Familiar

Story Positives:

1. Intro: While short, the opening cinematic and initial interactions get you into the mood, tone, and vibe of the game instantly
2. Humor: While not really a game filled with jokes, the overall light atmosphere really adds a humorous flavor to things
3. Voice Acting: Generally good voice acting for all the various dragons
4. Brickwork: Artisan’s World, the delightful fresh medieval greenery and lighting is quite well done
5. Character: The individual characters of the dragons you rescue are one note, but still add some delightful flavor to things
6. Brickwork: The Peace Keepers World continues the visual variety, keeping things fresh and popping
7. Brickwork: Continued visual excellence in the Magic Crafter world
8. Brickwork: Dream Weavers probably best overall personifies the fairy tale aspect of Spyro 1
9. Animation: Clear effort was put into making the dragons distinctly animated
10. Spritework: Enemy variety and character

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: Even for a platformer, that ending was pretty lacking

Gameplay Positives:

1. Guidance and Flow: The ability to use the dragonfly to guide you towards missing gems is a godsend in a game like this and frankly deserves…
2. Guidance and Flow: …two positives
3. Interface: The built-in interface showing you exactly what you’re missing per level (which also has a separate hotkey just for it) is similarly a great QoL feature and gets…
4. Interface: …two positives
5. Yoshi Drums: The dynamic music option is quite nice
6. Music: Generally enjoyable music
7. Intro: The Intro does everything it needs to to explain how to play the game without a tutorial box, but on top of that offers said tutorials in the form of (skippable) dragon dialogue, earning it two…
8. Intro: …positives
9. Level: Special mention to the Artisan levels in general for smooth flow and design and…
10. Tutorialization: …good tutorialization
11. Fast Travel: The fast travel system of being able to warp between worlds and levels more or less on the fly and at will is honestly really good…
12. Fast Travel: …and earns two positives
13. Level: The Peace Keepers world is where secrets start to get more interesting, and level flow starts to be more a part of the process…
14. Level: …and overall generally interesting level design, enemy design, and layout
15. Level: High Caves is probably the single best level to-date, really using the mechanics that have been established to this point and doing something with them
16. Level: The Magic Crafters levels in general are pretty decent, though in some cases fall a bit flat of the earlier Peace Keepers one
17. Level: Beast Makers isn’t quite as good as the previous levels but still has some fun platforming and decent secret design
18. Control: The game, despite controller issues, does still play very fluidly and smoothly
19. Level: Lofty Castle is one of the other better designed levels to-date, great flow and great secret usage and general fun of platforming
20. Level: While shorter, there’s some sufficiently tight design in the Gnorc levels
21. Level: The final level’s usage of no-height-loss gliding and layering access to higher shelves to access more of the level is actually quite clever

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: Lack of rebinding controls
2. Level: Sunny Flight is a bit too tight and entirely too irritating to 100%
3. Level: High Top… yeah no. I’ll only ding it once cuz most of it is ‘fine’, but the rest of it can go straight to hell
4. Level: Haunted Towers has a precise secret… which is fine but the controls just don’t support that, which even that I might forgive if not for the massive red herring which is along the secret’s path
5. Bug: Load times
6. Bug: Framerate issues
7. Boss: Generally lackluster boss design
8. Enemy Design: Those damned thieves…
9. QoL: …their damned laugh…
10. Core Combat: …and the fact that you have to stop to attack them, during a car race
11. Outro: Screw that outro. Screw it hard. It’s a chase followed by a chase followed by a chase followed by a chase (no exaggeration). It’s also very easy to screw up, is unclear in what you should do, and, very much worst of all, absolutely no mid mission checkpoints. I’d be willing to make this a one negative situation if not for that lack of checkpointing, but having to do the two thieves again every single screw up is absolutely ridiculous…
12. Outro: …earning it…
13. Outro: …three negatives
14. Level: The final level’s total lack of checkpoints drags it down a fair bit (oh and the damned thieves)
15. Camera: Unfortunately I do have to ding the camera, as it just gets in the way as it almost always does. Not as bad as most games, but it’s still there

Story Positives:

1. Internal Continuity: Each world does a weirdly good, if small, job of keeping itself relatively consistent with its own recurring issues and contestants
2. Animation: As with before, good animation on the characters
3. Storytelling Mechanics: The little intro and outro tidbits are at least occasionally amusing
4. Brickwork: A general brickwork positive for the Summer and Autumn worlds combined
5. Voice Acting: As with before, it’s pretty decent
6. Character: The ‘main’ characters are weirdly weak, but the NPCs across the worlds have enough flavor and fun to them to qualify
7. Spritework: The usual standard for the remaster

Story Negatives:

1. Character: Hunter is… just irritating
2. Atmosphere: Kid’s show mentality. It’s all over the place and it honestly takes away from the narrative
3. Cutscenes: Related to the kid’s show thing earlier… I honestly want to ding every cutscene in the game, but we’ll be nice and simply call them all bad

Gameplay Positives:

1. Guidance and Flow: The ability to use the dragonfly to guide you towards missing gems is a godsend in a game like this and frankly deserves…
2. Guidance and Flow: …two positives
3. Interface: The built-in interface showing you exactly what you’re missing per level (which also has a separate hotkey just for it) is similarly a great QoL feature and gets…
4. Interface: …two positives
5. Yoshi Drums: The dynamic music option is quite nice
6. Level: A general aggregate double positive for the Summer Forest worlds…
7. Level: …for there is some good stuff spread throughout
8. Level: A general aggregate for the X worlds
9. Fast Travel: The fast travel system of being able to warp between worlds and levels more or less on the fly and at will is honestly really good…
10. Fast Travel: …and earns two positives
11. Control: Issues aside, the game continues to play quite smoothly
12. Intro: Overall a decent enough Intro to qualify for a positive
13. Levels: A general aggregate positive for the Autumn Plains worlds. They’re not terrible, but they’re noticeably lacking compared to Spyro 1 levels and earlier stages thanks to irritations in backtracking and a lack of cohesive flow or design to them, plus they feel entirely too cloistered
14. Levels: So then there’s the Winter Tundra levels. There’s some creative ideas here (Metropolis, Canyon Speedway) but then there’s… other issues

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: Lack of rebinding controls
2. Camera: Camera continues to have the same issues as before
3. Minigame: The ice hockey minigame is sluggish, you can’t jump, there’s no sprint, the controls suck, and there’s too much randomness built into it
4. Minigames: A bonus aggregate negative for all the irritating minigames in the Summer Forest World
5. Minigame: TrOuBlE wItH tHe TrOlLeY, eH? But seriously screw this minigame. It’s janky to begin with thanks to being 3D forced crudely into 2D…
6. Mid-Mission Checkpoint: …but also the total lack of mid mission checkpoints and the actual mockery each time you fail (which you can’t skip) drives into double territory
7. Minigames: The Autumn Plains minigames are a mixed bag but mostly can suck a lemon
8. Backtracking: The game’s insistence upon being incapable of finishing a world the first time you go in sucks on several levels. Backtracking is a small issue, really (thanks to the fast travel), but the fact that you can’t be sure if you’ve finished a level or if you have to solve a puzzle is aggravating at best
9. Level: Okay so Fracture Hills has the worst escort in the game. He’s slow, the enemies are easy to miss, they have tons of range and perfect tracking, if they hit him at all it’s a total failure, he takes a long and winding route, and the whole thing mega sucks…
10. Level: …earning it two negatives
11. Backtracking: What pushes it up to technically three negatives is the fact that you get access to this before you have access to the power up required for the second part of the quest. This means if you do this when you’re here (and NOTHING indicates you shouldn’t) you’ll have to do the escort again later just to do the final step
12. Level: The Winter Tundra world levels have several irritating or frustrating segments and, honestly, feel a bit rushed… but if I had to earn this negative, it’d go to the high-speed blind-run segment of Robotica Farms
13. Outro: Bad camera, RNG on Hunter, frustrating controls, irritating tendencies to screw you over thanks to collision or placement…
14. Outro: …leading to two negatives

Story Positives:

1. Character: Sparx’s unique voice acting is the most adorable thing in the whole game
2. Humor: Holy crap, the game got an actual laugh out of me with the Sgt. Bird cutscene
3. Character: Bianca is… just so adorable. She has so, so little of an idea of how to be evil, and she’s trying so hard
4. Cutscenes: So this is technically an aggregate for all the times they beat the crap out of Moneybags
5. Character: Speaking of which, Moneybags is substantially better and more interesting this time around
6. Brickwork: So the brickwork is similar to 2’s, but still generally decent
7. Animations: The animations in cutscenes are quite good
8. Spritework: Despite some issues, the spritework is still good
9. Voice Acting: And similarly, voice acting

Story Negatives:

1. Animations: The ‘canned’ dragon baby animations are far too few for how many you have to get (nevermind 100%ing)… compare and contrast the completely unique dragon animations in the remake of 1

Gameplay Positives:

1. Guidance and Flow: The ability to use the dragonfly to guide you towards missing gems is a godsend in a game like this and frankly deserves…
2. Guidance and Flow: …two positives
3. Interface: The built-in interface showing you exactly what you’re missing per level (which also has a separate hotkey just for it) is similarly a great QoL feature and gets…
4. Interface: …two positives
5. Yoshi Drums: The dynamic music option is quite nice
6. Fast Travel: The fast travel system of being able to warp between worlds and levels more or less on the fly and at will is honestly really good…
7. Fast Travel: …and earns two positives
8. Level: Sunny Villa is a surprisingly well designed level; good indicators, good draws, good flow, good exploration
9. Level: This is further emphasized over in Sheila’s Alp where we get to play as the aforementioned Sheila and the additional control precision and verticality are well utilized
10. Kit: Sheila herself plays quite well, and is a good contrast to Spyro himself; Being primarily slower and higher than his low speed approach
11. Kit: Then there’s the sarge, who controls deceptively well, with good and intuitive movement and more rapid horizontal reach than you’d think at first glance
12. Level: General level positive for the rest of Sunrise Spring World
13. Level: Sgt. Byrd’s Base is another good example of good level design, appropriate for the newcomer, and is a good way to introduce his concepts while still keeping the flow of the game moving smoothly
14. Level: The Icy Peak and Enchanted Towers levels both have issues and frustrations, but overall still some good design
15. Level: Spooky Swamp and Bamboo Terrace have some decent overall design
16. Level: Bentley’s Outpost is simple, but very fun for what it is
17. Level: The Fireworks Factory is honestly one of the better laid out and designed levels… with one big exception
18. Level: Charmed Ridge and Dino Mines continue to have good level design
19. Level: Crystal Islands, irritation aside, is still good stuff
20. Level: A final general positive for some of the more unique and interesting levels (the Sparx levels, some individual challenges, etc.)
21. Controls: With some notable exceptions, game continues to control well
22. Intro: Usual decent Intro
23. Hub: For the first time I actually like the hub worlds, and so grant them all a positive

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Level: The Country Speedway race is total bullcrap. Between inconsistent hitboxes, rockets that straight up rely on RNG to even hit (and occasionally do nothing), and being entirely overtuned, the whole thing is just frustration central…
2. Level: …earning two negatives
3. Minigame: Escorting the fireflies can suck a lemon. There’s no clear indicator of their pathing, there’s a total logic disconnect in the entire concept which just pisses you off after a bit, but the worst part and the reason this can go straight to hell is you have to stomp on the mushrooms… but the mushrooms have inconsistent collision boxes which makes you have to literally jump differently to get on top of them, and a mushroom pops back up after a period of time, during which they can’t be re-flattened, meaning you have to time it properly for the double back sections, on top of the delay before being able to stomp again…
4. Minigame: …earning it a full…
5. Minigame: …three negatives
6. Level: Lost Fleet is disorienting, badly visually distinguished, has disorienting flow, and has the ‘one way’ problem in design too much
7. Minigame: The boxing minigame on the snow level is really just honestly bad. It’s just rock paper scissors, but with inconsistent timing, bad frame windows, and AWFUL controls
8. Level: Harbor Speedway isn’t as bad as Country, but it has the same general issues
9. Boss: The double dragons in Fireworks Factory can go burn
10. Minigame: I’m going to give another generic minigame negative almost entirely for the controls. So many of these minigames either have awful controls, or they’re inverted or reverse of what they are in ‘normal’ play, and there is no fixing or rebinding this
11. Options: Lack of rebinding controls
12. Visual Distinction: Similar to 2, the remake of 3 honestly gets color and visual distinction… wrong. It’s actually hard to tell what you’re looking at in many cases
13. Minigame: The final final race is the same usual overtuned RNG garbage…
14. Bugs: …but what really makes it awful is the fact that the race track is REALLY buggy. Like, I can’t describe the sheer quantity of bugs here but there are so, so many and they’re just on this one level…
15. Bugs: …so badly so I’m willing to bake all other bugs and this into two negatives

Story Positives:

1. Intro: While cheesy and ridiculous, the Intro establishes both tone and several points well (most notably his aversion to damage)
2. Moment: Weirdly good reveal of Virgil and his connection to Dante after the final Angelo fight
3. Doodad: For a game with this bad of brickwork, I’m honestly impressed with the doodad usage throughout (helps that so much of the game occurs in the castle)
4. Moment: So bad it’s good… because your dark soul is filled with LIIIIGHT

Story Negatives:

1. Character: Or rather, lack thereof. Mundus, Dante, and Trish are non characters at best
2. Pacing: So the game has the most lurching narrative. It starts, stalls for literal hours, then rushes so fast through plot points that character arcs occur across literal minutes
3. Moment: The Trish turns scene is… bad. Not cheesy bad, just bad
4. Plot: So the plot is… Mundus is evil. Even for cheese this is not a strong point
5. Voice Direction: I’m going to put this under direction because the voice acting is … yeah… it’s very early Capcom voice acting
6. Outro: So, uhm, what? I honestly can’t even put into words what the hell was going on with that Outro. Rather than being cheesy or ridiculous, it fails to step over that line and instead remains firmly in the territory of just plain awkward
7. Writing: The overall writing in this game is… just not great
8. Brickwork: I don’t want to be too mean on an early PS2 game but the brickwork in this game is pretty bad even for the time. Hope you like murky browns and greys

Gameplay Positives:

1. Tutorialization: First room. It does so much right it’d take too long to type it all up here
2. Intro: The Intro is honestly the strongest part of the game, with the aforementioned tutorialization and good usage of… honestly everything to help you get into the game proper
3. Camera: Manually crafted camera to help with…
4. Guidance and Flow: …exploration and guidance
5. Music: The actual music in the game is, of course, legit
6. Level: Stage 2 has a few stumbles but I love how it escalates and continues the tutorialized setup and style
7. Boss: The first Nelo Angelo fight is simple, but still quite good
8. Kit: Ifrit. It has good combos, it can be charged manually (per hit!), and it seeks beautifully giving it more range than you’d think for a big heavy hitter like it
9. Boss: The various Phantom fights are neat, fun, simple, but enjoyable
10. Boss: The second Angelo fight is equally tight and well designed and, most importantly, fun
11. Boss: And yes, the final Angelo fight continues the trend of good boss design
12. NG+: There is a bit of a basic, but still existent, new game plus
13. Enemy: Generally decent enemy design and variety
14. Replayability: I mean, of course it’s replayable

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Audio Design: Audio balancing issues
2. Camera: Hahaha… yeah…
3. Camera: …the camera is fine for some segments, but absolutely awful for others, and legitimately terrible for boss fights
4. Controls: The game controls very stiffly and has many issues
5. Music: Ambient music is… boring, repetitive, but most importantly of all it just grates on me
6. Map: Wow that map is… not super great
7. Level: Sooo level 5… yeah screw that walkthroughitis noise
8. Difficulty Options: So… you can unlock ‘easy automatic’ mode which does NOT say it’s easy mode, but has accessibility options (most notably easing the pain of squeezing the right trigger to fire) but also…
9. Difficulty Options: …forces you (for the rest of that playthrough) into easy mode, which is lazy difficulty
10. Boss: The final Griffon fight is kind of awful, with camera that works against you, attacks that are more irritating than challenging to dodge, and weird tracking issues
11. Info In Game: While obviously you’re supposed to just try stuff out for yourself, there’s a whole lot of ‘shrug’ with regards to info in game
12. Graphics: Nauseating mirror/hell world graphics and distortion
13. Boss: The final Nightmare fight is honestly the worst fight in the game. Cramped arena, having to target something without being able to, bad collision, bad hit boxes, camera issues, no real dodge or other ability to bypass mechanics, just irritation top to bottom…
14. Boss: …leading to two negatives
15. Outro: So all three of the final bosses really suck in their own ways. We have the worst possible control scheme for the ‘easy to die’ phase 1, the irritating ‘shoot it with bad camera’ phase 2, and the timed fight of ‘phase 3’. All of them suck…
16. Outro: …earning them two negatives, but then…
17. Outro: …there’s that last screw you with the escape sequence (both of them)
18. Difficulty Curve: The difficulty curve is… absolutely all over the place, and irritating throughout
19. Walkthroughitis: Yeah there’s several moments of ‘now what do I do?’ and, worse, the game lets you roam ‘out of level’ while in a level so… very easy to get lost (occasionally)

Story Positives:

