Gosh, that’s quite a bold claim, isn’t it? Am I seriously arguing this game can follow Shadow of the Erdtree and make the eternal wait for Hollow Knight: Silksong bearable? Absolutely. At time of writing, I’m 25 hours in and yet to finish Nine Sols. But unless it ends with my PC exploding, this will likely be my game of the year. Even if that does happen, I’ll probably still recommend it.
Nine Sols is a soulslike metroidvania that… wait, wait, come back! Yes, half the 2D games out there fall into that genre these days, but this one stands out by taking its influence from Sekiro, the least idea-plundered of FromSoftware’s games. It's all about nailing different types of parry, including doing it in mid-air. Too stubborn to learn to parry properly? You'll need to crank the difficulty right down, because Nine Sols’ block-or-be-broken combat is just as pleasingly unrelenting as its main inspiration.
