Inexistence Rebirth Review

A fun Metroidvania with some challenging achievements. You’ll have to beat the game at least twice on two specific modes. The other achievements are for getting 100% on everything. 9h to complete the game.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: around 9h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 6/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 2 if you start your first playthrough on hard mode
Is there a good guide available: Not yet
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Not really, maybe the level 25 one if you find all the treasures quickly
DLC-Only achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes, you have to beat the game on hard mode
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

This is a very fun Metroidvania. You play as Hald who is trying to protect and wake up his sister, in order to do so you need to defeat Claos. It has a few challenging boss fights. You can grind in this game to boost your stats by leveling up and to unlock skill points. After most bosses you’ll get a new ability to be able to progress further into the game, this will be things like double jump, stronger magic and dash.

Normally I don’t like games with achievements for hard mode, but I decided to try it out and even start my first playthrough on difficult. It was harder than it would be on normal difficulty, but it was doable for a noob like me. I had a lot of fun playing through this game and almost finished it in one day. I struggle for a long time on the long jumps (there are 3 spots in the game where you need to use this combination of a dash and double jump) but after a tip from the developer I understood what I did wrong. I did the first jump just when I was over the edge, but to be able to do the double jump the first jump has to be right on the edge. With this knowledge I was able to make those jump easily.

For the achievements I would highly recommend saving your first skill points until you have 8 to be able to buy the skill where you’ll hear a sound when there is a treasure chest in that room. This will help you to not have to backtrack too much when finishing up. Most of the other achievements are just for completion, like complete the map for 100%, complete the bestiary, find the hidden puzzle pieces, stuff like that. You’ll have to play at least twice through the game. Once on hard difficulty and once on sister mode. In sister mode you play as the sister who has a spear, which makes most enemies a lot easier. She starts with all the spell unlock that you could buy for skill points. I also had the idea that she did level quicker, but I’m not 100% sure about that. There are no treasure chests or puzzle pieces in this mode.

I would like to add a trigger warning. The ending is disturbing and can trigger people who are sensible for topics like child abuse.

This review is written on 28 May 2020 based on the Steam version which has 13 achievement when I write this review. The information can be outdated when developers add or remove achievements.