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: So that intro cutscene… sucks. It’s bland, Dante is non existent, the voice acting is barely there, the animation is bad, the storyboarding is barely… it’s just off
2. Plot: There is a violent absence of plot
3. Character: Dante is legitimately completely out of character here
4. Dialogue: And his dialogue is especially bad, even by this series’ standards
5. External Continuity: I don’t think I need to explain this negative
6. Brickwork: The game is so devoid and absent it’s bothersome… in fact it’s…
7. Brickwork: …worthy of…
8. Brickwork: …three negatives
9. Brickwork: Okay so normally I only give three positives or negatives to brickwork per ‘biome’ or ’tileset’. Thing is, you really have to understand this; this entire game is one tileset (the friggin’ city) and it’s SO monotonous and SO awful that it deserves, uniquely…
10. Brickwork: …an additional…
11. Brickwork: …three negatives
12. Doodads: There’s no detail, no nuance, no fleshing out of anything…
13. Doodads: …earning…
14. Doodads: …three negatives
15. Voice Acting: What little is there is not great
16. Story Sequencing: Things just… happen, disjointedly, from one moment to the next. We’re racing up a skyscraper, why? Who knows, but now we’re at the bottom again! This never gets better (arguably gets worse)…
17. Story Sequencing: …earning it…
18. Story Sequencing: …three negatives
19. Visual Continuity: Areas have so little connection to each other that they aggressively don’t make sense, which could’ve worked if they earned it but they super did not
20. Cutscene: I… legitimately have no idea what’s going on in some of these cutscenes. Such as the one after the fight with Arius, which conveys absolutely no real information and is legitimately confusing…
21. Cutscene: …earning two negatives
22. Camera: The dutch angle is NOT a good angle to use in general but especially to over-use
23. Atmosphere: The game’s overall atmosphere… isn’t, and it actively detracts from things
24. Camera: Bad camerawork in cutscenes
25. Story Sequencing: Lucia’s sequencing is, somehow, even worse! Sometimes you literally just teleport to a new area, no transition or explanation
26. Outro: The Dante ending is bad, bad, bad, bad… years and years later I remember it as one of the least satisfying, worst endings I’ve seen. It reminds me of the ending of Ride To Hell Retribution, and that’s saying something…
27. Outro: …earning it…
28. Outro: …a full three negatives
29. Pacing: The pacing of this is just absolutely all over the place

Gameplay Positives:

1. NG+: There is… in fact… a new game plus
2. Guidance and Flow: Usage of red orbs to indicate required direction (as well as camera swoops)

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Intro: This isn’t the worst Intro I’ve ever played, but it is up there. Long boring corridors, long boring fight sequences, no setpieces, no tutorialization, no design at all…
2. Intro: …leading to two negatives
3. Level: Stage 2 and its lack of indicators and awful samey corridor design
4. Level: Stage 3 and its lack of indicators and its unbalanced timing crap
5. Boss: Jokatgulm is… so many levels of awful. Tentacles respawn too fast, the whole thing has too much health, attacks too frequently, camera gets in the way, and even ignoring all the aggravations the boss is just plain boring…
6. Boss: …leading to two negatives
7. Level: Stage 4 continues the wonderful trend of awful with big empty swaths of nothing, already repeat boss fights, the stupid tanks…
8. Boss: …and that damned infested helicopter, which is only not worse because the first THREE encounters with it are optional (not that anything indicates this though)…
9. Boss: …giving that damned helicopter two negatives
10. Level: Stage 9 and its stupid ‘literally use the mechanics in a bad way to avoid the game’s mechanics’ in order to progress bullcrap
11. Level: Then Stage 10 starts in with ‘find the pixel’ amidst camera and dark and brown
12. Boss: Mothra. It’s an add fight where the adds can spawn quickly, eat you quickly, take out HUGE chunks of your health, are difficult to dodge due to reliance on ranged weapons and animation locking, and keep spawning until you kill the thing they’re in the way of, all while the cameraman is completely drunk. This is the worst fight so far in this game…
13. Boss: …earning…
14. Boss: …three negatives
15. Boss: The Guardian non-fight is even worse than Mothra fight, good lord. It’s so bad I’m not sure I can explain it properly. You’re in the inside of a sphere which is constantly moving and if you get too far away from the middle you take a lot of damage, while four floating enemies are after you, and you have to destroy these diamond things. There’s no feedback, no shadows, no depth perception, the enemies respawn infinitely, they also ‘eat’ your targeting to prevent you from aiming properly, the whole thing is…
16. Boss: …SO, so bad…
17. Boss: …no words I give can describe it
18. Camera: Special bonus negative for the camera just for that one fight, as it is legitimately nauseating and cannot keep up with the terrain shifting constantly like that
19. Controls: Special bonus negative for the controls actively fighting against you during said fight
20. Boss: Arius (first fight) is the definition of a non boss
21. Level: Mission 14 is already boring (go find the things in a huge empty city) but add onto that infinitely respawning enemies, no real direction, camera trickery, and dutch angles and you’ve got a recipe…
22. Level: …for two negatives
23. Level: Mission 15 is… just… what? It’s a ‘kill the enemies under a timer’ but boring
24. Level: Then there’s mission 16. Confusing corridors with vague visuals and boring fetch questing
25. Boss: Theeen there’s Trismagia. This dude is approaching an actual boss fight with variable attacks, but there’s very little feedback on what’s what and the targeting issue returns once again
26. Boss: Arius is honestly even worse than last time, being a non boss plus targeting issues plus adds (which is like half the bosses in this game honestly)
27. Encounter Density: Far too many padding fights
28. Encounter Design: There is none
29. Enemy Design: It’s… not there
30. Enemy Variety: It’s… there
31. Kit: An absence of kit makes for unfun gameplay
32. Viscerality: Anti viscerality, that’s what we’re here for. Fails on all three points
33. Controls: The game doesn’t control super great
34. Camera: Bad in general
35. Camera: Nausea inducing
36. Audio Spam: So I’ve actually heard worse, but usually that worse is for individual moments or bosses or levels, here it’s just a nonstop barrage of noise from everything (mostly the guns, in a game that emphasizes using guns) so…
37. Audio Spam: …a full…
38. Audio Spam: …three negatives
39. Music: Boring and repetitive
40. Map: The map is about as useful and ‘good’ as the DMC 1 map
41. Enemy AI: There’s probably worse AI then this, but I can’t think of any right now…
42. Enemy AI: …earning it…
43. Enemy AI: …three negatives
44. Info In Game: Good luck figuring out anything, really, in game
45. Core Combat: It’s boring
46. Core Combat: It’s boring
47. Core Combat: It’s BORING
48. Itemization: Enemies give too few orbs, and everythings costs entirely too much, AND those upgrades are badly designed…
49. Itemization: …for…
50. Itemization: …three negatives
51. Difficulty Options: Same general options from DMC 1
52. Difficulty Curve: While understandable why…
53. Difficulty Curve: …I’m not even sure there is one honestly
54. Level: So Lucia’s first level is exactly what I want in a DMC level; a big empty boring village with nothing to do, enemies who have no real attack patterns, unclear (or outright absent) directions, and it’s over at a weird point
55. Boss: The refight with the stupid aquatic boss
56. Boss: The monkey refight
57. Control: So the game has this thing where if you fall down, you can do this lengthy flourish when you get up. That’s cool… but it takes forever and you are fully vulnerable the ENTIRE time, so it almost inevitably leads to just getting hit (or knocked down) again
58. Boss: So Mothra the second time is just as bad…
59. Boss: …screw that fight
60. Level: So Lucia’s underwater level sucks with a capital crap. The underwater part itself isn’t actually THAT bad but the navigation above water is just awful
61. Boss: Then there’s the underwater boss, with terrible camera and the inability to lock on in a game designed around lock on
62. Boss: The return of the awful, awful tri head boss
63. Outro: So there’s the final boss fight with Argosax, first form, and it’s just… the worst…
64. Outro: …earning it…
65. Outro: …three negatives

Story Positives:

1. Intro: One of the better Intros in gaming. Silly, serious, tone, animation, acting, presentation, camera, just… everything…
2. Intro: …earning it…
3. Intro: …three positives
4. Atmosphere: In the Intro the game immediately establishes the tone of the work
5. Cutscene: The end of 1 and beginning of 2 is a great establishing moment for both Virgil and Arkham and just oozes cool factor in addition to shoving exposition down our throats rapid fire
6. Humor: The game is legitimately funny more than a few times
7. Character: Dante’s characterization
8. Character: Dante’s character arc
9. Character: Vergil is well characterized and just so damned cool
10. Character: Arkham is honestly probably the best character here, for how monstrously horrible he really is
11. Character: Lady and her inclusion was a great idea and makes for a great dynamic for the others
12. Cutscene: Dante and Lady’s first meeting is a great establisher for both but, let’s be real, it’s also well animated, directed, voiced, and is just fun
13. Voice Acting: The acting chops of each character are top notch
14. Brickwork: Good brickwork periodically
15. Visual Storytelling: Surprisingly good visual storytelling in enemy and terrain design
16. Spritework: Good enemy sprites
17. Cutscene: The big contest between Vergil and Dante is one of the best scenes in the game and encapsulates so, so much between style and flair and efficiency and animation and character and implication and foreshadowing…
18. Cutscene: …earning…
19. Cutscene: …three positives
20. Cutscene: The ‘running down the tower’ scene is silly fluff, but it’s cool fluff
21. Cutscene: And, again, the big scene between all four major characters, and the reveal of Arkham
22. Cutscene: Yeah, the motorcycle bit is pretty cool
23. Cutscene: The entire Arkham scene is great, but when Vergil shows up and the way the two play off each other perfectly, the way they so clearly know each other’s styles and moves, and the way they both agree to unite against Arkham, is the other ‘best scene in the game’…
24. Cutscene: …and deserves…
25. Cutscene: …three positives
26. Outro: The Outro isn’t the best I’ve seen, but it’s damned good, wrapping things up with all the principle characters in a very satisfying way
27. Animation: In general, the motion capture is excellent
28. Plot: The core plot of Arkham and Vergil’s interactions, Dante’s intersection, and Lady’s intervention is actually pretty damned engaging
29. Story Sequencing: In total contrast to the previous game, events follow each other very neatly and smoothly throughout
30. Storyboarding: Some of the better storyboarding I’ve seen in gaming in general…
31. Storyboarding: …earning two positives

Story Negatives:

1. Lindblum Effect: The city feels… not. It feels like a stage, and the total absence of life or movement hurts the work for me
2. Writing: The Jester fights actively hurt the overall consistency and pacing of the work
3. Pacing: The story literally just… stops during the retread segment of the game

Gameplay Positives:

1. NG+: Mission Select is just there, enabled, from the get go, and of course retains all progress…
2. NG+: …earning two positives
3. Core Combat: What more do I really need to say here?
4. Core Combat: Two positives
5. Controls: Combos and their control being in the hands of the player
6. Controls: Control fluidity in general
7. Difficulty Options: Actually changes up enemy AI and moveset
8. Boss: Cerberus has a neat mechanic (the ice armor and head removal) and a great variety of attacks
9. Boss: Agni and Rudra have great kit, compliment each other nicely, and I love how there’s actual tactics in fighting them (oh and their parry design is great)…
10. Boss: …earning two positives
11. Boss: The first Vergil fight is simple but very well executed, and one of the funner fights to-date…
12. Boss: …earning it two positives
13. Boss: Nevan is another of those great fights, seemingly simple but with good escalation and surprisingly good cue design…
14. Boss: …earning two positives
15. Boss: Vergil 2 isn’t quite as good as last time, but still a very fun and excellent boss fight
16. Level: Mission 12 is actually pretty fun, with the gimmick of enemies dropping more health than usual, constant devil trigger, and taking constant chip damage making things fun and interesting
17. Outro: That final fight with Vergil is, technically, ‘just’ an iteration of his previous two, but it’s improved in every way, and is honestly one of the better fights (visuals, sound design, arena, moveset, music) in the franchise…
18. Outro: …earning it…
19. Outro: …three positives
20. Kit: The Cerberus nunchuck are honestly just awesome, good reach and range with a ton of possible moves and combos…
21. Kit: …earning it two positives
22. Kit: Rebellion isn’t the best but it’s still a good sword with a good range
23. Kit: Agni and Rudra have great priority, speed, chaining, and closing and it’s just very fluid and very fun to use…
24. Kit: …but more to the point has actual purpose and variety over the other weapons
25. Kit: Beowulf is a bit less than Ifrit was, but still just as fun
26. Weapon Swapping: Live swapping in between swings? Yes please
27. Styles Kit: While locking them in limits this to just one positive, the styles system is pretty legit
28. Style System: As well as how it varies up how you play across the various weapons
29. Builds: Just about any combo of weapons and Styles works
30. Enemy Variety: Obvious
31. Enemy Design: While not the best, there’s still some good enemy design throughout
32. Core Mechanic: Style timer and score indicator
33. Kit: The Vergil playstyle of Yamato is heavily focused on timing, style, and reach and I love it, honestly just as fun as the other two weapons I’m rather fond of…
34. Kit: …earning it two positives
35. Minigame: Bloody Palace is an optional grind fest but the differing routes and saved ‘progress’ help
36. Animation: Pretty much required for a game like this one
37. Enemy AI: While not the best, it’s tight, responsive, and variable
38. Mid-Mission Checkpoints: Generally good continue system
39. Music: Naturally there’s some bangers here, ironically mostly the stuff that plays for specific fights or scenes
40. Replayability: Yeah between the styles and builds and mission select and everything, the game is quite replayable
41. Viscerality: The sound, the visuals, the presentation of combat in this game is phenomenal…
42. Viscerality: …earning it two positives

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Difficulty: Overtuning
2. Boss: …the placement of Cerberus is arguably wrong. He’s legitimately one of the hardest bosses in the game… and he’s the first boss
3. Level: The interconnectivity of the earlier tower levels honestly works against it
4. Enemy Design: Irritating enemies ahoy
5. Walkthroughitis: There are several ‘now where?’ moments throughout the tower stages
6. Pacing: The Jester fights aren’t bad, but they’re complete nothing burgers and, worse, make no sense at all and completely destroy the pacing of each level they’re in
7. Boss: The doppelganger fight honestly sucks. First off it’s boring (lure into area, hit a couple of times, rinse and repeat) and second the resets, total invuln, and long periods of non interactiveness make the whole fight drag
8. Level: Mission 14 and the padding returns
9. Level: Mission 15 and the quest for more padding
10. Padding: The entire later section of the game really serves no purpose other than to drag the game artificially onwards
11. Boss: The boss refights are back… as if this was a Megaman game or something
12. Boss: Gigapede is the worst combination of boring and long invuln periods boss design
13. Boss: The second phase of Arkham should be a Hyperbeam Moment, and instead it just makes it aggravating
14. Intro: The Intro is… weirdly lacking. The first mission is a fairly boring fight interrupted by pop ups, the second is a difficulty wall, and then we’re smashed into Cerberus

Story Positives:

1. Intro: This is honestly an even better Intro than 3’s in several ways. It has so many nuanced details, emotional establishment, characterization, movement, animation, choreography, and might be one of the better story beats of the entire game…
2. Intro: …earning it…
3. Intro: …three positives
4. Writing: Bonus positive for the amount of showing not telling in the Intro
5. MSQ: And a bonus positive for the (optional) tutorial continuing the aforementioned Intro
6. Cutscene: The scene where Nero is reborn via Yamato is, let’s be honest, just plain legit
7. Character: Dante is a bit out of character at times, but he’s still Dante
8. Character: Nero, weirdly enough, gets some of the best characterization in this one
9. Animation: Excellent usage of animation for the characters throughout
10. Storyboarding: While it’s a bit too ‘cool for cool’s sakes’, there is still some legitimately good storyboarding going on for the cutscenes…
11. Storyboarding: …earning two positives
12. Doodads: Good doodad usage in the city
13. Brickwork: Best brickwork in the game is early on, in the city
14. Brickwork: While varied in quality, there is generally good brickwork throughout
15. Visual Storytelling: Lots of showcasing that tells on display
16. Voice Acting: Generally good voice acting
17. Character: Agnus is probably the best character in the game by himself
18. Cutscenes: Dante’s cutscenes as he gets the Gilgamesh and Pandora are just awesome
19. Cutscene: Dante and Agnus is the best cutscene in the game for sheer enjoyment. The dialogue is so awful… and so brilliantly presented and showcased, with great usage of camera, music, effects, and voice acting…
20. Cutscene: …earning it…
21. Cutscene: …three positives
22. Spritework: Excellent spritework for enemies and players

Story Negatives:

1. Pacing: Early game pacing is honestly terrible as the plot just sort of… meanders
2. Character: Kyrie is such a non character it actually detracts from the narrative. She’s a great idea (a civilian who can’t hang at the level of the mains, but is important nonetheless) but they do nothing with this other than make her a plot coupon
3. Character: Credo is such a nothingburger, a typical General Leo with nothing to back him up
4. Cutscene: The scene where the Savior is activated is… REALLY bad, even by this series’ standards. A whole lot of people standing around doing nothing, then suddenly bursting into action, a whole lot of incompetence, and a whole lot of bad dialogue…
5. Cutscene: …earning it two negatives
6. Cutscene Incompetence: Except… the opposite. There’s a segregation between gameplay and story in cutscenes that goes above and beyond
7. Writing: General writing flaws…
8. Dialogue: …which really drifts into the dialogue especially
9. Pacing: Good lord that nice big block of meandering as Dante
10. Outro: For a game that leans so heavily on Nero and Kyrie, that outro sure did suck

Gameplay Positives:

