal safely; the only way to clear your debt is to step into the pocket and swing back.
Because the game exists on a 2D plane, the developers cannot use 3D spacing or circle-strafing to create difficulty. They have to use pure timing. Enemy attack strings are deliberately syncopated. A boss will swing fast twice, hold their sword in the air for an agonizing extra half-second, and then slam it down. If you panic-roll, the delayed third hit tracks you and kills you. You have to train your brain to watch the enemy's weapon, not your own character model. Mastering this rhythm is non-negotiable. There is no over-leveling in Nine Sols. You either learn the parry timing, or you do not progress.
Progression Bottlenecks and the Myth of Open Exploration
Because the game wears the skin of a Metroidvania, returning genre veterans often expect to wander off in a different direction the moment they hit a difficulty wall. Nine Sols severely limits this. The game utilizes a hub-and-spoke map design centered around the Four Seasons Pavilion, and while the environments are gorgeous examples of "Taopunk" aesthetics—blending Taoist mythology with cyberpunk machinery—the critical path is surprisingly rigid.
When you encounter a boss, the doors lock. You cannot leave to find a hidden health upgrade in a different biome that will magically trivialize the encounter. The upgrades you can find or purchase with Jin (the game's primary currency) offer horizontal options rather than vertical power spikes. You can buy nodes on the skill tree, but the fundamental math of the combat loop rarely changes. A health upgrade might let you survive three mistakes instead of two, but it will not help you actually deplete the boss's health bar.
This creates a very specific pacing that catches action-focused players off guard. The narrative sequences in Nine Sols are dense. You will spend significant chunks of time in the hub reading dialogue, untangling the lore of the Solarians, and speaking with NPCs to unlock minor utility upgrades. This is a deliberate design choice to break up the intense, sweat-inducing friction of the boss fights. If you skip through the dialogue hoping to get back to the action faster, you lose the context for why you are fighting and miss out on subtle clues regarding the game's economy.
When deciding where to spend your hard-earned Jin, prioritize utility over raw defense. Expanding your parry window, unlocking the ability to parry mid-air, or increasing the speed at which you generate Chi will pay massive dividends compared to minor health bumps. The economy is punishing. Dying drops your Jin, forcing a classic soulslike corpse run. The tension of exploring a new sector isn't about finding a new traversal ability; it is about surviving long enough to find the next root node to bank your currency before a basic enemy catches you in a stagger loop.
Building Your Yi: Trade-Offs in the Talisman System
Parrying keeps you alive, but the Talisman system is how you actually win. As you successfully deflect attacks, you build up Chi points. You spend these points by dashing straight into an enemy, slapping a Talisman onto them, and detonating it to deal massive damage. This is the core offensive dump of Nine Sols, and it introduces a terrifying layer of risk assessment to every fight.
The trade-off here is built around animation commitment and charge scaling. You can detonate a Talisman with just one point of Chi for a quick burst of damage. Alternatively, you can store up to three points of Chi and detonate them all at once. The damage output is heavily asymmetrical. A three-charge Talisman deals significantly more damage than three individual one-charge Talismans. However, the animation required to stick a three-charge Talisman onto a boss takes substantially more frames.
While you are charging that detonation, you are entirely vulnerable. If the boss flinches and swings at you, your animation is canceled, your Chi is wasted, and you take massive damage. Therefore, having the resource is only half the battle. You have to buy the time to use it. You must learn which of the boss's attack strings leave them in recovery frames long enough to support a three-charge detonation. If you guess wrong, you die. This creates a high-stakes gambling loop mid-fight. Do you cash out your single Chi point right now to clear some internal damage, or do you hold it, risk dying, and try to break the boss's phase with a massive burst?
You manage this risk through the Jade system, which functions like equippable badges. You have severely limited Jade slots, forcing hard choices before every major encounter. A common mistake is equipping defensive Jades—like those that heal you slightly on a successful parry—and leaving them on forever. Defensive Jades are excellent training wheels. They extend your lifespan so you can stay in the arena longer and memorize the boss's attack patterns. But once you actually know the timing, defensive Jades become dead weight. To secure the kill, you must swap to offensive Jades that increase Talisman damage or build Chi faster. Defensive builds teach you the fight; offensive builds end it.
Conclusion
Stop treating the movement stick as your primary defense. The hardest habit to break in Nine Sols is the urge to create distance when you feel overwhelmed. The game actively punishes retreating by stalling your resource generation and exposing you to tracking attacks. When a boss winds up, take your thumb off the directional pad entirely. Stand perfectly still, watch the enemy's shoulders, and trust the parry button.
