My thoughts on Toziuha Night: Order of the Alchemists; a review
To be fair, the cover art of the game would have made me skip it while browsing GOG’s catalogue, which would make me miss out on a great metroidvania. Fortunately a fellow member of one of the discord servers I’m in was singing praises for this title, so I got it and I do not regret.
Label
Speaking of, Toziuha Night: Order of the Alchemists is an indie metroidvania made by Danny Garay, on Godot 3.6. It released on the end of October 2025 and is available GOG, Itch and Steam. It’s also the second game in the series (you can get the first on Itch and Steam).
Aesthetics
It’s a pixelart game for the most part. And it looks gorgeous. The game offers the option of playing with the CRT-emulating filter, Grid LCD filter or without any. I personally preffer playing without any of those, but – as they say – Your Mileage May Vary.
The environments are varied; offering lush forests, underwater caverns, ruined cities, abandoned steampunk industrial areas snowy mountain and more. The character and enemy sprites also look very nice.
I did say the game was mostly pixelart. Where it breaks from that are character portraits during dialogues. These are presented in a VN style, with the drawing of the speaker being presented above the text box. They don’t look bad, but I’m not too enthusiastic about them.
The other break are a few artworks that appear as part of a cutscene a few times.
And then there is music and general audio side of things. Each zone (and I’m pretty sure the bosses too) has it’s theme, and they all sound pretty damn good. Or at the very least I enjoyed the music immensely, as untrained in music as I am. There wasn’t anything that stood out to me, in either good or bad way, when it comes to rest of the sounds of the game.
Gameplay
TN:OotA is a 2D side scrolling metroidvania, so the game revolves around running around the rather big map, fighting enemies and looking for upgrades that let you access previously-out-of-reach areas, where you run around. Or, in a few cases run around lost, because you don’t know where to go next.
By the way, while the game supports controllers, I played similar exclusively on the keyboard.
Exploration
Which brings me to the exploration, which is a pretty important part of gameplay.
The general movement feels pretty good. Though to get some options aside from running, jumping and doing a backflip will take a little. And yes, forward dodge is an unlockable move… That comes online somewhere around halfway through the game.
Eventually the repertoire of moves gets pretty decent; with sliding, wall jumping, double jumping, air dashing and swinging on the whip feels pretty damn nice.
Maybe aside from the swinging, it can be somewhat… “off” for a lack of better term.
The game has platforming sections ranging from a nice change of pace to infuriating to roadblocks that take dozens of attempts. At least the worst ones aren’t mandatory… Which is both a blessing and a curse, because of you get there a bit too early, you’ll realise that you gave get through it again.
And then there’s the aforementioned getting lost. Either due to lack of indications where to go next… Or a somewhat misleading ones, that tell you to go somewhere you can’t go yet… Or telling you to find an item before going to a place… That you can only get after visiting that very place.
Combat
Combat on the other hand is rather simple. You have a whip attack and you can modify it with various elements by making “alloys”. Though I wonder why having a rust whip produces wind blades…
Of course, this being a metroidvania, some of the upgrades affect combat more directly, such as turning a single whip attack into a three-hit-combo string, adding a heavy strike and a powerful strike that will be very helpful against bosses and though enemies…
That and swapping between loadouts, because for some reason that’s an upgrade.
A spectacle fighter it is not, but it’s not the point. The combat is decent; with wide cast of enemies having varied elemental weaknesses it’s interesting enough, even if you can get though most of the game using the flashbang magnesium alloy that is gained at the very start, coupled with the decent selection of spells (again, electro spheres, one of the first gained will be useful almost everywhere) make it interesting enough.
Story
And then there is the story. It’s a simple, yet serviceable one, serving more as a spice enhancing the whole, rather than the core ingredient. I see no issue with it being the background for why we whip things with an iron whip that spawns fireballs and jump around various areas.
The protagonist has a grudge against a cult leader. Said cult attacked a city and Xandria (the protagonist) rushed there, with the aim of facing the cult leader… But one of his lieutenants, a Chlorine Alchemist, almost killed her before she could fight him.
The recovery time and expenses was the reason for the loss of her abilities. The rest of the game revolves around finding out what the cult is planning and stopping them, all the while Xandria in pretty focused on revenge.
Or well, it feels more like we randomly stumble upon something that pushes the plot ahead. Sometimes a bit randomly, like the whole hallucination section (which I very much liked, as it was a neat change of pace… though it felt close to overstaying its welcome), which is one of the very contentious places, if you visit the forums.
The game also offers multiple endings: the depressing one, the bad one, the tragic one and the good one. The depressing one is the first one you can get, and is potentially missable. Fortunately all of them can be done on the same save, though that requires reading the written notes… or consulting the guides on the internet.
The game also offers a chain of optional sidequests, such as finding a lost child, finding that child’s cats, photographing birds and delivering fruit.
Summa Summarum
Toziuha Nights: Order of the Alchemists is a very good metroidvania, with pretty visuals, good music, and fun overall gameplay.
There are a few issues that didn’t bother me enough to lower the grade further. Or at least they affected me little enough for them to fade from my mind.
Furthermore, the game is getting updates, with additional options (like the optional post game mode letting you play as a different character) and QoL changes (like drops being pulled in after a few seconds).
And so, I’m giving it a 5-.
#ActionAdventure #ComputerGames #gameReview #gaming #IndieGame #Metroidvania #ToziuhaNight #ToziuhaNightOrderOfTheAlchemists
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