1. Tutorialization: While hand holdy, the tutorialization is well designed and a good example of tell, demonstrate, repeat
2. NG+: As per what is now the usual, immediately available mission select…
3. NG+: …which carries progress across the save
4. Intro: While there’s better, the Intro does a good job of getting across the basic loops, and has an actually decent boss at the end of it
5. Core Mechanic: Style indicator, as before
6. Boss: Ice frog is interesting, has a few tactics that work against it, and is in general just fun
7. Boss: The Credo fight is, honestly, probably the best boss fight in the game (as usual for the series, it’s the one on one duel) and does a lot right…
8. Boss: …earning two positives
9. Difficulty Options: As per 3, the difficulty options do a good job of varying up AI and attack patterns based on your setting…
10. Core Combat: I mean come on. Of course the game is fun to fight in…
11. Core Combat: …earning two positives
12. Enemy Design: Generally decent enemy design
13. Core Mechanic: Arm and revving as Nero’s primary kit
14. Kit: Rebellion is, as usual, a well designed weapon
15. Core Mechanic: The Styles themselves continue to be enjoyable
16. Kit: And the additional positive for how Styles vary up your gameplay
17. Core Mechanic: Finally being able to swap Styles on the fly
18. Music: Some really fun and enjoyable music throughout
19. Controls: The combos once again being fully in the hands of the player
20. Controls: And are quite enjoyable to play with in general
21. Animation: As usual, decent enemy animations for indicators and combat
22. Enemy AI: The enemy’s AI continues to be enjoyable as it was in 3
23. Mid-Mission Checkpoints: Generally good continue system, though placement is a little wonky at times
24. Boss: Agnus 2 is the first refight that’s actually fun and worth a damn
25. Kit: Gilgamesh is, as usual, legit
26. Kit: General weapons kit
27. Difficulty Options: Sparda mode is actually quite fun
28. Viscerality: Not quite as good as 3, but still there
29. Minigame: Bloody Palace is still a decent minigame
30. Replayability: Yep, very replayable, as per usual
31. Kit: Vergil and the Yamato are pretty legit, very well designed, and quite fun
32. Kit: Trish is exceptionally well designed, her attacks fluidly going in and out of each other as she has great movement and reach…
33. Kit: …earning her two positives
34. Kit: Okay, you win game, Lady also gets the same two positives for how unique, fun, and engaging she is to play as…
35. Kit: …cuz, hell yeah

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bug: Game was literally unplayable until manually hex editing the EXE file…
2. Bug: …which is absolutely bonkers
3. Level: So then there’s the torture room… which is easier than it looks of course, but is TERRIBLY designed to have awful margins of error, inconsistent indicators, and of course the refight every gorramned time you fall…
4. Level: …leading to two negatives
5. Guidance: So where do I go next? As with 3, there are portions where you can massively backtrack when you shouldn’t, and the game lets you… for good or ill
6. Minigame: So the dice… it’s relatively inoffensive, but it’s slow, boring, and almost totally unexplained
7. Level: The first Forest stage is irritating in general but that stupid segment where if you screw up you start over, hard hitting flying enemies with barrier HP attack you and if you let them fall their barriers regenerate, and if you fall you fight a recurring encounter, sucks…
8. Level: …earning two negatives
9. Level: Mission 11 is unnecessarily irritating with its ‘platforming’
10. Difficulty: The game is heavily balanced around the arm and revving, and its especially bad on boss fights
11. Enemy Design: There are just several very irritating enemies to fight
12. MTX: Paid DLC cheats… ‘nuff said
13. Level: The retreat through the HQ level is already irritating (and backtracking!) but the flashing lights are just awful eye cancer
14. Level: Then there’s the backtracking through the forest! Which in addition to backtracking isn’t fun (and the audio cues screw up periodically)
15. Boss: The Echidna boss refight with Dante is a boss refight with Dante
16. Level: Forest 2 backtracking is awful, but then you add in the padding trap enemies! Oh and lots of forced encounters
17. Level: Then there’s the Castle… again…
18. Boss: Then there’s the frog… again…
19. Level: Then there’s the lab… again (but worse!)…
20. Boss: Then there’s Duriel… AGAIN…
21. Level: Mission 19 is just… awful, between boss refights…
22. Level: …and the return of that unnecessarily padded dice mechanic
23. Enemy Variety: Lacking
24. Encounter Rate: Way too many
25. Outro: The second to last boss is boring, and commits a lot of sins (rushes back in a melee focused game, while summoning adds, which he respawns instantly, while having trial and error gameplay) and worst of all once you figure out the method to success the fight is just a boring refight…
26. Outro: …for…
27. Outro: …three negatives
28. Outro: And a bonus negative for the final pseudo QTE and the final escort quest

Story Positives:

1. Codex: Good stuff in there, mostly in character, but most importantly…
2. World Building: …actually providing some real world building finally
3. Doodads: The doodad utilization in the initial city is legitimately excellent
4. Brickwork: Similarly the brickwork design in the entire city is just fantastic
5. Visual Storytelling: And… yeah I’m talking about the city area again
6. Character: Nero has a few bumbles but he’s still Nero and he’s still the same wholesome, cool kid he has been for a while now
7. Character: Nico is just a treat every time she’s on the screen
8. Character: V is, ironically, the best character this time around (just like Arkham and Agnus… huh…) and gets all the best moments, development, and character…
9. Character: …pushing him to double positive territory
10. Character: Dante and Vergil bounce off each other well but don’t really move that much this time around
11. Animation: Motion capture is top notch this time around…
12. Animation: …earning two positives
13. External Continuity: While it touches on 1, 2, and 4, this game is a near direct sequel to 3 (and designed to conclude it, though I’m not sure I agree with that)
14. Banter: Griffin (and the rest) have some great banter with each other
15. Voice Acting: Everyone is well voice acted and directed this time around
16. Cutscene: Nico geeking out over meeting Dante is adorable and wholesome…
17. Cutscene: …and Dante dancing it up with Fauste just clinches it
18. Cutscene: Okay, it’s all kind of condensed into one scene, but I DO like Nero’s big moment and his refusal to let things go the way they’ve been going is a nice thematic point
19. Outro: The outro stumbles a few times, but it’s good enough to crawl into positive territory… mostly for that excellent scene between Nico and Nero
20. Babylon 5 Effect: It’s minor, but it’s there, mostly for V
21. Storyboarding: Excellent storyboarding, though not quite as good as, say, 3’s or 4’s

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: So despite the quality of presentation on display, I actually don’t care for where it starts. It tries (too hard) to establish the stakes and Urizen and it just falls flat with how hard they Worf everyone
2. Brickwork: The latter half of the game
3. Brickwork: Honestly the tree levels all kinda suck here
4. Plot: Failure to capitalize on the ‘mystery’
5. Character: Nero literally has contradictory character motivations and doesn’t have the time or breathing room it needs to make that work
6. Plot: The final insistence upon ‘settling things’ is sort of… weirdly misplaced

Gameplay Positives:

1. Animation: Enemy animations are their usual on-point selves. Forgive me for not being verbose, when I originally typed this all up it was immediately after having reviewed the entire series, so I was running out of ways to describe it. But I understand some people will just pop in at, say, this point and be like ‘what’s he referencing?’ so let’s try to explain this a bit. Enemy animations have a ‘wind up’ period who’s purpose is to convey to the player what attack they’re about to do, so the player can adapt to it. This is not just done consistently in DMC5, which is already positive worthy, but they do this cool thing where the duration of the wind up varies based on the attack AND the relatively difficulty of the enemy. Meaning bosses can be made harder simply by shrinking that window. It’s good stuff…
2. Animation: …earning the full…
3. Animation: …triple positives
4. Boss: The Angelo team. A fun and solid encounter with the primary (Proto) being backed up by four blocker/defenders who harrass you (the Scudos)
5. Boss: Artemis. Big vuln periods in her first phase, and amusingly her staying airborn actually helps your comboing. Combine with some drones to help you get air and nice big line attacks to encourage evasion…
6. Boss: …and of course a phase 2 where she’s far more mobile and has bigger wind ups (still focusing on evasion) and even bigger vuln windows if you succeed, but very punishing if you don’t
7. Boss: Cavaliere Angelo and the tutorial on parrying. So if it’s not obvious each boss has a bit of a ‘theme’ (think Metal Gear Revengeance if you’re familiar with it). Cavaliere Angelo is all about blocking / parrying. As with Artemis this is punishing if you fail, but very rewarding if you succeed. Unlike some bosses you have to make vuln windows here, but if you do they’re nice and big, and followed by him lunging across the entire arena away from you and charging a super nuke hit (while still remaining vulnerable to damage). Can I just say how refreshing DMC5 bosses are? None of the usual nonsense we see in other games (of all genres) just solid design and general fun. Anywho…
8. Boss: …obviously this boss rocks. Speaking purely personally this is probably my favorite fight in the game just because of how satisfying it is
9. Boss: Gilgamesh. This is your standard big boss fight in a beat ’em up. You hit his legs, you make your way up to his back, and you wail on him. Don’t mistake that as a negative though, this is very well constructed (as honestly every boss is in this game). His vuln windows are good, his attacks are well telegraphed but also huge and require understanding movement tech to dodge. In fact, continuing the theme, this boss is all about understanding your own mobility in a fight
10. Boss: Goliath. The end of the Intro and functionally our tutorial boss, so he’s our introduction to most of what the bosses in this game will be. Big hits (easy to dodge and well telegraphed, but it’s there to get you used to the idea). Big sweeping hits that leave him weak for long periods of time to get counter attacks in. And a nice dynamic environment that plays along with the fight as it develops. And I do admit I’m really fond of the sheer spectacle of it…
11. Boss: …solid double positive
12. Boss: King Cerberus is another example of your big sweeping bosses, like Goliath or Gilgamesh, but much meaner than both. But in addition to his usual big sweeping attacks with big hits, he swaps between his three forms (fire, ice, lightning). Fire leaves stuff on the ground and attacks far more aggressively. Ice does massive AOE attacks. And Lightning stays at range more and has multiple orb and lightning attacks. Nothing super fancy…
13. Boss: …but still solid
14. Boss: Malphas. Fighting a creature who’s weakpoint is on its back as Nero certainly works well immediately, and her teleport spamming rewarding reflexes and avoidance (notice she moves very fast and hits a wide area). She also has absolutely huge vuln phases if you successfully endure her assault or knock her out of it. Fun and frenetic…
15. Boss: …another solid double
16. Boss: The DMC1 Trio of Griffon, Shadow, and Nightmare. Or should we call these the memories of Nelo Angelo? Anyways. This is a clever way to do a mirror match, as almost all of their atacks are the same ones V has been using for much of the game. Griffon is a perfect ranged harrasser, Shadow is the melee berserker, and Nightmare serves as lynchpin for both (and heals both if they get downed). Great council fight
17. Boss: Urizen 3, aka the last Urizen fight. A lot of his attacks are interesting in that they’re hard to dodge or parry but have a pretty long cooldown phase (aka after he attacks he’s vulnerable). He likes to teleport away and hit the arena with beams of death, serving as a bit of area denial
18. Boss: Vergil 1 is just such a fantastic fight. Ranged attacks for when he’s at a distance, very tight timing making him terribly difficult to dodge or parry, a large variety of attacks once in melee, variable timing in his windows, nice combination of teleporting and walking to keep the pacing good… I could just sit here and type up all his attacks but this is what DMC excels at most, these types of one on one duel fights. Even his second phase where his attacks get much meaner are natural developments of his existing attacks so you’re already in the groove for parrying or avoiding and countering…
19. Boss: …making it one of the best fights in the game…
20. Boss: …and an easy triple
21. Boss: And then there’s the final boss fight. In some ways it’s a Hyperbeam Moment because they give you an AMAZING kit to play with (essentially a combination of how Nero’s always played and Dante) which feels fluid to play as after everything else in the game. But Vergil isn’t pulling any punches at this point, having all his previous attacks combined with several new expressions of them, and some new counters and special interactions…
22. Boss: …another solid…
23. Boss: …triple fight. LOVE these fights
24. Controls: The game controls like a dream, using all kinds of tricks to allow for the level of precision these games really demand…
25. Controls: …earning it…
26. Controls: …three positives. This is good because it naturally informs…
27. Core Combat: …the combat. This is as fluid and smooth and awesome as it ever has been, in ways I’d fail at describing…
28. Core Combat: …earning it…
29. Core Combat: …three positives
30. Core Mechanic: Of course the combat doesn’t stand alone. Good controls, good core combat, and good mechanics supporting it! First up we have Dante and his Style Switching. Being able to swap in mid combat to each style which plays substantially differently from each other is already awesome. The fact that so many of them have natural synergies with each other just makes it even better. This is the definition of a high skill ceiling moveset…
31. Core Mechanic: …and deserves its own…
32. Core Mechanic: …triple
33. Core Mechanic: Loadouts for Dante and Nero. The fact that you can just set up however you want and swap between them at will is fantastic and a great QoL feature, and really allows the player to try out all kinds of combos…
34. Core Mechanic: …easy double
35. Difficulty Options: The usual high quality difficulty options (and more selectable this time around too)…
36. Difficulty Options: …earning two positives
37. Encounter Design: For one of the first times in the series, thought is put into which enemies should be fought alongside which others
38. Enemy AI: Enemy AI is, of course, very good (and variable based on difficulty)…
39. Enemy AI: …for two positives
40. Enemy Design: For I believe the first time in the franchise, no irritating enemies, just high quality throughout…
41. Enemy Design: …earning two positives
42. Enemy Variety: Enemies have a huge variance in how they can be tackled and how they fight…
43. Enemy Variety: …earning two positives
44. Kit: Dante, Balrog. So! Our big unarmed kit of the game. This is already crazy complex, as it has two full movesets (fists and legs), as well as Ignition mode which can be triggered based on setup. So lemme pause a sec and admit something. I like to be verbose (nowadays, not when this Run was originally ran) and try to give as much depth as I feel comfortable doing in these notes, so people know exactly where I’m coming from on this. Thing is that would involve paragraph upon paragraph for the weapons in this game. There is WAY too much you can do with these things. Each one has the same level of depth and complexity as entire Kits in other games. So we’re going to try to parse that down into something a bit more readable. So! Fast hits, Ignition, big ol’ hits, air juggles, and rolling attacks. Then kick mode which is far more about sweeping hits and more closers but same general inputs for similar outputs. And all of this makes Balrog fantastic…
45. Kit: …and an easy…
46. Kit: …triple
47. Kit: Right, before we cover more weapons we should mention Styles. So Dante can swap Styles (I mentioned that earlier) and each one modifies the Kit of different weapons. Gunslight changes up guns, Swordmaster the melees, and Royal Guard is for when you want to just be an incredible badass (my personal favorite, by the way, even if I suck at it). Oh and there’s Trickster too
48. Kit: Rebellion is probably the most ‘vanilla’ of Dante’s arsenal, which is really saying a lot. Tons of combos, good reach, Stinger which is useful all by itself, great sword
49. Kit: So hey, I mentioned the Cavaliere already, let’s talk about that. It’s a friggin’ motorcycle. I’m almost not sure what to add to that, but let’s talk about it mechanically for a sec; This is your big, slow, heavy swinging mace of doom type weapon. It’s, amusingly, also the chainsaw type weapon (lots of little hits). This makes for a great combo and can absolutely body trash packs, and if you get it in a nice big vuln window you can really go to town on a boss
50. Kit: For sheer fun I think the King Cerberus is my favorite of Dante’s arsenal this time around. Short range fast hits, great range, some good closers, and the ice attacks hit like a truck. The lightning stuff also gives you great coverage, and good lord the stuff you can do with fire when you use this in Swordmaster is bonkers. I think this is on the level of Balrog…
51. Kit: …thus earning…
52. Kit: …another triple
53. Kit: So this is going to be a bundle. Dante gets a bunch of guns this time around and each of them only really has one or two attacks (plus a few extra in Gunslinger) and that’s it. Don’t mistake me, they’re good attacks, there’s just not the variety needed for more complex positives. Still, Dr. Faust is amazing, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the double Kalina Ann
54. Kit: So hey, Nero. Nero of course uses Red Queen and it has a ton of options and combos, and of course can be powered up via the rev mechanic to do even more stuff. This is way more intuitive than I’m making it sound, and it’s a great kit to just get into the zone for and absolutely body everything. There’s also a timing mechanic on when you hit your combos which changes them substantially, giving you tons of options for reach and movement (he’s got multiple closers). This is fantastic…
55. Kit: …and an easy…
56. Kit: …triple
57. Kit: So, Nero has these things called Breakers. They’re consumables he equips on his fake arm but here’s the unique thing about them; You can spend them to do a unique attack, but you can also just USE them and not break them. Both options are valid depending on circumstance, and you get new breakers in the level (or can buy them in between levels). I hate to use what sound like buzzwords but let me be clear; This is wonderfully granular AND dynamic. How Nero plays with Breakers is all on the player, from which you equip, to the order you get them in, to if you break them, to when you break them. It’s a GREAT system…
58. Kit: …so consider this a triple for…
59. Kit: …the breakers themselves
60. Core Mechanic: But the system I just described deserves its own mention for all the reasons I just said. So, uh, repeat everything I just said…
61. Kit: …for another…
62. Kit: …triple
63. Kit: V is seemingly simple but massively complex under the hood, and is just an absolute joy to play as…
64. Kit: …earning him…
65. Kit: …three positives by himself
66. Kit: Vergil
67. Level: There’s some really good escalation on display, introducing an idea and then expanding upon it, for both Nero and V
68. Mid-Mission Checkpointing: Pretty good in general, though the rez-through-red-orbs mechanic helps
69. Minigame: Bloody Palace, timer, and general fun
70. Minigame: The Void is one of the better ‘training room’ things I’ve seen in gaming. Fully customizable, up and down, for a totally controllable and safe experience in getting used to enemies, animations, timing, moves, etc…
71. Minigame: …earning it…
72. Minigame: …three positives
73. Music: Yeah there’s some legit bangers
74. NG+: Usual mission selection awesomeness…
75. NG+: …and usual two positives
76. Outro: While it’s mostly a victory lap, the final fight against Vergil is legitimately satisfying
77. Replayability: Between all the additions and modes and, let’s be honest, the high quality of the content, the game gets…
78. Replayability: …two replayability positives
79. Tutorialization: The game lets you try out moves straight from the upgrade screen, which is just so good…
80. Tutorialization: …in addition to letting you try it yourself it also gives you exact inputs on how to do it…
81. Tutorialization: …earning three positives
82. Viscerality: So. First is the obvious, visuals. Historically speaking this is the first game we’ve covered that gets a full triple visual viscerality positive. Except it’s even more than that because we’re going to be giving positives on a per character basis. First is of course Dante. I mean, come on, of course Dante gets a triple visual. I’m especially fond of the Cerberus and Cavaliere weapons myself, but for now…
83. Viscerality: …the full…
84. Viscerality: …triple positive
85. Viscerality: But then there’s Dante’s audio! This isn’t AS good (and honestly Nero’s is better) but damned if there isn’t some great sound design here (again, the Cavaliere is a standout)…
86. Viscerality: …for another…
87. Viscerality: …triple. Yes I know I just said it’s ‘not as good’ but that doesn’t mean it’s not a triple
88. Viscerality: Then there’s impact. Of course Dante has tons of impact. Though again I feel like Nero nails this a bit better, but that’s inches amongst miles, because of course Dante feels like he’s just destroying everything…
89. Viscerality: …for that solid…
90. Viscerality: …triple
91. Viscerality: So then there’s Nero. Nero’s visuals aren’t as strong as Dante’s but, again, that’s not to say they’re not good…
92. Viscerality: …for a solid double
93. Viscerality: Where Nero REALLY shines is his audio design. The wonderful bass of his revolver, the roars as he’s zooming around, the engine revving. Nero’s audio Viscerality crushes it…
94. Viscerality: …for a strong…
95. Viscerality: …triple
96. Viscerality: I also think his impact is a bit better than Dante’s. If I can add a personal touch here. When I first played this game I wasn’t overly fond of Nero and his various mechanics. It wasn’t until the second time, when I cranked the diff up, that I really started to appreciate him. Nero FEELS awesome to play as. While his ceiling isn’t as high as Dante he’s honestly more satisfying, and that’s what Viscerality is all about…
97. Viscerality: …so there’s our second…
98. Viscerality: …triple
99. Viscerality: Consider this a bit of an aggregate for V. Oh I know V is super awesome to play as, he just isn’t anywhere near the scale of the other two, so he ‘merely’ gets…
100. Viscerality: …a double aggregate
101. Yoshi Drums: A precedence setter in Yoshi Drums as the songs and their escalations as you rank up are friggin’ awesome in general, but also give you additional encouragement to want to style as much as possible…
102. Yoshi Drums: …for…
103. Yoshi Drums: …three positives
104. Difficulty Curve: The game is generally well curved throughout
105. Guidance: The red orb usage is back
106. Intro: Generally good, good escalation and good lead up to Goliath
107. Song: Pull My Devil Trigger

