Possessor(s) Review – Metroidvania Meets Fighting Game!?

Possessor(s)

PC/PS5

11/11/25

Heart Machine/Devolver Digital

The latest release from Heart Machine, creators of the Hyper Light series, is here, and it’s… another Metroidvania game. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, as the genre continues to thrive, with audiences seemingly having an insatiable appetite for what these games offer. Possessor(s), with its “s” in parentheses, offers much of what you would expect: combat, exploration, a massive world, and of course, big bad bosses to take down! But does it have anything new or exciting to offer? Or did Heart Machine break my heart? Let’s find out in our full review!

With Possessor(s), developer Heart Machine seems hell-bent on calling it anything other than a Metroidvania, and while it very much is—with shades of a few other genres including soulslikes—for the sake of using their description, let’s go ahead and settle on calling it a “platform fighter-inspired action adventure.” Regardless of how it is labeled, players can expect to find a huge journey that packs in nearly 30 hours of content for completionists. If only the content contained within those many hours had been more interesting.

You’ll be placed into the shoes of a young teenager named Luca, who early in our adventure makes a life-changing pact with a demon known as Rhem, though she doesn’t really have any other option. I mean, I guess she could die, but if it were between a demon possessing me in an effort to do its bidding, or death, I guess I’ll take the demon possession.

While the idea of a lead character being possessed by a demon is a novel one, the game's story is merely serviceable. Dialogue seems to cater more towards teenagers, with plenty of fresh lingo and edginess out of Luca, offset by Rhem’s dismissive attitude towards her. I can’t say I grew particularly attached to either of these central figures, though Possessor(s) does attempt to flesh out more of their backgrounds through memos scattered about the city and, periodically, flashbacks that reveal additional information about Luca’s past. More interesting are some of the characters that you’ll encounter—not so much how they are written, but more so in their designs. In fact, the character and enemy designs are one of the stronger aspects of this entire experience, even if the writing wasn’t necessarily my cup of tea. Ultimately, I was checked out on the narrative within a few hours, meaning it failed to grab me in any sort of impactful way.

The bigger problem with Possessor(s) is the city in which it takes place. Despite having some very cool creature and character designs—some of which are accompanied by lovely portrait art—it feels otherwise void of life. Now granted, this is supposed to be a city that has been ravaged by demons, but I felt like its vanilla backgrounds and limited color palette lacked any sort of distinct personality. This surprised me a bit, as whoever designed the game’s trailer did an incredible job of making the entire experience look gorgeous, but the reality is, much of your adventure is stuffed with bland, generic backdrops that feature washed-out colors, broken lights, library books, empty offices, and rather plain building architecture, as just a few examples. 

Being a game where you backtrack often, you’ll have to get used to seeing these areas a lot too, making this city—for lack of a better word—boring to explore from a visual standpoint. At least a fairly well-implemented fast travel system means getting from location to location won’t be too difficult. And while, when looking at the entire presentation, I ultimately wasn’t crazy about this game’s visuals, I will say that it features a nice map that clearly indicates points of interest and where you should be heading next.

But let’s go over the basic gameplay loop before we get too far ahead of ourselves. Your goal, like many games of this genre, is to complete various objectives strewn about the city—some of which will progress the story forward, and others which are optional and often handed out by the many NPC characters that you’ll come across. This mostly involves pulling up your map and heading towards the appropriate icon on that map. Naturally, enemies will stand in your way, which can be defeated using an assortment of bizarre weapons—from knives, to bats, to even a guitar. Complete objectives and defeat bosses, gain new abilities that unlock new areas of the map which you’ll need to backtrack for, and so on and so on. It’s a loop I don’t really need to explain too deeply because look, you know how these games work by now, and Possessor(s) simply doesn’t have all that much new or fresh to offer over hundreds of other Metroidvania games. 

Combat at least tries to mix things up a bit by offering directional attacks amongst other mechanics, though I can’t say I was the biggest fan. While comparing battles to a fighting game seems a bit of a stretch, I can kinda, sorta understand what Heart Machine was going for. Players will mix together standard attacks, magical abilities that you’ll acquire, and even toss around a whip—which not only helps you to traverse through the game’s many platforming sections, but can also pull certain enemies towards you to keep combos alive. A parry is also available which can deflect certain bullets back towards your foes, and it comes with a reasonable timing window that didn’t leave me overly frustrated. Luca can also dodge through and out of the way of attacks with the press of a button. Outside of that, the left bumper allows for healing, and players can also equip various items to weapons that will grant even more abilities, ranging from gaining health for successfully dodging attacks to other statistical boosts. Through exploration, fragments can also be collected to further increase inventory for various items, along with the number of slots available for equipping onto weaponry.

Defeating foes nets currency, which can be stored at save areas. It can be important to do so, as loot can be used to purchase new weapons and items across the world’s shops. Should you fall in battle—similar to a soulslike game—you'll need to traverse back to the exact spot where you died in order to retrieve your lost goods. And odds are, you’ll do this often, as combat feels choppy, lacking fluid animations. It doesn’t help that cheap hits are aplenty, with enemies often trapping you and dealing out massive amounts of damage. This is made even worse by an aggressive knockback animation that can send you plummeting all the way back to the bottom of an area that you’re exploring, forcing you to crawl your way back up via the game’s less-than-impressive platforming and swinging mechanics. I can’t say that Possessor(s) feels downright awful to play, but it never feels as good as you’d like in any capacity.

While frustrating at times, you can in fact win the many battles you’ll face, some of which are forced onto players in arena-like settings. You can also make the jumps and swings that are required with enough patience, and yes, even beat Possessor(s)’ challenging bosses which stand as some of the brighter moments, offering a few interesting patterns to learn. While all of these things can indeed be accomplished, rarely is the act of doing so something that I would associate with being fun. At the least, I appreciate difficulty options that can be toggled at any time during gameplay if you really get fed up with certain sections—which you will. It’s not just the combat and platforming that leave something to be desired, as other decisions Heart Machine has made are truly head-scratching, such as needing to hold the Right Bumper to climb ladders and vines. What? Why does swimming feel so poor and lack any sort of weight? Did we really need a souls-ish mechanic in this game at all? It’s a hodgepodge of ideas that often seem at odds with one another. Clearly, the developers wanted to make a very long Metroidvania stuffed with content, but they forgot to make much of that content meaningful while leaving the core gameplay feeling unrefined. 

At the least, sound design is quite good, with some beautiful melodic piano pieces sprinkled throughout this journey. In fact, the overall audio presentation may be the best part of Possessor(s), as hits during combat sound impactful, the music is genuinely nice throughout even when it isn’t just moody pianos, and I didn’t encounter many bugs, with the game running decently enough on my 4070 at the 4K resolution. The game is playable on Steam Deck too, though not yet at a locked 60fps. I experienced quite a few performance dips playing this way, making it even more frustrating to get through; however, the developers have noted that they are working to improve the portable experience, which is certainly appreciated.

But in the end, Possessor(s) is one of the most forgettable games I’ve played all year. It’s not egregiously awful, but does nothing to stand out in an indie gaming scene that sees great Metroidvania games released on a monthly basis. It’s fine that a game doesn’t do much new, not every game has to, but when it fails to provide a playground that is interesting to explore or, you know, play around in, you’re left with a baked potato without the cheese, sour cream, and all the other yummy stuff inside. From its forgettable narrative, bland world, ho-hum story, and awkward combat, this is a rare miss for Devolver Digital that doesn’t meet the publisher’s usual high standards. Possessor(s) just kinda exists, earning itself the table lamp of mediocrity.

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