There's a moment in Karma Exorcist when you emerge from the shattered stone finger of a petrified hand and realize you're about to descend into one of gaming's most visually stunning underworlds. The demon hunter you control has no name, no memory, and only a soul-severing blade. What unfolds over the next hours is a hand-drawn journey through 11 distinct biomes rooted in Chinese mythology and folklore, where ghost emperors and mythical beasts run rampant across a landscape corrupted by evil karma.
Developer Cyclos has crafted something that caught me completely off guard during a recent hands-on event in Shanghai. The opening hours alone showcase the game's ambitions: a gloomy cave system filled with gnashing slugs, a sandswept ruin with crumbling platforms, and an optional tomb lined with Indiana Jones-style boulder traps and stone guardians that spring to life without warning. The world begs exploration, and the atmosphere is thick enough to cut with that soul-severing blade.
Combat starts simple. Basic sword slashes, a dodge-roll that doubles as a platforming tool, and a modest jump form your foundation. A rechargeable sword thrust adds bite once you land regular attacks, while a gourd system lets you drain defeated enemies to restore health segments. This modest toolkit works fine against the deputy demons that greet you early on, but Karma Exorcist doesn't stay gentle for long.
Over 100 enemy types populate this underworld, and they escalate quickly. Lantern-wielding bats unleash spinning flame attacks during treacherous platforming sections. Spear soldiers erupt from the earth to ambush stationary targets. Skeletal brutes with hammers seem determined to knock you clean into the next afterlife. The challenge ramps fast, but the game gives you tools to match it.
Twenty weapons exist across the full game, and the fraction I found during my time with it fundamentally altered how combat felt. Mapping three weapons to dedicated buttons let me keep a fast sword on one, a slower but devastating axe on another, and throwing daggers on the third for ranged pressure. The full game supports eight preset loadouts, which becomes crucial as the arsenal expands and enemy variety multiplies. Swapping between configurations will likely become essential for boss encounters.
Those boss fights are where Karma Exorcist's design truly reveals itself. The first major encounter, a hungry ghost king, falls to basic timing and dodge work. Subsequent bosses demand respect. A teleporting warrior monk drags lightning from above while conjuring homing swords. A chained demon springs from its coffin like an escape artist, closing distance with a powerful grappling hook. Each death stings in the best way: you're sent back to the last shrine with your soul on the line, capping your maximum health at three bars instead of five. You can either fight back to your death point to reclaim it fully or spend hard-earned coin to summon it to your current location. That penalty keeps every step tense.
Defeating the second major boss rewards you with the game's true hook: the soul-snatching chain, a grappling hook that does far more than just traverse. In midair, you slow down to manually aim at ledges and attach. In combat, you can hook flying enemies and zip toward them for sword strikes, or fire the chain at shield-bearing demons to vault around their defenses and attack from behind. This single ability opens exploration paths and dramatically shifts how encounters play out. Hidden walls reveal secrets, from pages of the Book of Life and Death that trade for coins at a librarian to consumable talismans granting temporary stat boosts.
That opening experience is undeniably strong, but rough edges exist. Menu systems feel unfinished. The map system proved unreliable during play, which becomes maddening when you're hunting for hidden rooms in a Metroidvania where positioning should be everything. I defeated one particularly tough boss on my fifth attempt not through pattern recognition or tactical improvement, but because it glitched into a corner and sat there taking damage. That hollow victory felt more like a technical failure than an earned conquest.
Cyclos has time to exorcise these demons. Karma Exorcist doesn't launch until 2027, targeting PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch simultaneously. Based on what I played, the game has all the DNA of a magnificent Metroidvania. Its journey through a hell soaked in corrupted karma could absolutely captivate Hollow Knight fans looking for their next obsession.
Author Emily Chen: "The bones are there, and they're impressive, but those bugs and UI stumbles need polishing before launch if Karma Exorcist is going to stand alongside the genre's elite."
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