Gameplay Negatives:

1. MTX: Same as last time, we have purchasable cheats (among other things)….
2. MTX: …leading to two negatives
3. Visual Distinction:
4. Padding: Mission 14 is, let’s be honest, pure padding (also boss refights!)
5. Padding: And then there’s Mission 15…
6. Padding: …and 16…

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Absolutely lovely brickwork everywhere
2. Brickwork/Spritework: Bonus point to both
3. Spritework: Absolutely gorgeous spritework
4. Doodads: Lovely doodad usage
5. Animations: And a bonus point for how everything from terrain to mobs bops to the beat

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Boss: Gleeokenspiel
2. Boss: Gohmaracas
3. Boss: Wizzroboe
4. Co-Op: Full proper campaign co-op…
5. Co-Op: …for two positives
6. Controls: Controls very tightly (as it has to)
7. Core Mechanic: The core rhythm mechanic is fantastic, and balances itself nicely on rewarding you for doing it right, punishing you but not too much but not too little for failing, and for paying attention to the movements and beats of all the enemies and projectiles…
8. Core Mechanic: …earning…
9. Core Mechanic: …three positives
10. Enemy Design: Almost every enemy in the game is well designed
11. Enemy Variety: And they all have a wide variety of how they’ll move, attack, and can be attacked
12. Fast Travel: Great fast travel system, usable just about anywhere and very quickly (and in combat) after finding the spot, and tons of fast travel nodes…
13. Fast Travel: …for two positives
14. Guidance: Usage of little hints for guides (my favorite are the blue butterflies)
15. HUD: Very tight HUD design, lots of info on display
16. Intro: While not extensive, a lot is explained in a very short time about what to do and how to play the game
17. Itemization: Lots of thought going into diamond, rupee, and kit placement
18. Kit: Generally good Zelda-esque kit
19. Level: Fire dungeon
20. Level: Frost dungeon
21. Level: Frozen lake
22. Level: Wind Dungeon (neat gimmick, usual fun dungeon crawling)
23. Map: The map isn’t the best, but it shows a huge amount of information in the legend at a glance
24. Music: I mean come on, of course the music’s a bop…
25. Music: …it’s the main reason we’re here
26. Starting Options: Mutators, and lots of ‘em
27. Outro: The Ganon fight where you control all three characters simultaneously is quite fun
28. Overworld: While it’s random, what’s there is good, interesting, and a nice connective tissue and way to progress
29. Sound Design: Usually good Zelda-esque sound design
30. Visual Distinction: Easy to discern things at a glance
31. Viscerality: Surprisingly good viscerality with the hits and the beats
32. Yoshi Drums: While there’s ‘only’ three layers to each song (menu, peace, combat) they’re VERY well tied into each other, and flow seamlessly…
33. Yoshi Drums: …earning two positives

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Early Game: Early game hell
2. Outro: That last dungeon is just enemy spam HELL
3. Overworld: Thanks to the random nature of the game, the overworld can just be… whatever

Story Positives:

1. Animations: Mostly the little cutscene animations, but they’re surprisingly good at expressing mood and tone
2. Atmosphere: The general vibe and tone of the game speaks for itself really
3. Architecture: The town itself is shockingly small but a lot of work is done, in typical SNES RPG fashion, to make it feel substantially larger than it really is
4. Background Lore: Surprisingly large amount scattered everywhere, in items, layout, character interactions, etc.
5. Brickwork: A bonus positive for Summer…
6. Brickwork: Special mention to the town itself
7. Brickwork: The game’s visuals are legitimately gorgeous and do a great job of getting you into the setting
8. Brickwork: …and Winter
9. Brickwork: …Fall…
10. Characters: While few characters individually stand out, most are memorable and interesting…
11. Characters: …for two positives
12. Cutscenes: The character ‘cutscenes’ are probably the biggest meat of story in the game and deserve their own recognition
13. Doodads: Do I need to explain this one?
14. Doodads: Honestly, two positives
15. Intro: The Intro is pretty strong all things considered, despite Grandpa’s bed
16. Prime Opt: Most Heart events form the core story of the game and are, generally, good stuff…
17. Prime Opt: Special mention to some of the better events, notably Shane’s and Abigail’s
18. Prime Opt: While there’s some variance, there’s some legitimately sweet dialogue and moments for several of the romances
19. Prime Opt: …worthy of two general positives
20. Spritework: While not the best, there’s still some good spritework on display here
21. Visual Storytelling: Hard to summarize as it’s everywhere. What the characters have up in their rooms, how the town is laid out, the different houses, just tons of it
22. World Building: A surprisingly well fleshed out world behind everything
23. Sound Design: Decent, if variable in quality, soundscape for areas

Story Negatives:

1. Prime Opt: Inconsistent quality of character heart stories

Gameplay Positives:

1. Co-Op: Good, proper, well thought out campaign co-op…
2. Co-Op: …earning two positives
3. Controls: Game controls reasonably well for most activities
4. Core Mechanic: Crop growth time is thought out in relation to…
5. Core Mechanic: …sales price as well as…
6. Core Mechanic: …position, size, time, and water consumption (real life factors rather than in game ones)
7. Core Mechanic: All of this makes for an excellent, in-depth, well fleshed out economy of price, time, energy, and sale…
8. Core Mechanic: …earning two positives
9. Guidance: The game does a lot to help keep you roaming and exploring
10. Difficulty Curve: The game in general is very tightly designed in terms of time and energy costs for most activities, both becoming resources you can spend however you like (with one notable exception)…
11. Difficulty Curve: …earning two positives
12. Early Game: The early game has an enormous amount of things you can do and, combined with the aforementioned energy economy, is designed to sort of funnel you into trying things and deciding upon which things you want to do when…
13. Early Game: …earning two positives
14. HUD: HUD design is smart, neat, and efficient
15. Info In Game: About half the info you really need is readily available in game through smart tooltips, mouseovers, and quests
16. Interface: Generally good interface design
17. Intro: The game’s intro is a long one (befitting such a long game) but its surprisingly good at what it does. There are birthdays, quests, and events positioned to help get you into what to do, and mechanics are unlocked quickly and readily
18. Music: While inconsistent, there’s some good music there
19. Core Mechanic: The reputation mechanic is arguably the most core mechanic in the game, but even from a gameplay perspective it does several things right (indicators of who you’ve talked to and when, gifts, current progress, and of course there’s tangible rewards)
20. Overworld: The design and layout of the areas and how they connect with one another
21. Progression Curve: The various ‘leveling’ is one of the better use-it-level-it systems I’ve seen (mostly because of how the game is structured) and so the progression is actually quite tight, unlocking new items and new recipes as you go
22. QoL: Lots of quality of life features speckled throughout…
23. QoL: …earning…
24. QoL: …three positives
25. Starter Options: Good general starting options
26. Visual Distinction: Great visual distinction
27. Mid Game: One of the strongest mid-games I’ve seen, as all the tons upon tons of content from early game really comes into its own (finally) and the door is essentially blown open on what you can do, and yet it perfectly continues to fit the multiple playstyles approach…
28. Mid Game: …earning it…
29. Mid Game: …three positives
30. Core Mechanic: So, Husbandry. It’s not as in depth as the farming, but it’s still clearly well thought out and well designed. Purchasing animals is a huge up front cost (in opposition to seeds) but provides slow, steady, and reliable income and goods, which helps with reputation and money both, and as long as you’re on managing your coop and barn will also be a steady incline in quality, and there’s the usual double layer of processing to help the entire chain too…
31. Core Mechanic: …this is on top of the variety of animals and their respective products and general visual flair…
32. Core Mechanic: …earning it three positives
33. Core Mechanic: Then there’s processing in general, which tends to require specific resources to get going but once you have it set up can improve the value of (almost) any good. This works in general, of course, but adds a necessary layer of complexity to everything…
34. Core Mechanic: …for two positives
35. Level: Spring is the perfect tutorial month. Mostly early, quick growing crops available, lots of basic and easy to catch fish, and several events and birthdays peppered
36. Level: Summer then augments this with even more birthdays (because by this point surely you’ve figured out who’s where), and a nice mixing up of what’s available
37. Level: Autumn is then fascinating because it’s when some of the more rare seeds and fish become available, and is designed to have less of a rep focus so the player can do what they need to in preparation for…
38. Level: Winter. Winter is easily the best designed month in the game, perfectly sandwiched between Autumn and the build up, and Spring which becomes payoff. It also encourages the player (in game, not just in design) to branch out and try things other than farming (though you can farm as well), ranching really comes into its own here, but its also a great time to focus on lots of other activities. Consequently it’s also (tied for Summer) the other big ‘rep month’ to really raise people’s reputations…
39. Level: …and so overall earns itself two positives
40. Itemization: The traveling fleet and merchant (along with a few other tidbits here and there, mostly during festivals) offer a bit of item coverage to help bridge gaps in seed and item availability
41. Cosmetics: While there isn’t a super huge range of cosmetics for the characters, there is a fairly large amount…
42. Cosmetics: …for the layout of the farm itself (and the town, technically). Between different tiles and floors and positioning and farm layouts and buildings and wallpapers and placable items, there’s a good spread to customize things
43. Guidance: Direction and flow of Ginger Island
44. Level: Design and slow opening of Ginger Island
45. Kit: Some cool options and kit in Ginger Island and related areas… though suffers from being available way too late
46. Replayability: Game is reasonably replayable, at least up to mid game

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Combat: Animation locking
2. Combat: Frame timing
3. Combat: Kit and lack thereof
4. Combat: Reach and lack thereof
5. Combat: Required for so much of progression
6. Combat: Straight up boring
7. Controls: Periodic irritation in controls
8. Fishing: Can go straight to hell. The bar’s too small, the wait for a nab is too long, and the rate of loss is too high
9. Info In Game: The game criminally does not indicate a fairly large amount of mechanics within said game
10. Level: Skull Cavern
11. Prime Opt: Locking content behind heart events, specifically romance content
12. Save System: Very, very limited
13. Traversal: Walking around is… not great
14. Walkthroughitis: Honestly fishing itself is just the worst in figuring out what to fish when and how
15. Late Game: Far too many cool things that would’ve been nice to play around with earlier unlock so late that they have FFVII Syndrome; All the neat toys you get so late you can’t enjoy them

Story Positives:

1. Intro: A great deal is conveyed very quickly and brilliantly in just a few short minutes. Even if you don’t speak or read the language you can tell the premise
2. Worldbuilding: It’s scattered throughout but we learn a fair bit about the setting through the voice and data logs
3. Sound Design: It’s damned rare I praise a game on the story axis for sound but good lord…
4. Sound Design: …easily deserving two positives
5. Atmosphere: I mean let’s be honest here, this game absolutely oozes atmosphere from every pour…
6. Atmosphere: …easily earning two positives
7. Visual Storytelling: There’s actually not much relatively speaking, but most crash zones, ruins, and lifepods have wonderful visual storytelling
8. Brickwork: The Shallows is easily one of the best designed zones in the game and it shows. Everything from the color, lighting, proximity to the surface, and low danger areas…
9. Brickwork: …earning two positives
10. Brickwork: The Plateaus and Kelp Forests are both pretty
11. Brickwork: The Mountains, Bulb Zone, and Dunes are too…
12. Brickwork: …but then you have the really great zones. The Grand Reef is just the right mix of beautiful, vast, and terrifying
13. Brickwork: The Blood Kelp Zone manages to contain some of the more situationally dangerous enemies, but also look like you’re at the ocean floor, in all the right ways
14. Brickwork: The Lost River deserves special mention by itself, somehow looking like a beautiful Metroid level while retaining semblance of its own visuals
15. Brickwork: By itself, the Edge is very appropriately terrifying. Lighting, absence of music, the cliff edge, and of course the Ghost Leviathans
16. Lighting: The usage of lighting to accent every individual zone is fantastic
17. Characters: This is a rare one, but Reapers are great on the story axis. They are brilliantly designed to be absolutely terrifying, even when there are other, arguably more dangerous creatures. The way they move, the way they sound, and the way they will absolutely destroy you if allowed to
18. Music Direction: The usage of music to accent zone and tone is wonderful
19. Moment: The Sunbeam and its rescue is a very powerful moment, whether you know what’s going on or not
20. Outro: For all its flaws on the gameplay axis, the Outro is pretty legit
21. MSQ: The main plot is weirdly engaging, and has some very nice twists and reveals and just generally had me quite into it
22. Doodads: Hard to see often, but some generally great doodad design throughout
23. Spritework: Fish! And fauna in general

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Tutorial: The game tutorializes most of its basic features within literal minutes of starting the game, and does a good job of it
2. Intro: The game’s Intro is honestly one of its better segments. The design and build of the Shallows, the distribution of resources, the visual distinction and encouragement to explore, and ready access to three very distinct biomes within just a short swim’s reach, along with clear initial objectives culminating in the exploration of the Aurora
3. Terrain: Landmark design. I’ve seen better, of course, but the usage of the Aurora as a near universal centering piece which you can see from anywhere in the caldera is brilliant
4. Lighting: Even in areas where it should be quite dark the lighting design is excellent, you can always see what you ‘should’ be able to see, no matter how deep you go…
5. Lighting: …earning two positives
6. Overworld: The manually crafted map by itself deserves its own praises and recognition
7. Overworld: Absolutely excellent design in overworld layout, itemization, enemy spread, location, etc. to the early game areas…
8. Overworld: …the mid game areas…
9. Overworld: …and the terrifying late game areas
10. Penalty of Failure: Almost every aspect of the game is designed around gradient failure. Dropping some items, a few extra seconds to grasp for breath, the Edge being gradient, the depths being gradient, etc.
11. Difficulty Curve: Similarly the entire game flows naturally into a smooth difficulty curve thanks to how things escalate
12. Exploration: Lots and lots and lots of resources and blueprints and things to find everywhere
13. Core Mechanic: Building is, of course, fun to do and surprisingly intuitive and the game allows for a lot of crazy base building
14. Visual Distinction: The game is startlingly visually distinct, every biome and type of interactable is quite easy to spot at a glance
15. Sound Design: You can navigate a huge amount of this game via just sound, as each creature (and area) has a distinct sound and a wonderful soundscape
16. QoL (mark recipe, battery indicator, haven’t-scanned-yet indicator)
17. Early Game: Early game isn’t as strong as some games, but it’s still interesting as you slowly expand your range and access
18. Mid Game: Mid game is super strong in Subnautica. As tools and resources become solved problems, it’s all about efficiently progressing and exploring, and it’s awesome…
19. Mid Game: …easily earning two positives
20. Controls: The game controls surprisingly smoothly (on Switch too, not that it matters here)
21. Kit: The scanner is a seemingly innocuous building that quickly becomes one of the most useful tools in the entire game, easily making the very dynamic of the game change drastically
22. Enemy Design: In general the enemies are very well designed (with one notable exception) and work very well for the areas they are in
23. Enemy Design: Reapers. Reapers are, by themselves, brilliantly designed. They are simultaneously easy to spot from a distance and can easily sneak up on you, and they won’t (necessarily) kill you instantly… but they sure can hurt
24. Enemy Variety: Great enemy variety, given the situation
25. Visual Continuity: The game does a pretty good job of helping you navigate purely by visuals

