Aeterna Noctis

Aeterna Noctis is a Metroidvania for the hardcore Metroidvania fans. Definitely not a game for the first timers, it makes games like Super Metroid, Ori and Hollow Knight feel rather easy in comparison. It builds on the foundation of Hollow Knight (Metroidvania + Souls) and just cranks up the platforming and difficult boss fight to another level. You could say that Celeste is also an influence here as there is so much precision platforming to do which also involve mixing and matching abilities (double jump, wall glides, dashes, warping arrows), things get really intense in that aspect.

The game is also quite big (took me 32 hours to get to the final boss) with tons of areas and really good map design, it definitely feels like it's 3-4 times bigger than your average Metroidvania. There's a lot of backtracking to do as you typically do in this genre, but also each of the areas are quite huge themselves with tons of difficult challenges in each of them. There's some "souls" mystery to it too as not everything is explained to the fullest, and you'll have to figure some stuff out by yourself.

The game is hard and frustrating at times, some of these platforming areas and bosses at me screaming and laughing at just how insane they were. But that makes the game quite memorable too, there's many instances that it's the craziest shit I've seen done in the genre. While it borrows a lot of elements from Hollow Knight (to be fair quite a good base to take from), it does have a lot of its own twist to it making it quite a unique experience.

It's a self-published indie title so it doesn't have the most exposure but I do think it can go head to head with any of the big games of the genre, I really felt it was that good. Apparently the console ports are buggy, but I played the Steam versions and didn't really have any issues (and it's been quite patched since the initial release). If you like Metroidvania, Dark Souls and Celeste, well this is kinda all of them together into an amazing package. High recommendation.