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Genre: Atmospheric action-adventure horror
Developer: Leonard Menchiari, Daniele Vicinanzo, Giulio Perrone
Publisher: TFL Studios
Release Date: May 15th, 2020
Edited by AlexKnight2005
The Eternal Castle Remastered is a cinematic platformer that tries to bring back a supposed 1987 DOS game of the same name. Cinematic platformer games strive to bring more realism to the mix with more thinking or slower-moving gameplay. This is either for puzzles, debate your options, or due to the realism compared to other platform games. I went into this one without knowing anything of the original game but, I felt this was one remaster that would be better off as a remake and not a remaster. The Eternal Castle Remastered ran flawlessly on the switch but, a slew of other issues made it harder to enjoy the game.
The story at first can be hard to grasp in The Eternal Castle is not from the lack of trying but from a poorly chosen text font at the start, you don’t see again in the game. It took re-reading to pick apart most of the paragraph as it is that hard to read. After which a different font is used for the rest of the game. Visuals in the game are very unique as they play on shadows and a few colors to show great detail, mystery and a horror style feel of the destroyed land you are in. The drawback to this is pickups, objects you are meant to interact with, and places you are meant to stand on to progress are horrid to see. The colors and background get too dark and some objects don’t pop-out enough to know it was something.
In short, you are trying to repair your ship while trying to find your loved one in a wasteland. The wasteland is filled with bandits, strange creatures, and traps as you movie mostly left to right to get though. You are free to pick which of the three stages to do first. All stages are of similar difficulting and their own challenges. Checkpoints are generous as you adventure though, dying just makes you spawn back to the last checkpoint you acquired. Accidentally moving back to your ship though will force you to start over from the start of the stage. Combat is limited and more awkward than adding to a game. This is one of the few times I would claim adding combat makes the game worse. The guns I found severely lacks and hitting the enemies and the bosses at the end of each stage are better with your fists or the ax. Even then it felt like a spam fest with a side of luck as staying still hitting with my bare hands worked better than using the dodge mechanic. Adding to the mess is controls don’t seem responsive when you are trying to pick up or interacting with a vital object. This can be annoying as they are not only hard to see at times but hard to interact with. Management of stamina during such help but the combat seems unpolished and buggy. The best parts of the stages where the jumping and dodging dangerous traps along with the scripted events that make the game shine. I would have rather seen a game that focused more on that than adding combat, that alone would have improved the game. Events that happen in the stages be it puzzles or dangers where amazingly done and really made me feel happy about completing those parts. This mixed with the smooth animation helped the game look like something amazing but these were far and few compared to the other parts. The lighting and the art style are amazing to make it seem more than simple pixels but it hinders as much as helps the game. Even with the smooth animations that make you believe the shadows of the people in the game, it isn’t enough to distract the troubles it brings with the other issues.
I wanted to love the game as the visuals and music fit great but the visuals with the combat make you hate the game in the wrong way. The combat felt it was an unpolished or uncompleted part of the game then something to be in a full release. The visuals hid important objects and some objects even just look like a pixel on the ground. The weapons and power-ups were mostly useless as I never felt different from getting them or not. Playing this game on the handheld on the switch is a big no with how the visuals are done. if you have any trouble seeing already. Avoid the game. This a game with ok ups but harsh downs. The biggest highlights are the art style and the non-combat parts of the game. I mostly found it slightly lacking in too many areas that could have made it into one of the best indies I played this year, even though it is a short but challenging game.
Pros:
- Unique Visual look
- Good Concept
Cons:
- Poorly Executed Concept
- Combat Feels Unfinished
- Visuals Make it Hard to See
FoxieEXE gives The Eternal Castle Remastered for The Nintendo Switch a Drastik Measure of 4.0 out of 10.0 (40)