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Core Mechanic: Inability to craft from chests which leads to inventory padding
2. Enemy Design: In a game with really well designed enemies, the exploding fish really suck, especially given the related issue…
3. Controls: …the swing of the knife. I know this isn’t a combat heavy game but even when using the knife on a plant the hit detection is just wonky
4. Save System: The save limitations are… weird. You can save state essentially anywhere, but only to one save file, and there’s no auto save to speak of in case something happens (like a crash or having to leave the desk)
5. Info In Game: Some specifics on how base buildings and tools work isn’t really explained anywhere in game
6. Core Mechanic: Water drain is just way, way too fast
7. Bugs: The game is known for its minor hiccup bugs, but then there’s the occasional, easy-to-stumble-into major bugs (like getting your Prawn permanently stuck in the terrain)
8. Outro: The Outro is… very, very weak. After a near nonstop escalation of gameplay up to and including the late game, the Outro is just… backtracking and building, as if we were in the beginning of the game again, which is already bad, but then there’s…
9. Outro: …the severe padding which just draaags it down
10. Inventory: So, limited inventory is fine (good, even) in Early Game… fades a bit in Mid Game… and is actively obnoxious by End Game

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Hub. Also in general. The oil painting aesthetic is brilliantly done…
2. Brickwork: …easily earning a second positive
3. Brickwork: House of Pleasure. Contrasting colors, great usage of layout and that particular blend of fancy and rotten
4. Brickwork: Bridge. Really helps sell the ironpunk aesthetic
5. Brickwork: Lady Boyle’s Last Party…
6. Brickwork: …easily one of the best stages in the game, visually too
7. Doodads: I’ve seen better, but the doodad usage is still very good, especially in a few particular areas (like the hub)
8. Intro: The Intro is a bit rushed, but the immediacy of it followed by the good pacing of the prison segment flows nicely
9. Background Storytelling: NPC dialogue is not only interesting to listen to but often informs about the mission you’re on
10. Character: The Outsider is, easily, the best character in the game. From the eyes to the slightly unnatural movement to the voice acting
11. Storytelling Mechanic: The heart. Best voice actress in the game, and very informative and interesting info throughout
12. World Building: We only see snippets of it, but there are multiple peeks into this doomed and decrepit world and it’s very well fleshed out
13. Visual Storytelling: Lady Boyle’s Last Party
14. Atmosphere: As much as I hate it, the game oozes the dirty, grimey, awful atmosphere

Story Negatives:

1. Voice Acting: Honestly there’s several performances which, while not ‘bad’, are noticeably off, and it detracts from several scenes, especially considering…
2. Foreshadowing: …the way the foreshadowing is handled is clumsy at best and amateur at worst
3. Writing: There’s several times the game crosses the line in ways that just drag the whole work down
4. Character: Several of the villains, most notably the Spymaster, are just… morons. They are really stupid and it does not work
5. Character: Corvo. Silent protagonist does not work here
6. Outro: The endings… aren’t that interesting, and honestly tie in to another problem…
7. Storytelling Mechanic: …chaos. The way Chaos is used narratively is disjointed and disconnected, at best, and honestly I think they should have just committed to it not being good/evil, or committed to it being good/evil
8. Atmosphere: The grimey, dirty, awful atmosphere actively pushes me out of the game

Gameplay Positives:

1. All Roads Lead to Rome: Lady Boyle’s Last Party
2. All Roads Lead To Rome: Return to the Tower
3. All Roads Lead To Rome: The High Overseer level
4. Intro: While brief, the escape from the prison and sewer sequence are brilliantly constructed to get you into how things operate and how to interact with what, effectively…
5. Itemization: Generally good spread of ‘currency’ gains and subsequent upgrades and costs
6. Kit: Abilities, powers, and tools
7. Kit: Lots of options in how to progress through stages, in the DLC too
8. Level: Bridge
9. Level: House Of Pleasure
10. Level: Lady Boyle’s Last Party
11. Level: Lady Boyle’s Last Party 2
12. Level: Return to the Tower
13. Level: Return to the Tower
14. Level: The Loyalists
15. Level: The Loyalists
16. Outro: The final stage continues to be generally excellent, with lots of options and throughputs
17. Outro: The ways the final stage can vary are generally excellent and well
18. Prime Opt: The High Overseer level
19. Save System: Good saves, autosaves, and quicksaves…
20. Save System: …for two positives
21. Terrain: House of Pleasure
22. Terrain: Return To The Tower
23. Terrain: The High Overseer level
24. Terrain: The Loyalists
25. Tutorial: …tutorializing you on the tools you’ll have at your disposal throughout
26. DLC Minigames: Optional Challenge maps…
27. DLC Minigames: …with good variety
28. DLC Level: Slaughterhouse
29. DLC Level: The lawyer’s estate
30. DLC Level: The Dead Eels
31. DLC All Roads Lead To Rome: The Dead Eels
32. DLC Level: The Witches level

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Graphics: Depth of Field, Bloom, and other headache-inducing problems
2. Core Combat: Stealth and non lethal are fun. Front-faced combat is not
3. Enemy AI: The enemies can be… really… really dumb

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: It’s inconsistent, but there’s some decent spritework and visuals to help sell the game
2. Voice Acting: Exaggerated, but distinct
3. Atmosphere / Tone: General nightmare tone
4. Dialogue: Surprisingly well done dialogue, especially in selling the horror of it

Story Negatives:

1. Atmosphere / Tone: General nightmare logic
2. Pacing: The game starts with a bunch of things about Lazarus and Albrecht then… trails off for several hours… then suddenly Lazarus and Albrecht and by the way Cain is a Horadrim!

Gameplay Positives:

1. HUD: Good at-a-glance with the HUD, especially with health, mana, and hotkeys
2. Minimap: For how simple it is, the minimap does a good job of indicating what is where
3. QoL: Some few small general quality of life things (colored outlines on mouseover, auto equip consumables, ‘mouseover’ text, etc.)
4. Music: Tristram’s theme is what it is
5. Leveling: Stat distribution and spellbook system
6. Replayability: Several built in options that encourage replayability

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Audio Spam: It actually gets WORSE later
2. Audio Spam: Uhh! Huh! Uhh! Uhh! Huh! Uhh!
3. Audio Spam: Seriously, shut up!
4. Boss: Lazarus devolves into the same problem all enemies do after the caves; ranged spam
5. Boss: The Butcher and Leoric and… really all the bosses are kind of the same thing. Big stat sticks that walk up and punch you
6. Build Into A Corner: Between lack of respec, the lack of information in what classes matter how, the variance between their max stats and unique abilities, it’s pretty easy to reach a point where the game just kinda starts to suck
7. Combat: Balance between classes… and lack thereof
8. Combat: Hit Chance is wonky as hell and heavily slanted against melee classes
9. Combat: Stunlocking and its wondrous joys. The best part is it actually gets worse…
10. Combat: …the further you get in
11. Controls: Lack of tunneling, awkward mouse controls, ease of misclicking, punishing misclicking, having to swap between arrow keys and mouse, etc.
12. Difficulty Curve: More like difficulty staircase
13. Durability: Not the worst I’ve ever seen, but not fun
14. Encounter Design: General. There’s a few enemy types but they’re mean in how they combine… and by mean, I mean irritating
15. Encounter Design: Then in the hell levels you get enemies immune to damage types (of which there are only four total) and they like to just spam the crap out of interrupting ranged attacks
16. Enemy Design: Special negative for the ranged runners for juuust being annoying
17. Friendly Fire: Yep, there’s friendly fire in D1. Literally
18. Hub: Between the slow walk speed and the weird spread of gameplay NPCs, the hub kind of sucks to navigate and utilize
19. HUD: The HUD isn’t bad, but it takes up an onerous 27% of the screen
20. Inventory: Bonus complaint about how large items are, and how money takes up space, and how money only stacks to 5k, and how you need way more than 5k gold…
21. Inventory: Limitations. The inventory space is absolutely miniscule
22. Inventory: Loot distribution isn’t great, and sort of relies on a lot of repetition to get good stuff thanks to RNG
23. Inventory: Loot is pretty boring, almost entirely being just basic stats, and most items can only have one or two modifiers
24. Kit: Or lack thereof
25. Levels: Hell levels… so first there’s the brevity and lack of design to it, even for how simple the previous levels are
26. Levels: The caves (navigation, minimap avoidance)
27. Music: The majority of the music is one song per tileset and it repeats (and restarts upon changing floors)
28. Options: Lack thereof (no rebinding, no options to speak of)
29. Traversal Mechanics: Movement speed. It’s bad in town…
30. Traversal Mechanics: …it’s bad in dungeons…
31. Traversal Mechanics: …it’s bad in general
32. Visual Distinction: General. The game is murky and brackish and it’s just hard to see
33. Visual Distinction: The Catacombs get their own visuals problem due to being even darker and harder to see than usual
34. Visual Distinction: Then there’s the fact that it’s hard to see things like interactables, loot, and enemies without just waving the mouse all over the place

Story Positives:

1. Voice Acting: Competent, mostly with the Chosen
2. Atmosphere: Thriller action movie
3. Visual Storytelling: Enemy units and their intros
4. Background Lore: Research primarily, but some on the weapons too
5. Music Direction: Surprisingly good usage of music to emphasize moments and keep the missions fresh
6. Brickwork: Decent throughout
7. Characters: Chosen. Seriously, they steal the show every scene they’re in. They quite literally get more characterization than the main characters back at base, who are mostly exposition bots
8. Doodads: Honestly the doodad usage is pretty legit, helping add to almost every part of every mission…
9. Doodads: …earning two positives
10. MSQ: The Central’s Archives story missions honestly feel like the campaign mode the rest of the game kind of lacked, following a more traditional mission based narrative

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: So there’s some plot-induced stupidity in the Intro… but the main premise of the plot is honestly ridiculous
2. Plot: So they couldn’t do anything for 20 years because the only one with any tactical acumen is us. Uh… sure? (also just removing the Commander as a character entirely would have worked better)
3. Exposition: Bland and forced and often
4. Drama: The forced, overplayed drama between factions is already not good but could be excused if they did anything with it… which they did not
5. Character: Too many of the characters are just… not characters, they’re exposition bots
6. Cutscene: The first Retaliation Mission cutscene is top to bottom bad
7. Internal Continuity: Tons of inconsistencies basically everywhere
8. Dialogue: The repetition and aggravation of the dialogue is simply awful
9. Cutscene: The first shadow project cutscene is textbook bad cutscenes
10. Outro: Good lord. The bad ending is such a nothingburger that I honestly don’t even know what happened, the good ending is a brief wash followed by a ‘to be continued’… twice. And just wouldn’t end! The whole thing is already awful…
11. Outro: …but then there’s the final awful cutscenes in the last dungeon (brand new psiker defeating multiple lifelong mages… sure)
12. World Building: Or lack thereof. The planet is treated like a single town (what is this, Star Wars?) and events actively make no sense when considering the setting

Gameplay Positives:

1. Core Mechanic: Chosen. The entire concept of the random Chosen missions is already awesome, and the way it adds a dynamic to battles is great. This is on top of them having random abilities (and weaknesses), having their own ticking clocks and progression, rewards, and of course their boss fights…
2. Core Mechanic: …earning the Chosen two positives
3. Core Mechanic: Research and the balancing of breakthroughs, inspirations, and how the tree progresses
4. Core Mechanic: The two AP system is intuitive and well designed (though again, not the best)
5. Core Mechanic: While not the best I’ve ever seen, the action economy is pretty legit in terms of what you can do and what it costs (free actions, proc actions, attacking, moving, etc.)
6. Difficulty Options: Surprisingly good and varied difficulty options…
7. Difficulty Options: …earning a second positive
8. Enemy Design: Weirdly the Lost are some of the most balanced, well designed enemy units in the game. They spawn frequently, react badly to certain types of attacks, can hurt, but also have a built in mechanic to help you deal with them, on top of being a ‘third party’ that will attack other enemy forces and you equally (and vice versa)
9. HUD: For all its issues, the HUD is excellent at getting across a lot of information quickly and efficiently
10. Info In Game: Occasional and decent information available to help you decide what to do, how to build, etc.
11. Interface: Much of the interface is well designed, lots of good at-a-glance
12. Kit: Classes. Varied in style and approach and each with their uses, though some are obviously better than others…
13. Kit: …there’s still some good class design here
14. Kit: Utility items, weapon upgrades, personnel upgrades
15. Level: First Chosen / Factions mission. It’s fun, it’s well tutorialized, and it’s got some great beats
16. Level: Resistance / terror missions in general. Fun stuff, usually worthwhile
17. Mod Depth: Depth of mod possibilities
18. Mod Design: Game designed for mods
19. Mod Tools: Tools for mod support…
20. Mod Tools: …for two positives
21. Music: The original music is neat and all…
22. Music: …but the remixed music and swapping of soundtracks on the fly is great
23. Penalty For Failure: Bleedout mechanic. It’s a gradient way to approach character death and I’m with it (except when it doesn’t trigger)
24. Penalty For Failure: Losing units, injured units, mental health problems? Retreat to fail mission?
25. Starting Options: Generally good starting options
26. Terrain: Almost always matters, in every single mission. Destructible terrain, height, cover, hazards… even things that will break (or not break) stealth. This is probably the best terrain design I’ve seen in a tactical game…
27. Terrain: …earning it…
28. Terrain: …three positives
29. Boss: The Chosen boss battles
30. Boss: The Alpha boss battles
31. Enemy Design: For the issues, there are some good and varied enemy designs throughout
32. Encounter Design: Generally decent encounter design
33. Enemy Variety: There’s a fairly large spread of enemies and they all have rather distinct abilities, weaknesses, maneuvers, and preferences…
34. Enemy Variety: …earning two positives
35. Cosmetics: Fairly decent customization of the units, which isn’t just neat but helps add relevance and care to individual soldiers…
36. Core Mechanic: The Tightening Noose game design is something I do enjoy (even if it has some issues here and there), having to always manage your time as the enemy just escalates ahead of you every step of the way
37. Strategic Layer: Resources, time, optional missions, intel gathering, Covert Actions
38. Mid Game: Mid game is where the game starts to come into is own, as you stop playing catch up and start to have some really decent abilities and options
39. Viscerality: Obviously there’s some decent viscerality here… it could be better, but it could be a lot worse
40. Level: Second to last mission is tight, well laid out, and surprisingly fun
41. Minigames: The custom skirmish modes are quite legit, some decent options and variety
42. Level: Okay so there’s these mission packs. They’re tight, surprisingly well designed, fun, and there’s 28 of them…
43. Level: So we’re going to give each one of the campaigns their own positive…
44. Level: …rather than attempt to try and review each one individually…
45. Level: …for what they are
46. Minigame: Also the bonus points and medals and objective upgrade path in Central’s Archives is pretty neat too
47. Save System: Decent, if occasionally buggy, autosaves
48. Replayability: Plenty of variety in builds and randomness to encourage replayability

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Audio Balancing: Issues all over the place
2. Audio Spam: Some of the characters (looking at Bradford) will NOT shut up
3. Audio Spam: The whole game pauses while they yammer too
4. Audio Spam: Honestly it’s just… so bad, even with it turned down (and with mods)
5. Bugs: Yep. There be bugs here. The game has literally hard crashed and soft-locked for me before
6. Core Mechanic: Implementation of RNG
7. Core Mechanic: Research, really, should follow a pretty specific path or you will just plain fall behind
8. Core Mechanic: Scatter and all that goes with it
9. Core Mechanic: This is a weird one but I think the game’s RNG needs additional mechanics and systems to help smooth over patches therein, as is the game is either too easy or too hard and neither are really desirable
10. Early Game: It’s easiest, by far, to fall behind and just have issues with the early game
11. HUD: In several cases information can (and should) be cross-referencable and… isn’t
12. Info In Game: There’s a weirdly large amount of information that is either poorly showcased or actively absent in XCOM 2. Mods can smooth this over but as usual the game doesn’t get credit for that. Hell there are entire mechanics not even visible without mods. So ultimately this game gets…
13. Info In Game: …negatives
14. Info In Game: …three…
15. Leveling: The fact that all of the experience really comes from kills is not great. It could be worse, but encouraging the player to play worse in order to level is never a great thing in these types of games, and the fact that you’re actually penalized for being stealthy or avoiding kills is not great
16. Seconds In Minutes: The zip mode helps mitigate this, but there’s definitely still some seconds in minutes padding in actions, movements, etc…. What’s worst about all of this is that even with the zip mode AND a mod to make this all go by faster (two mods, actually) the game just has so, so, so much of this that it makes the entire thing drag on to the point where I’m just tired of it…
17. Seconds In Minutes: …for a full…
18. Seconds In Minutes: …three negatives
19. Tutorialization: Forced, awkward, and irritating…
20. Tutorialization: …while also giving you bad info
21. Unskippable Cutscene: Weirdly a lot of them in mission
22. Core Mechanic: Stealth is honestly very badly realized, could have great potential but just… doesn’t, and tends to screw you over by ‘tricking’ you into using it too much
23. Terrain: Despite how awesome the terrain is, the height problem is real (and drifts into bugs territory)
24. Padding: The missions are good, but there’s honestly just a few too many of them… and when multiple people give the feedback of having to either take a break for a while or just cheating to get through it…
25. Padding: …then you know…
26. Padding: …there’s padding
27. Interface: A general lack of proper cross referencing
28. Kit: This is related to the earlier issues, but the weapons and their upgrades come too late (not just for difficulty, but in terms of having stuff to play with) and honestly even tier 3 is merely acceptable
29. Outro: So I hope you like long, boring slogs…
30. Outro: …if not, we have a padded wave mission too

