Clockwork Ambrosia Review

We need more Mega Man X-style games (shoutout to Gravity Circuit and Azure Striker Gunvolt!). Before you ask/say something, yes, there is a difference between Mega Man and Mega Man X. No, I will not explain, mainly because this is a review and not a treatise. If you played the games on NES and SNES or any of the collections, you understand what I am talking about. It is just different, okay? Anyway, Mega Man X, but it is an open-world Metroidvania…

Developed by Realmsoft and published by OI Games, Clockwork Ambrosia is an SNES-styled Metroidvania, 15 years in the making. Yep, 15. Nathan Heimenz established Realmsoft way back in 2011 (that was the 360/PS3 era, by the way). ANYWHO, you play as Iris, an airship pilot, who has crashed on a mysterious island filled with deadly robots and monsters. Can she survive long enough to get her ship fixed and the hell off steampunk Island of Dr. Moreau?

Clockwork Ambrosia begins as most Metroidvania games do; your character is pretty useless. Sure, you can move around and shoot, but all that cool stuff you watched in the trailer is not available yet. Good Metroidvanias will add in all that naturally without it feeling like you have to suffer to get there. Good ones also do the right amount of teasing, letting you know what you will be able to do at some point without just becoming some checklist to do as you receive X ability or acquire Y move. Clockwork Ambrosia has a great balance of all of the above. Iris can “see” the ledge above that is just out of reach of her jump. You can tell the water goes deeper, but Iris only floats near the top of the surface, for now. Those teasers continue even as you become more powerful. Remember that ledge that was just out of reach? Now that you can reach out, you enter a new room only to discover a chasm a little too far to clear. I guess we are marking this on the map as a spot to return to later (Side note: there are a ton of different markers available on the map that can be used to pin as many locations as needed). As the story progresses, Iris will be able to dash, double jump, wall climb, and Hadoken!

Just kidding, although THAT would have been an awesome easter egg. A common gripe in similar games is the addition of the dash later than most players would like. In the early goings, it never felt “missing,” so to speak, as the level design before did not feel like it was needed. What it did do was make you make a mental note of areas that felt like a dash COULD get you to a spot. As Iris does explore the world, she can find gear that specifically enhances all of the traversal abilities. Even better is that this gear could be swapped whenever you want to aid in the current predicament you may find yourself in. My go-to gloves could attract item drops. There are a few underwater sections so I could easily swap over to the gloves that increased swim speed. On top of that, there are boots that also increase swim speed and add a water dash, essentially transforming Iris into a dolphin. Other gear increases health and armor, slows down your wall slide, increases drop rates of items, or even allows for sprinting over water. All gear can be upgraded, which expands upon the ability and adds more utility in some cases.

My only gripe is that some of the scenarios where you would see the maximum benefit are fleeting. You also have to factor in WHEN you find some of the gear. Some gear can be used to locate secrets, but if you managed to locate said secret without the gear, that gear feels like it is wasting an equipment slot that could be used for something with more practical use. Gear is essential and all but if we are making Mega Man comparisons, we need to talk about weapons.

Just like the Blue Bomber, Iris begins with her trusty blaster (the Pulse Breaker). Unlike Dr. Light’s greatest creation, you will not be collecting weapons from every boss you defeat. By the game’s end, Iris will have access to a measly four weapons: the Pulse Breaker, a revolver, a missile launcher, and a grenade launcher. Each weapon has two firing modes AND over 100 mods in total to change not only the power of the weapon but HOW the weapon actually behaves. Have you seen the movie Wanted?

This needs to be your thought process on how your weapons work. Each of Iris’ weapons has mod slots that affect behavior, with additional slots becoming available the further you progress in the game. The Pulse Breaker fires a single shot, or it can be charged like Mega Buster to release a shot. I was able to mod it to split the shot into three and added another mod to also split those shots up. Yet another mod (you have to think of the mods as rules to fully understand everything) would create an additional shot whenever two or more shots were created. So, both the first and second mods were creating additional shots, and both triggered the third mod that would create more shots.

IYKYK

Oh wow, a spread shot! Contra called from 1987 and wants their weapon back. Fine. I present to you…

The grenade launcher: when you do not feel like aiming. Normally, if I hit an enemy with the grenade, it explodes, does some damage, and we repeat until the enemy is defeated. Iris’ grenade launcher and missile launcher have something called Second Stage that triggers if it takes too long to find its target OR it hits the ground/wall. In the above screenshot, I modded the grenade launcher to trigger Second Stage almost immediately. Second Stage was also modded to split into additional projectiles AND to trigger twice. By aiming the grenade at the ground in front of the enemy instead of at the enemy, Second Stage causes nearly triple the damage. And now you are probably thinking:

The possibilities are truly endless. Boomerang missiles, fire bullets, missiles that create a wall of explosives, shock bullets, homing grenades, and ricocheting bullets are only a handful of the different projectiles Iris can cook up.

Clockwork Ambrosia does a phenomenal job of encouraging exploration and treasure hunting by adding a multitude of traversal abilities and weapon mods to test. Unfortunately, the map UI is pretty awful in its current state. Note: these may end up being personal preferences, but I will air my grievances for those interested. For starters, the map has an endless scroll. I am ashamed to admit that I did not even realize this for 75% of the game, but once I did, it did not stop bothering me. When you open the map and move to the right or left, the cursor on the map will loop indefinitely despite each end of the world definitely having an end. It is one thing in a game like Final Fantasy where you fly in one direction, and you end up circling the map (take that flat-earthers!), but the map in a two-dimensional world does not need to loop. I remember a point during my achievement clean-up that I pinned a room on the far left side of the map, but when I went to find the exact spot, I naturally just scrolled all the way to the left only to find myself somewhere in the middle. The map also has only two zoom levels: zoomed in or zoomed out. When zoomed in, you can place various pins in the outlined rooms as reminders. When zoomed out, the pins are not visible. This is compounded by the fact that there are no zone labels on the map. While playing, the zone text appears briefly when entering an area, but from a map POV, there is no way to know which area is which. On top of that, the teleport system is presented in a list. You may recognize the zones on the list, but your guess is as good as mine when figuring out where on the map you will end up. At the very least, the list could mark points on the map. Ultimately, the map issues are not game-breaking, as I ran into the above mainly when trying to 100% clear the map right before tackling the final boss. Hopefully these are easier fixes that can be patched in at a later date.

Clockwork Ambrosia takes the fun gameplay of Mega Man X, adds in the fundamental exploration of a Metroidvania, and introduces a unique and clever weapon system to deliver a 10-15 hour game. I imagine the weapon system, as described above, probably seems confusing when read, but when seen (literally), it slowly comes together. I do want to point out that the Discord is very active, so much so that I found a bug and it was patched within an hour. Of course, this was a minor one, but the developers are watching the feedback and patching what they can in an efficient manner. Fans of Metroidvanias or SNES-style games need to check this one out immediately.