A tough yet extremely enjoyable and rewarding metroidvania-style RPG game. Mechanically it plays very similar to Hollow Knight however its theme, gorgeous artwork and fantastic sound design set it apart from all others of the genre. The character movement speed is a fair bit slower than that of Hollow Knight which to some will be a good thing and to others this will be a negative thing - For me personally this was a good thing as it was my first foray into this kind of game. The game still felt fairly difficult from time to time but I never got frustrated to the point where I wanted to quit the game - it would take a couple of tries to defeat a number of the bosses but I always felt like I was learning something new with each defeat which helped me the subsequent time I would take on that boss.

The story of the game centres around your character; a rat named Redgi, his family and the kingdom around you which starts off peaceful but soon descends into chaos and ruin after a deadly siege from the brutally merciless Frog Clan. You're tasked with defeating the Frog Clan and restoring your kingdom back to glory, rescuing friends and family while avenging the fallen. The story is engaging, well written and fantastically narrated throughout. The ending of the game felt satisfying and left me wanting more.

One small criticism of the game would be that, although the boss design and variety was top tier, I found myself feeling that the regular enemy variety were lacking a little at times - Initially the game would give you new enemies on a reasonably regular basis however eventually the game would just throw more and more waves of the same enemies at you to the point where some of the fights felt a little boring and repetitive.

Compared to Hollow Knight, Tails of Iron is a much shorter game with a significantly smaller map however I wouldn't say that this detracts from Tails of Iron in the slightest.

In Conclusion

Overall I absolutely loved Tails of Iron from start to finish. It's a much less daunting and more manageable introduction to the metroidvania genre than other similar games. My hope is that the developer (Odd Bug Studio) either develop additional story content/expansions for the game in the future or create a follow-up sequel.