Story Positives:

1. NPC Set Dressing: The various characters and their little quips and barks as they go about their business
2. Storyboarding: So this is a weird one but the game is really dynamic about its cutscenes because they all happen in-engine, which means whatever you’ve built is what the NPCs have to work with. So they’ll work with and around the terrain YOU built, which means YOU effectively design the ‘set’, and the game is quite good about working with that
3. Integration: The way the game presents Builders vs. Heroes and their partnership as well as presenting this in combat and with Malroth
4. Themes: While the obvious theme drifts in and out, there’s several recurring themes of hypocrisy, friendship, being able to accomplish things as a group, and looking past the surface layer, and all are generally well done throughout the work…
5. Themes: …earning itself two positives
6. Visual Storytelling: Interspersed, but there’s some good stuff throughout
7. World Building: A surprisingly large amount of world building, given the situation
8. Dialogue: Generally great dialogue throughout. This is honestly pretty standard for a modern Dragon Quest game (everything after 8 really) but it’s still solid…
9. Dialogue: …and worthy of mention
10. Localization: As is per usual for the post-8 Dragon Quest games, the localization is bonkers good…
11. Localization: …easily earning…
12. Localization: …three positives
13. Spritework: Despite their chibi nature, the well stylized and very well done sprites of characters and enemies is fantastic…
14. Spritework: …for a full…
15. Spritework: …three positives
16. Intro: For all its issues, the Intro does a lot right. The boat, the first meeting with Malroth, developing Lulu and the trio’s connections to each other
17. Brickwork: To be clear, the brickwork here is… well it’s a bit more bricky than usual. But even minecraft-style visuals can look good and they put a lot of work into making all of this bespoke and visually engaging. So to wit we start with Furrowfield, lovely greens and slimes and rocks and crags
18. Doodads: Furrowfield, again
19. Characters: Some good supporting cast in Furrowfield as well
20. Moment: The first time people start building one of the mega blueprints is honestly a pretty legit moment, complete with appropriate music
21. Pacing: Furrowfield Farm is honestly a very well paced island. You start off slow, escalate and incline until the big moment, then a breather to acknowledge before the finale
22. Plot: Call me a weirdo but I really enjoy Furrowfield Farm’s plot and progression. It gives away just enough so you can start to see where it’s going, but there’s enough nuance to the characters (yes, even the cultists and former cultists) that it works
23. Humor: Puns… puns never change
24. Brickwork: Khrumbul-Dun and the desert dunes and depths of the mines
25. Doodads: Khrumbul-Dun, again
26. Character: Babs (aside from the recurring ‘gag’ she’s just generally awesome, wholesome, and helpful)
27. Character: General supporting cast from Khrumbul-Dun
28. Humor: Goldirox… and the three bars
29. MSQ: Skelketraz is honestly just terrifying in all the right ways, it’s really messed up. This is probably the most Dragon Quest Effect this particular game manages, with a shockingly good look at cultist programming and prison culture…
30. MSQ: …which, yeah, that’s a Dragon Quest game for you
31. Plot: This leaves me with mentioning the plot of the entire game; the nature of the illusion and how and why things work the way they do. I won’t spoil it here but it’s shockingly well thought out considering
32. Brickwork: Moonbrooke, of course
33. Atmosphere: Moonbrooke’s atmosphere of starting on the back foot and crawling your way back up is honestly my favorite tone of all the islands and I love it.
34. Characters: Moonbrooke, especially Anessa
35. Moment: For all that the Moonbrooke chapter sucks, the big reveal about the nature of the illusory world is honestly awesome. It’s been built up to the entire game, brilliantly connects with Dragon Quest 2, and is honestly just as powerful and impacting a reveal as it could be
36. Brickwork: Malhalla, naturally. Without going overboard the whole place looks exactly as unpleasant as it should for a realm that’s the ‘heaven’ of a cult that worships destruction
37. Characters: While the game supplies a large variety of good supporting characters throughout, those in Malhalla really stand out and deserve…
38. Characters: …a full…
39. Characters: …three positives, for variety and depth despite being relatively minor NPCs really
40. Theme: The build / destroy theme really comes into its own in Malhalla, but it’s been there the whole game and is hammered into the bones of almost every scene
41. Characters: Malroth. I really don’t feel the need to explain this one…
42. Characters: …but Malroth is just generally awesome. He’s the most well developed, has a great arc, and has entire moments where he shines…
43. Characters: …earning Malroth a triple positive
44. MSQ: I love the Malhalla section in general, top to bottom. The progression, the characterization, the conclusion of the game’s themes…
45. MSQ: …it’s fantastic…
46. MSQ: …and I love it
47. Moment: Cap’n Whitebone, and the return of the kelp
48. External Continuity: The way the game connects to Dragon Quest 2 is honestly just amazing, taking the story and concepts and really running with them…
49. External Continuity: …easily earning two positives
50. Foreshadowing: It’s not the best, but it’s there, especially in Skelketraz
51. Outro: The Outro just… nails it honestly. It only has two small flaws and both aren’t on the story axis, so huge huge pluses…
52. Outro: …for the finale, the victory lap…
53. Outro: …and the ending
54. Moment: BUILD IT!!!
55. Moment: A second positive for “BUILD IT”. It’s arguably the best scene in the game. The WHOLE game has been building to this moment, and it doesn’t over-do it, it’s not over-dramatic, it’s not cliche, it’s not ridiculous, it just IS and it’s AWESOME
56. Moment: The high five. You know the one

Story Negatives:

1. Cutscene: As is so often, spoilers in intros
2. Localization: For all its positives, the game is SO well localized that in some cases it’s legitimately hard to read
3. Empty Text: Per usual for a Dragon Quest game
4. Empty Text: Plenty of it
5. Empty Text: Good lord
6. MSQ: Babs. There’s one joke here, it’s not funny, and that’s already bad…
7. MSQ: …but then they repeat it CONSTANTLY to the point where the repetition itself becomes the aggravation
8. Drama: Played up entirely too much
9. Writing: So why do we keep getting away with discussing our plans literally in front of people? There’s no avoiding this either, it’s part of the ‘talk to’ cutscenes
10. Moment: The exact moment we imprison Malroth, and he feels betrayed by us, is just the worst moment in the entire game. And every little thing the game could do to mitigate it or make it less awful it expertly avoids to make it as absolutely frustrating as possible…
11. Moment: …earning it…
12. Moment: …three negatives
13. Writing: Then there’s the fact that you’re forced to go along with it because screw you
14. Drama: So after we finally (FINALLY) get to let Malroth out and… he’s pissed and actually yells at us for never visiting or freeing him (regardless of what you actually do) and honestly, screw this bullcrap Third Act Conflict crap

Gameplay Positives:

1. Co-Op: It’s very limited, but it IS there and it IS fun
2. Lighting: Surprisingly good in such a simplistic looking game, really helping with distinction and presentation…
3. Lighting: …earning it two positives
4. Progression: Generally good feel and vibe of progression as you unlock more buildings, rooms, and gear
5. Progression: Tablet targets as a way of guidance, and rewarding to boot (mini medals)
6. QoL: Bell for gathering hearts and villagers
7. QoL: Ease and smoothness of looting (with aid of NPCs)
8. QoL: General smart code everywhere
9. QoL: Malroth’s assistance in gathering really helps speed things up and honestly never stops being useful
10. Sound Design: Good across the board, with good indicators and presentation
11. Traversal: Mounts. Multiple types and multiple presentations
12. Traversal: The Buggy Buggy, terrible name aside, is fun and neat (especially when it can fly)
13. Minigame: Puzzles and their general fun (while being rewarding)
14. Minigame: Taming. The monsters come with their own benefits and moves and are generally awesome
15. Core Combat: Useful NPCs in combat
16. Music: I mean it’s a Dragon Quest game
17. Core Mechanic: Building. I shouldn’t have to explain this, really, but its’ fun, it’s interesting, and it’s the core mechanic of the game…
18. Core Mechanic: …earning it…
19. Core Mechanic: …three positives for general quality and satisfaction
20. Controls: Then there’s the controls for Building itself (worth noting we are playing the PC version)…
21. Controls: …which earn two positives
22. Core Mechanic: In addition to building itself is the bonkers level of build variety there is…
23. Core Mechanic: ….which rather than describe said variety I will simply give it…
24. Core Mechanic: …three positives
25. Core Mechanic: Blueprints: Concept. The very idea of being able to plonk something down and reference it is already nice
26. Core Mechanic: Blueprints: But then there’s the fact that later on NPCs can and do help you build it once you’ve laid it down
27. Core Mechanic: The entire Rooms system. So first there’s how insanely dynamic the system is, which would be a positive by itself, but then there’s the usage of the rooms and the variety of the rooms, and you have an absolutely great system…
28. Core Mechanic: …earning the rooms…
29. Core Mechanic: …three positives
30. Interface: Blueprints, again, because then there’s the interface, which has multiple ways to filter, change angle, and see layers..
31. Interface: …making for two positives
32. Core Mechanic: Cooking, and lots of it
33. Core Mechanic: NPC designations, and being able to build stuff specifically to ensure NPCs act in a certain way
34. Cosmetics: The layout and design allows your base to look cool, not just in general but for cutscenes as well…
35. Cosmetics: …earning two positives
36. Map: Surprisingly helpful and useful. Also leads nicely into…
37. Minimap: …the minimap. Informative, icons, quest indicators
38. Fast Travel: Generally good fast travel distribution and method of find-it-unlock-it…
39. Fast Travel: …earning two positives
40. Guidance and Flow of Exploration: Lots of it, all over the place
41. HUD: Indicators for interactions (cooking, npcs, quests) all clear and distinct and from a distance
42. Info In Game: Also Malroth and his function as a hint machine
43. Info In Game: Builderpedia and tons of info on rooms, items, monsters…
44. Info In Game: …all easily sorted and propagated as you progress
45. Integration: The way the game presents Builders vs. Heroes and their partnership as well as presenting this in combat and with Malroth
46. Interface: Crafting menu (good filters, good sorting, good cross referencing, quick building, and mass building)…
47. Interface: …for two positives
48. Interface: Inventory. The bag, the sorting, spillover automatically goes into it, it can be accessed anywhere, and items stack up to 999… this is one of the best inventory systems I’ve seen in an RPG…
49. Interface: …earning inventory…
50. Interface: …three positives
51. Kit: Buildnoculars. Being able to build from range is just such a game changer
52. Kit: The flute, allowing you to find specific items across the islands and even triangulate based on moving location
53. Kit: The pencil and the possibilities of blueprint production and copying
54. Kit: The trowel is just the best damned tool. It’s a smart block replacer; You still have to have the blocks, you still gather the blocks, but it just does it like that; a HUGE quality of life feature…
55. Kit: …easily earning two positives for sheer QoL
56. Kit: Water jug. Being able to place, grab, and layer liquid all over is great
57. Kit: Windbreaker. Completely opens up traversal and removes falling damage from the equation, even in areas where you ‘can’t’
58. Level: Furrowfield. I don’t feel the need to really explain this, the level design of the manually crafted island is fantastic in every way, in terms of resources, monsters, item placement, flow, etc…
59. Level: …earning Furrowfield…
60. Level: …three positives
61. MSQ: Farming in Furrowfield, made better as you designate and build
62. Overworld: Furrowfield Farm, very well designed as usual
63. Tutorialization: Furrowfield Farm. The whole island serves as a better tutorial across the board than the actual tutorial. It’s not possible to list all the things it does right, it’s even little things like where caves point you or how certain objects pop in, and so Furrowfield gets…
64. Tutorialization: …the full…
65. Tutorialization: …three positives
66. Level: Khrumbul-Dun isn’t quite as well laid out as Furrowfield…
67. Level: …but Khrumbul-Dun still gets two positives for level design
68. MSQ: Mining in Khrumbul-Dun and how they just sort of keep you in a constant steady flow of resources as you build and improve their productivity
69. Overworld: Khrumbul-Dun, again very well designed
70. Boss: Madusa and its evolving mechanics and general fun
71. Princess Peach: Skelketraz does a good job of varying up the gameplay without your usual toolkit, but still keeping you engaged… also when you do get your tools back it’s a sea change
72. Explorers Islands: Lucrative, fun to explore, way to recruit people…
73. Explorers Islands: …and very rewarding with the infinite of a given resource checklist system
74. Level: Moonbrooke is once again a well designed level, not quite as good as Furrowfield (again) but still quite good…
75. Level: …leading to two positives
76. Core Combat: The emphasis on varied unit types, controlling units, and mass combat in Moonbrooke really makes the combat interesting
77. MSQ: The initial segment of Moonbrooke is honestly very well designed. It’s well paced, and you have the near constant attacks to deal with, but start surmounting them almost immediately and the tangible feel of progression
78. Level: And then there’s Malhalla, which is exceptionally well laid out and basically built for exploring on the Buggy Buggy…
79. Level: …earning Malhalla two positives
80. MSQ: The entire Malhalla gameplay loop is, as usual, a nice way to vary up this island from previous ones. Going out to recruit, re-using detritus to build, it’s great stuff
81. Pacing: Unlike most of the islands, Malhalla is very well paced, we move forwards at exactly the speed we should and events have proper highs and lulls
82. Post-Game: Extensive and well thought out…
83. Post-Game: …for those who honestly just want to keep building
84. Replayability: Generally replayable…
85. Replayability: …and lots of ways you can go about objectives

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Audio Spam: Claps and cheers get annoying distressingly fast
2. Camera: General lack of actual camera control
3. Core Combat: If you can call it that
4. Intro: Let’s be honest, the Intro DRAGS. I know people who almost put the game down in the Intro
5. MSQ: The section where we’re absent Malroth could’ve been awesome, but instead it just sucks
6. Music: There are a couple of songs (including during the Intro) who’s loops are awful and play for entirely too long
7. Music: This is a long standing, repeating problem
8. Padding: Enemies just have way too much help
9. Padding: It’s not much but Skelkatraz does overstay its welcome with padding and empty swaths of gameplay
10. Raspberry Jam: Beep… beep… beep…
11. Raspberry Jam: Low health beedleeps
12. Saves: While you can have multiple saveslots, you’re ‘locked in’ to a single save once you start one
13. Traversal: Stamina bar
14. Unskippable Cutscenes: But last, and not least, are the Hargon 2 dialogues… which just…. Take…… absolutely………….. forever……….
15. Unskippable Cutscenes: So first, there’s unskippable cutscenes in general
16. Unskippable Cutscenes: Then there’s the fact that dialogue takes forever to mash through
17. Outro: The Malroth dialogues during the final battle absolutely sap the damned scene

Story Positives:

1. Background Lore: Luigi’s attention to detail and reactions to things as you go throughout
2. Architecture: It’s somewhat cheating but honestly the entire Mansion really does feel like a massive tower of doom with its own themed floors
3. Brickwork: B2. I know it sounds weird to give a positive to brickwork for a friggin’ basement but no, seriously, this is a good indication of how much effort was put into nailing the visuals
4. Brickwork: 6F, Castle MacFrights. The gloomy atmosphere, the stone walls, the woodworking…
5. Brickwork: …great stuff
6. Brickwork: 10F, Tomb Suites. The sand is of course fantastic and I love the egyptian architecture, but I’m especially fond of how they play with the lighting
7. Brickwork: 7F, Garden Suites. Lovely, lush, and with some great touches
8. Brickwork: 11F, Twisted Suites. I’m not even sure what motif this is. House of cards? Magician’s tent? Stage show? It’s wild, and well done visually
9. Brickwork: 9F, Unnatural History Museum. It’s a big spooky museum, what do you want from me?!
10. Brickwork: 12F, The Spectral Catch. Lovely underwater cove and piratey vibes here
11. Brickwork: 8F, Paranormal Productions. Alongside Castle MacFrights this is probably my favorite floor visually. They really went all out on this one…
12. Brickwork: …but what really solidifies that second positive is how they have the clearly fake stage and prop segments that turn into full special effects when you view them through the camera
13. Character: Luigi. They don’t do too much with him here, but he’s still a delight
14. Character: Polterpup. Adorable and helpful
15. Doodads: B2. Yep, the basement. Lots of janitor’y stuff down here
16. Doodads: 6F, Castle MacFrights. There’s so many doodads here it’s a bit silly. Someone spent a lot of time on the various swords, tables, shields, barrels, etc.
17. Doodads: 10F, Tomb Suites. Statues, ornamentation, lots of gold stuff
18. Doodads: 7F, Garden Suites. Flowers, pots, soil, shovels, hoes
19. Doodads: The Hotel entrance has some lovely doodading. Letters, trash cans, paperwork slots, the usual
20. Doodads: 8F, Paranormal Productions. Great doodading here as usual, with the cameras and film reels and props everywhere
21. Intro: Early brickwork, bright visuals, puns, and humor
22. Intro: The game does a lot with little in the Intro, establishing tone and humor and plot and generally being enjoyable
23. Outro: Not the best I’ve seen, but it’s still pretty legit. Some good visual storytelling, nice moments, and a good wrap up
24. Atmosphere: Music, visuals, tone, all really add to things
25. Characters: The ghosts. They’re all really quite well done
26. Animation: This is probably where the game shines (outside of its brickwork) as the game has really, really good animation on just… everybody…
27. Animation: …easily earning…
28. Animation: …three positives
29. Spritework: The huge variety and quality of the ghost and boss designs really pushes this one up…
30. Spritework: …for a double positive

