End of Abyss patched its biggest map problems one day after launch

Section 9 Interactive's debut metroidvania End of Abyss launched on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via the Epic Games Store — and within 24 hours the studio had already pushed a patch fixing most of the issues flagged in day-one reviews.

The most significant fix addressed the in-game map, which was feeding players incorrect information: marking doors as locked after they'd been opened, and failing to indicate when a key for a specific door had been found. In a metroidvania built around backtracking and exploration, bad map data is a serious problem — players were planning long cross-world routes only to discover the map had misled them. The patch cleared that up alongside several other smaller issues. A separate bug, in which a boss failed to drop a required quest item, had already been fixed a few hours before the review deadline, meaning it never made it into the published critique at all.

The timing puts End of Abyss in an unusual spot for games criticism. Pre-launch patches that land during the review window are common, and so are sweeping post-launch overhauls that reshape games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Fallout 76 months or years down the line — sometimes prompting full re-reviews. End of Abyss falls into neither category. The fixes arrived too late to influence the original review score, but too quickly for that review to feel like a lasting record of the game's actual state. It's a 48-hour turnaround that most studios don't manage in 48 weeks.

The reviewer had planned to revisit the game once the core problems were addressed and publish a follow-up recommending it with more confidence — they just didn't expect that window to close in under two days. For players who held off after reading mixed impressions, the map fixes in particular make End of Abyss a meaningfully smoother experience than the one critics played at launch.