Story Negatives:

1. Humor: The game just will not stop making fun of Luigi. It’s tolerable at first but they just keep banging on about it

Gameplay Positives:

1. Boss: Another double boss positive for Captain Fishook. Very inventive, very fun, great escalation, visceral, just… generally awesome…
2. Boss: …for two positives
3. Boss: Honestly best boss so far with the Magician trio, very fun and rewards paying attention and great escalation…
4. Boss: …earning two positives for the Magician Trio
5. Boss: King McFreights was irritating at first, but still didn’t outstay his welcome and was generally fun to out maneuver
6. Boss: The Amadeus Wolfgeist fight is simple but very fun, good callbacks, attacks, ways to speed it up, rule of 3, etc.
7. Boss: The Boozilla fight is great, fun, and while simple manages to not overstay its welcome
8. Boss: The Clem fight is actually really innovative and fun and amusing
9. Boss: The Serpci fight probably has the most overall mechanics so far and good recovery to allow you to play with all of them
10. Boss: The Ug fight is actually quite legit, good escalation and great viscerality, and always feels fun to progress
11. Co-Op: In general, not great, but it’s there
12. Guidance: The built in soft (aka over time) hint system with Polterpup (and occasionally E. Gadd)
13. Guidance and Flow: The lighting and music changes when you clear an area
14. Guidance And Flow Of Exploration: It’s small, but Luigi will incline you towards things you should and can interact with
15. Intro: While the game takes a minute to really get going, it still manages to be engaging early on and stay that way
16. Level: Another excellent stage in the Egyptian floor, some truly fun and innovative puzzle design, and the encounters and fights are great…
17. Level: …earning the Egyptian floor another positive
18. Level: Another fantastic outing for the puzzle design and general creativity, inventive, and fun gameplay throughout the House of Cards stage…
19. Level: …earning a second positive for the House of Cards level
20. Level: B2 is one of the better levels so far, lots of fun and interesting back and forth puzzle design as well as the new floater mechanic…
21. Level: Castle segment, some really innovative puzzles here, and really starting to stretch with the kit
22. Level: Special mention to the tutorial room for the buzzsaw in the garden level
23. Level: The garden floor stumbles once or twice but is still generally enjoyable and has some fun side puzzles, plus the all important buzzsaw
24. Level: The second visit to B2 actually works quite well
25. Level: …giving B2 two positives
26. Levels: Mall segment
27. Minigame: ScareScaper is neat, if limited
28. Minigame: The ‘clean everything’ side game is just… weirdly satisfying, between the visuals, variety, sound effects
29. Music: Generally good, and thematically appropriate
30. Saves: Decent ‘autosave’ mechanic (keeps the three most recent door passings as saves)
31. Sound Design: Good, informative, helpful, distinct
32. Tutorialization: The game pulls the Nintendo norm and tutorializes as you go…
33. Tutorialization: …always adding new concepts and mechanics and showcasing them in level design
34. Yoshi Drums: Of course
35. Level: Floor 13, the final floor, has awesome and inventive platforming, puzzle design, and is just… generally awesome, but especially in its encounter design! They really do some fun things with it
36. Boss: The Hellen boss fight does have some issues (trolling, timing, health) but it’s still very clever and is probably the best ‘puzzle’ fight in the game
37. Outro: Good last dungeon, good encounter usage, good last boss…
38. Outro: …easily earning two positives
39. Enemy Design: Generally good enemy design
40. Encounter Design: Generally good encounter design
41. Viscerality: Surprisingly good in a puzzle game
42. Minimap: Decent overall
43. Secondary: This sounds weird but it deserves notice that running around 100%ing everything is legitimately fun and usually entails good puzzle design
44. Animations: On enemies and bosses both, always indicative of what they’re about to do and where
45. Itemization: Good, smart spread of healing items (a la Metroid)
46. Kit: The general kit of Luigi is fun, interesting, and evolving
47. Pacing: Generally well paced between puzzle, explore, and combat
48. Replayability: Fun game worthy of replaying

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: Or lack thereof
2. Boss: The cat ‘boss’ is… not good. It requires the bad kind of backtracking and the fight itself is very basic
3. Boss: The return of the cat ‘boss’
4. Microtransactions: Yep. Mostly cosmetic too
5. Guidance: So I’ll be honest, I’m mostly a moron, but… there are occasionally VERY simple puzzles that are not well telegraphed at all and I had to just google
6. Boss: DJ Phantasmagloria… sucks. It’s boring, way less interesting than the other bosses in general, but then there’s the fact that what you need to do is NOT well telegraphed, and even when you figure it out (by looking it up…) good luck with the inconsistent hurtboxes and fast moving enemies
7. Low Health Beedleeps: Yyyep. Not as bad as a lot, but they’re there

Story Positives:

1. Animation: There’s only tiny little tidbits of animation as we go but there’s a lot of them and they really add to the flavor of the areas…
2. Animation: …earning a solid…
3. Animation: …triple
4. Humor: In general of course, but that Troupple King…
5. Shovel: Visual Continuity: Stages in general, but also the constant presence of the Tower (final dungeon) in the background
6. Shovel: NPC Set Dressing: Weirdly well done in town
7. Shovel: Brickwork: Pridemoore Keep and the Lichyards. Golden ramparts and a lovely haunted graveyard
8. Shovel: Brickwork: Villages. I feel weird trying to describe this since it’s probably the most bog standard ‘medieval village’ I’ve ever seen but it’s really well done
9. Shovel: Brickwork: Explodatorium, the wonderfully green and violet alchemist laboratory, and the Iron Whale with its shifting underwater sands and sunken ruins
10. Shovel: Brickwork: Lost City and the molten ruins (what’s with all these ruins?)
11. Shovel: Brickwork: Clockwork Tower. Honestly this might be the most literally descriptive name for a zone ever. It’s a clockwork tower
12. Shovel: Brickwork: Stranded Ship and the frozen wastes and, you guessed it, ruins
13. Shovel: Brickwork: Flying Machine and tons of flying propellers and steam punk
14. Shovel: Brickwork: Tower of Fate which looks exactly as horrifying as it should be
15. Shovel: Outro: I absolutely love the simple but effective symmetry; the reveal of Shield Knight, her joining you in the final battle, and the simple but enjoyable ending
16. Plague: NPC Set Dressing: Several, especially when you take the second town over
17. Plague: Character: Mona and support cast
18. Plague: Character: Plague Knight himself. How do you take someone who’s a total geek, absolutely crazy, and then make him adorable and shy? This is how
19. Plague: Dialogue: Noticeably improved and generally amusing dialogue in Plague Knight
20. Plague: Moment: Several in the first few stages leading up to…
21. Plague: Moment: …the finale with Mona and Plague which is honestly just so adorable
22. Plague: Outro: Honestly even better than the last one, not just for the usual reasons but for the connection with Shovel as well as the cuteness
23. Plague: Internal Continuity: The way Plague’s tale dovetails into Shovel’s is neat and adds to it
24. Plague: Atmosphere: The overall vibe and tone of the work, the flavor of it, are very much on point as the chaotic, explosive mad scientist
25. Specter: NPC Set Dressing: As per usual for the hub areas
26. Specter: Hub: There’s a lot of lovely touches and dialogues in the hub, but also the fact that it slowly fills out as you recruit
27. Specter: Brickwork: While I can’t give them full credit, the added touches to every stage in Spectre Knight are a welcome addition and really add to the areas. Special mention to the Lost City for really mixing it up
28. Specter: Character: Donavon is engaging right from the start, showing several additional layers to him on top of his surface level stuff
29. Specter: Moment: The second and third flashbacks really help nail the sequence of events here
30. Specter: Internal Continuity: I love how this connects with the rest of the games, especially regarding the significance of the locket and Reize… but the most understated of all is the Acolyte becoming the Troupple follower
31. Specter: Outro: Great significance for the final boss duo (the last one being primarily about navigating the terrain, not the boss)
32. Specter: Characters: Great supporting cast across the board, especially Red and Reize
33. Specter: Consequence Storytelling: Weirdly all the pieces line up pretty well here. From the initial foray into the Tower, the fall of Donovan, the tragedy of Specter Knight, Reize’s life, and the inevitable fate of the valley
34. Specter: Plot: The entire plot is really engaging. The rise of the Enchantress and the future story’s pieces falling into place
35. Specter: Atmosphere: Gloomy, despondent, and ultimately tragic
36. King: Intro: Sets up the characters, scene, connections, and plot pretty effectively… even has some foreshadowing
37. King: Character: The supporting cast is weirdly well characterized and has great flavor
38. King: Brickwork: Joustus Hall looks pretty great
39. King: NPC Set Dressing: Love the characters roaming the ship
40. King: Brickwork: Troupple Forest, one of the few new areas for the later games
41. King: Brickwork: There’s actually one other new biome, the Birder Bluffs. Lots of waterfalls, mountain ranges, and (strangely) old mountaintop ruins
42. King: Character: King Knight himself. Simple, with a weak ego and a need to prove himself. Speaking of which…
43. King: Character: …King Knight’s arc. He starts off trumpeting himself like he’s hot stuff while simultaneously being pathetic. And over the course of his game he slowly builds himself up to being the person he always thought he was with friends, respect, and authority… but what he thinks he wants and what he really wants do not coincide. And so…
44. King: Moment: …King Knight is, finally, just one step from actual character growth, before King Pridemoor just… screws it all up, and King Knight throws everything he’d earned away for something he thought he wanted. And that leads to the ending which…
45. King: Outro: …has the usual general quality (and I LOVE how lonely King Knight is at the end) but…
46. King: Outro: …a bonus positive for how it lines up so neatly with Specter Knight, and sets up for the future games
47. Spritework: So, hey, spritework. This was one of the earlier of the so called retro sprite games, but they still went all out, and the spritework only gets better as we go. So let’s start off with some boss positives…
48. Spritework: …for…
49. Spritework: …a triple. Do note this is across all the games so there’s going to be a bunch of these
50. Spritework: Then we have the enemies of course…
51. Spritework: …so that’s…
52. Spritework: …a triple
53. Spritework: There’s quite a few NPCs of course, especially across all three games…
54. Spritework: …so we’ll just consider that…
55. Spritework: …another triple
56. Spritework: But then there’s the main cast. So let’s just jot down a double…
57. Spritework: …for Shovel Knight himself
58. Spritework: …and of course Plague Knight…
59. Spritework: …gets another double
60. Spritework: But then there’s Specter Knight, which is really showcasing how much better the spritework has gotten with the later versions…
61. Spritework: …so that’s…
62. Spritework: …a triple
63. Spritework: And King Knight…
64. Spritework: …has…
65. Spritework: …the same

Story Negatives:

1. Drama: There’s a lot of excuse fighting going on here, it’s kinda weird honestly
2. Plague: Drama: For all the improvements to the story, the artificial Act 3 drama between Mona and Plague is the usual issue

Gameplay Positives:

1. Cosmetics: Body Swap mode
2. Enemy Variety: I mean there’s… just so many types and styles of enemies…
3. Enemy Variety: …easily earning…
4. Enemy Variety: …three positives
5. Mid-Mission Checkpoints: Good placement in general
6. Mid-Mission Checkpoints: Optional! Risk/reward with breaking for gold, or keeping for safety
7. Penalty For Failure: Drop a chunk of your money on death, can go get it back… but if you die again, it’s gone
8. Enemy Design: As with the variety, there’s a lot of good enemy design…
9. Enemy Design: …especially across all four games…
10. Enemy Design: …earning three positives
11. Minigame: Shovel Knight Showdown. This is kind of a crazy developed ‘minigame’ since it’s basically its own entire game. It’s a fighting game with a ton of playable characters and honestly I’m bonkered it’s included in this. We decided after some discussion not to do a FULL review of it so consider this an acknowledgment of the fact that it comes with the bundle…
12. Minigame: …and worthy…
13. Minigame: …of its own triple
14. Minigame: Challenge Mode, Shovel. So let’s talk about what these are. These are little challenges which are just there for the… uh, challenge of it. They’re unique, fun, and interesting, and vary wildly based on the character you’re playing as. The initial bundle, Shovel’s, are probably the best of the bunch…
15. Minigame: …and so get the double
16. Minigame: Challenge Mode, Plague. These are still decent, but just a little worse than Shovel’s…
17. Minigame: …still double territory though
18. Minigame: Challenge Mode, Specter. Same general quality as Plague’s…
19. Minigame: …for a double
20. Minigame: Challenge Mode, King. I’m only giving this one a single because… honestly while there’s some good stuff here, there’s also five that are just Joustus matches. And… eh
21. Song: Hitting Close To Home. This song does such a great job of conveying the intensity and emotions going into where it plays (the final stage for Specter Knight)
22. Shovel: Controls: Could be better, but still precise and tight. I should mention this is just for Shovel Knight himself, we’ll cover the others later
23. Shovel: Co-Op: Limited, but it’s there
24. Shovel: Guidance: Usage of terrain to indicate where to explore and why
25. Shovel: Music: I mean you knew this was going to be here…
26. Shovel: Music: …cuz there’s just so many bangers…
27. Shovel: Music: …and they’re generally awesome. As mentioned later in Levels these are the same basic songs across a huge portion of each game so these three cover basically everything, with a few noteworthy exceptions
28. Shovel: Kit: So let’s look at Shovel Knight’s kit first, of course. We start off with some basic stuff like the Flare Wand which is whatever, and the Throwing Anchor which is our classic Castlevania style axe. Also the War Horn which is a big AOE around you, and the Chaos Sphere which is a nice bouncing thing…
29. Shovel: Kit: …but where it really comes into its own is the more utility items. The Dust Knuckles are pretty limited in use, but you can do a lot with the Mobile Gear and the Propeller Dagger, and of course the Phase Locket is fantastic (in how it lets you not only avoid damage for a bit, but ‘freezes’ you in place even if you’re in mid air, so it can help with traversal)
30. Shovel: Intro: So before we go any further let’s elaborate on something. Each of these stages is next to identical between both Shovel and Plague, so it won’t be until Specter or King that we vary those level positives and negatives up any. Okay so, very, very strong intro. Great escalation and tutorialization of the Mario World variety (no language, no dialogue, no problems) and functioning as a bit of an increasing essay of platforming…
31. Shovel: Intro: …for an easy two positives
32. Shovel: Boss: Dark Knight (all). Good variety of attacks, lots of spread which allow for multiple methods of avoidance
33. Shovel: Tutorialization: Each new gimmick is properly showcased
34. Shovel: Tutorialization: The mini rooms to get you used to a new ability
35. Shovel: Traversal: Bouncing! It’s refined from Duck Tales but it’s still awesome
36. Shovel: Level: Pridemoor Keep. This is kind of an extension of the tutorial stage but it’s still good. There’s some basic but fun temporary platforms, traps, and the basics of enemy placement
37. Shovel: Level: Lichyards. Already a fun stage with the bush… things you hit to use as bounce targets, the platforms that sink under weight, and of course the shadowy sections, but all of this is on top of some very smart enemy usage (the frogs on the weighted section come to mind)…
38. Shovel: Level: …great level
39. Shovel: Level: Iron Whale. Mean as hell, but very fun and some great new mechanics. I especially like the destructible sand sections, the slowly collapsing bubble platforms, the rising platforms (usually under a series of spikes), and the enemies-as-platforms segments (lot of platforms in here)…
40. Shovel: Level: …easy double
41. Shovel: Boss: Treasure Knight. Another ‘wouldn’t think he’s this fast’ type, love his grapple movement and large sweeping attacks. And of course he’s uniquely positioned to take damage from the anchor, assuming you procured it
42. Shovel: Level: Lost City. As you might imagine a lot of this level places emphasis on digging (both the hard and soft rock) but what surprised me is the emphasis on BOUNCING, as there is quite a bit of usage of the green goop in general traversal and lava avoidance…
43. Shovel: Level: …great level either way
44. Shovel: Boss: Mole Knight. Faster than you’d think for the big guy, with some good layering in his attacks
45. Shovel: Level: Explodatorium. Try to be shocked but this place has a ton of explosions and destructible terrain, as well as temporary safe spots that will (fairly quickly) gush up as jets of fire. Even the miniboss primarily throws grenades at you. Follow this up with some timing puzzles and a few fun platforming segments…
46. Shovel: Level: …and we have another solid level
47. Shovel: Level: Clockwork Tower. As mentioned up in Brickwork the name is right on the tin. Lots of moving pieces, with a continuing theme of having to time your progression based on aiming for safe zones as the machine moves around you, escalating later on to also include portions where you ‘push’ platforms or gears forward to make additional paths…
48. Shovel: Level: …another solid double
49. Shovel: Boss: Tinker Knight. Phase 1 is a joke, phase 2 is fantastic. Love the spectacle if nothing else
50. Shovel: Level: Stranded Ship. This is probably the ‘worst’ stage in the game, which considering I’m still giving it a positive says something. But you have harassment enemies which are both fast and relentless on top of ice physics and lots of bottomless pits. I do like using snow to cover the instant death spikes but the physics of it is also a bit wonky
51. Shovel: Level: Flying Machine. Even when I first played this game (on camera, even!) I was impressed with this game. It’s almost a Wily Level in its own right, including a lot of final exam themes. Pressure jumps, moving and temporary platforms, using projectiles as platforms, and of course the wind mechanic…
52. Shovel: Level: …probably the best stage of the first two games…
53. Shovel: Level: …easy double
54. Shovel: Boss: Propeller Knight. Starts off pretty basic, ends up pretty fun
55. Shovel: Boss: General boss design, to cover the rest
56. Shovel: Level: Tower of Fate Entrance. There’s some issues with the rest of the Tower, but the initial ascent is still damned solid, and really rewards the player for using those Relics which hopefully they’ve been getting because if not, whoof
57. Shovel: Outro: While there are definitely some issues, the last two fights are very well designed and very fun
58. Shovel: NG+: While it enforces the difficulty increase, it’s still good to have and does keep all your stuff
59. Plague: Intro: Same general stage, touched up for the new tutorialization
60. Plague: Itemization: Lower health, but regular potions which give you increased maximum health but do NOT heal you, and go away upon death… these potions also drop pretty regularly, and you can only hold so many at a time…
61. Plague: Itemization: …giving the whole potion health system two positives
62. Plague: Itemization: Once again good itemization in the gold distribution and upgrades they purchase
63. Plague: Kit: Let’s be clear, Plague Knight’s kit is bonkers good. First is the huge variety of the actual attacks and the available combinations…
64. Plague: Kit: …which not only lets you decide on your own general playstyle but can be adapted on the fly to adjust to the situation…
65. Plague: Kit: …easy triple territory
66. Plague: Kit: Then there’s Plague’s Arcana (aka his Relic equivalents) which are WAY better than Shovel’s and have a wide variety of applications in traversal, recovery, attacking, and mutating. We have a ground bomb, a huge explosion, the ability to heal off enemies, invuln within a limited space, the ability to make a platform in thin air, a vertical lunge, a super dash, giving yourself contact damage, and of course a melee attack. This is all awesome…
67. Plague: Kit: …earning Plague Knight’s Kit…
68. Plague: Kit: …three positives
69. Plague: Level: The new challenge levels are fun and, well, challenging
70. Plague: Level: The speedrunner museum challenge is honestly quite interesting and fun
71. Plague: Traversal: Plague controls so much better than Shovel, and honestly is a treat to play as by comparison…
72. Plague: Traversal: …earning a second positive
73. Plague: Replayability: Between the variety of playstyles and general fun, Plague gets a Replayability positive
74. Plague: Viscerality: Plague is appropriately chaotic and explosive in playstyle
75. Specter: Tutorialization: The mini stages once you buy a new curio
76. Specter: Kit: So hey, Curios. These are what we in the business refer to as ‘turbo badass’. We have a boomerang attack, a massive melee hit, a terrain-following scythe, and a bouncing attack… already good stuff…
77. Specter: Kit: …then we skootch forward with some cool utility, like the Skull (heal), Sentry (summon a skeleton to help you which you can also detonate), barrier (exactly what it sounds like), and Shadow Mirror (makes a duplicate of yourself that ignores terrain)…
78. Specter: Kit: …And of course then there’s the overpowered stuff, like the Chronos Coin (slow the entire game except yourself), Hover Plume (a bit of physics defying flight which can be really well used in combination with jumps), and my personal favorite, Judgement Rush (which just zooms you to the next target and obliterates them)
79. Specter: Guidance: Terrain design indicating where to explore and how
80. Specter: Music: So, hey, mostly new music for Specter. It’s all remixes of course, but they’re REALLY GOOD remixes, so I’d be remiss…
81. Specter: Music: …if I didn’t give…
82. Specter: Music: …another triple
83. Specter: Terrain: Just… bonkers good, throughout…
84. Specter: Terrain: …earning two positives
85. Specter: Tutorialization: The levels constantly add new mechanics and the level design so naturally informs how they work
86. Specter: Viscerality: It feels so good and so cool to play as Specter Knight
87. Specter: Replayability: Oh yeah
88. Specter: Traversal: God I love just moving around as Specter Knight. The new movement kit and slashing and verticality are so good…
89. Specter: Traversal: …easy double territory for fluidity, usage in levels, and general fun
90. Specter: Intro: Once again a great and well designed Intro, honestly even better than the last two…
91. Specter: Intro: …with a new boss battle and some very tight level design that forces the player to realize their kit very early on
92. Specter: Level: Pridemoor Keep is exactly as mean and fun as it should be, even for a first stage. Keeping the same basic enemies and themes of the original two games, but varying it up by making the platforming much tighter and forcing the player to use obstacles and enemies as progression…
93. Specter: Level: …easy double
94. Specter: Boss: King Knight’s new kit is appropriate, varied, and fun, altering the terrain and throwing way more attacks in the arena (but these also allow for more traversal options for the player)…
95. Specter: Boss: …solid double fight
96. Specter: Level: The Explodatorium just knocks it out of the park now, with wild and challenging platforming puzzles and a great density. Lovely usage of walls as a way to progress, and as with King Knight’s stage retains the same themes (explosions, timing, and destructible terrain). This is as good a time as any to mention that this is going to be a running theme for Specter Knight. While Plague Knight was just the same stages with a new character Specter Knight is full on remixes of the themes of previous stages, using the same building blocks. This is why we’re giving brand new positives here whereas Plague didn’t get any. Anyways! This is one of the better ones of this bundle…
97. Specter: Level: …giving the Explodatorium…
98. Specter: Level: …three positives
99. Specter: Boss: Plague Knight is just awesome now, lots of fun new mechanics and gimmicks including duplicating himself, far more explosive platforms (which chain of course), and several of his attacks from the previous game
100. Specter: Level: Lost City. So this one surprised me considering how… not underground and not lava soaked it is, but it works out super well. It still contains the same themes as the previous version (the bouncing green goop primarily, but also digging and lava). Either way this, combined with the incredibly creative way they use the goop bubbles and lanterns and lava fields and everything…
101. Specter: Level: …makes for a solid…
102. Specter: Level: …triple
103. Specter: Boss: Mole Knight. So he’s still super fast (how is he so fast?) but now he uses goop powers more than lava powers which makes for a nice inversion and, honestly, makes him much harder than before as this changes the vectors of his attacks based on if he’s lava or goopey…
104. Specter: Boss: …great fight
105. Specter: Level: Lichyard. While obviously this is more of a story thing I just want to comment on how cool it is to see the otherwise normal town slowly get haunted across the level. Anyways! Specter Knight in his home turf now (or what will become it at least), and the level is really going nuts with the main mechanic of slicing through / bouncing off things now. Huge portions of the level are pitch black, the ghostly platforms are great and used cleverly (since they can form unidirectional passages), and of course the fire you have to put out with attacking. Great stage…
106. Specter: Level: …an easy…
107. Specter: Level: …triple
108. Specter: Boss: Phantom Striker. So hey, we had to put SOMEone in the Lichyard. Lightning boy is as good as any, though I admit I dislike how projectile spammy he is
109. Specter: Level: The Stranded Ship. So as with before this is probably my least overall favorite level. They use the ‘you can’t climb on this’ wall a lot on this stage, and the ice physics and harassment enemies aren’t any better. That being said the grindrail sections are great, and I do like what they do with the rainbow platforms
110. Specter: Level: Iron Whale. Again with the theme remixing; Enemies at platforms, plenty of death pits and spikes, more floating platforms by said spikes, and of course the friggin’ torpedoes. The Big Bertha enemy can go to hell though (see negatives later)
111. Specter: Boss: Treasure Knight. Way more projectiles than before but still with the great reach and speed
112. Specter: Level: Clockwork Tower. Yeah this is probably the best stage in this particular playthrough. Chapter? Campaign? Anyways. You know the drill; It’s the same unthinking, cold, brutal machines churning on without you and you have to deal with that combined with moving and pushing pulleys and gears to shove your own way through, all while clockwork enemies absolutely swarm you from every direction and provide you a convenient alternate ingress method. It’s great, and I love it…
113. Specter: Level: …and it’s…
114. Specter: Level: …a solid triple
115. Specter: Boss: Tinker Knight. This was already a fun fight but hoo boy. This time around the terrain starts being less… terrainy, forcing us to stay afloat based on him and his giant (unfinished) mech, all while he’s flinging tons of projectiles at us. One of my favorite bosses of the bunch…
116. Specter: Boss: …an easy…
117. Specter: Boss: …triple
118. Specter: Level: Flying Ship. This is always one of my favorite stages so how’s it do this time? It’s insanely brutal, with lots of verticality, usage of the cannonballs as traversal, some autoscrolling, more usage of the wind mechanics, buncha precise stuff…
119. Specter: Level: …all good stuff really
120. Specter: Boss: Propeller Knight’s phase 2 is way funner now, with the little fighter airships serving as the platforms for the fight
121. Specter: Level: Tower of Fate Entrance. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but there’s a ton of verticality to this level and you have to fight through tons of enemies which are designed to simultaneously interrupt your likely traversal paths while also informing them so they have nice big vuln areas. This is on top of some timing puzzles alongside switches, and some great final exam stuff by mixing and matching concepts from multiple previous levels. To phrase that differently, they’ll often do a thing where two stages get represented in a single section simultaneously. So you’re dealing with Lichyard and Iron Whale simultaneously, or Lost City, or whatever. And that’s before we get into the railgrinding section again. It’s great stuff…
122. Specter: Level: …another solid…
123. Specter: Level: …triple
124. Specter: Outro: This is a bit of an aggregate, but it still counts. Consider it for the final bundle of bosses, mostly notably the railgrind of the very last one. Not hard, but still fun
125. King: Core Mechanic: Joustus. Normally I’d put this under minigame but no, this is clearly a core mechanic to King’s Knight. The minigame itself is fine. It’s well designed, fun, and has some depth to it. It has issues but I’ll cover those in the negatives
126. King: HUD: Joustus battle arena. Again, good HUD, lots of good at a glance
127. King: Interface: Joustus card filters and info. Pretty much everything you need to know about Joustus is right there in the game
128. King: Guidance: As per usual, very well indicated and places…
129. King: Guidance: …even more than before, with the multiple exits and hidden paths
130. King: Overworld: Actual design put into it now, multiple routes and exits, and the micro-levels idea. This is what I’d consider at the Mario 3 level (not as good as, say, Mario World’s)…
131. King: Overworld: …so that’s a solid double
132. King: Itemization. Not counting the last few tidbits, the game does a great deal right here
133. King: Kit: As with Specter Knight, King Knight has some really unique mobility in his Kit. He’s dull to get AROUND but he’s great to platform, if that makes any sense, which is why this is a positive and a negative
134. King: Kit: But then there’s his moves and Heirlooms. He has a massive AOE attack, a hammer which heals if it connects, a horizontal missile, exploding rats which you can control, a shield which lets you then do damage based on how much you take, and my personal favorite… a friggin’ slap. Okay I’m kidding, but this is all solid stuff…
135. King: Kit: …but then you consider the Scepter which lets you avoid water, the Bubble Frog which is basically a float, Scorching Saber which lets you destroy everything, and of course Gyro Boots which are just bypassing terrain entirely at that point…
136. King: Kit: …all great stuff
137. King: Tutorialization: As before, each new mechanic and gimmick a new area adds is properly tutorialized and showcased
138. King: Intro: Usual introduction and level design goodness. It’s based off the usual first stage, but quickly develops into its own thing as is necessitated by King Knight’s unique kit
139. King: Level: Mossy Mountain. So, the thing King Knight did that was actually quite brilliant was rather than having long levels of doom they broke down each of the biomes into much more bite sized pieces. So there’s several ‘plains levels’ instead of just the one. In other words this takes the place of the second chunk of the tutorial stage. For the record I’m fully in favor of this, and not just for the usual time reasons (after all the whole game is still just as long), but because it allows for greater density in platforming themes. For example this entire stage is all about making sure the player is fully aware of King Knight’s unique smash into spiral gimmick, and all the platforming is centered around that
140. King: Level: Spectral Plains. This might as well be the final exam for the first few stages. The swinging and moving lanterns serving as targetable objects you can dash into and bounce off of quickly becomes mandatory for basic progression
141. King: Level: Bounding Battlements. This is a good time to mention that, unlike the Specter levels which were clear remixes of existing themes, these new stages are… new stages. Oh there’s some of the same moving pieces, like similar enemies and obstacles, but there’s new expressions, new platform types, new mechanics, and of course new enemies. All of that makes for some really fun, dense stuff… like this in fact, where we start introducing the bounding platforms
142. King: Level: Grand Hall. One of the larger levels so far, once again playing a lot with the midair dash and what refills it (enemies, bouncing platforms), solid stuff
143. King: Boss: And it leads into King Pridemoor himself with his giant suit of armor. I like the summons, the fact that he defends against his biggest weak spot (which amusingly also leaves him vulnerable), nice big sweeping attacks which rewards your greater mobility. Simple but well designed
144. King: Level: Floating Frog Fen. So this is clever; You have floating flogs in bubbles (foreshadowing the new kit) which let you run into them for a boost, but doing so also frees the frog which you can then also jump on. The frog will also immediately go for a jump themselves, meaning they’re very likely to also be a new platform for you. Clever, tight, fun level. This level also introduces the new temporary platforms in the form of leaves, and does some very creative stuff with its alternate route
145. King: Level: Lunkeroth’s Lagoon. So this is fun. We’re pulling in some of the gradually moving / crushing platform concept from Mario World, combined with some of the only decent usage of the Big Bertha enemy I’ve ever seen
146. King: Level: Pressure Plant. So this is another new one; corks! These are temporary moving platforms which require hitting the same color of vial to shoot them out, which makes for some interesting interactions (and they, of course, tutorialize this well)
147. King: Level: Ratsploder Runway. I really like this stage. You can tell large swaths of it are designed to be used with some of the kit (notably the shield), lots of flaming death everywhere, and some very smart placement to help you stay in the air to totally avoid the aforementioned flaming death
148. King: Level: Royal Pond. I wasn’t expecting much from this but this was actually pretty creative for what they were going for. The canoe, the autoscroller segment, the cheep cheep wannabes.
149. King: Boss: The Troupple king returns, in style! Arcing attacks, lots of ‘using adds as projectiles’… but as is the primary theme of the entire game, enemies just make moving platforms for King Knight. This plus having control over your own safe spot (the canoe) throughout the fight makes a lot of how it goes in the player’s hands
150. King: Level: Torque Lift Torsion. So you remember the second half of the Clockwork Tower levels’ themes back in the previous 3 games? Yeah it was the ‘you step on it, you make it go’. Well they take that to its next logical conclusion here. While the whole stage is centered around that, now you can ram into the part you DON’T want to change the navigable terrain.
151. King: Level: Aerial Brigade. So hey, they REALLY like this theme of obstacles being traversal aids. In this case it’s cannonballs (and a few enemies). And… yes I see you game, ha ha, nice reference to 5-9 from Mario 3. At least here we have honest to goodness kit to deal with it instead of ‘sucks to be you’
152. King: Level: Shock Assembly. Some new fun pressure plate lightning zappers, so that’s always fun. They do some great stuff with this, like using roaming enemies to activate them, or later there’s enemies that follow you, or even places where the ONLY platforms are the zappers
153. King: Level: Ladder Factory. The name is quite accurate. The whole level is ladders but they’re floating or flying or falling and you have to navigate them the entire time. This might be one of the shortest stages in the game but it’s got a lot of density going for it
154. King: Level: Excavation Station. So now we have tons of breakable blocks from the side! Nah I’m kidding, the new gimmick here is… digging! I find this vaguely amusing considering our first hero had a friggin’ shovel but it took until twirly boy to finally start using that as a mechanic. Each dirt patch can be tunneled into which can change your route or find other ways forward. And secrets, of course… then there’s the final room. I love this. So you have to slam into things to make some of the harder jumps, which makes you twirl. Twirling tunnels through dirt patches. The dirt patches are over lava. Figure it out!
155. King: Level: Alchemical Aqueducts. Rushing waters, temporary platforms, moving platforms, enemies that fling bombs, new slime enemies with… shields? (Where did they get the shields…) Some spikes too for good measure
156. King: Level: Axolongl Alcove. Whole new… enemy? Platform? Mechanic? Anyways the Axolongls serve as retracting / extending platforms depending on being hit vs. being left alone and it allows for some very creative platforming
157. King: Level: Cyclone Sierra. Hey, new biome! First time we see one. Our first and most obvious new mechanic is the cyclones which warp you between the same color of cyclone. They do some good tutorialization of this and some great escalation of it both. Love this whole segment
158. King: Level: Heavyweight Heights. I don’t have much to add to this one. It’s using the same mechanics as the ship levels from the previous games (the wind in particular) and doing so competently, and is otherwise well done
159. King: Level: Birder’s Roost, aka our boss stage. Lots of stop / go moving platforms, birder enemies absolutely everywhere, good escalation with spikes and pits later as they continue the stop / go theme
160. King: Boss: King Birder. Continues the moving platform motif of his stage. Summoning adds, periodic water splashes (interrupted by the platforms), the bouncing laser, and a shrinking arena make for a fun fight
161. King: Level: Shrouded Spires. Our friendly silhouette mechanic is back, along with moving platforms AND spikes (fun combo). They’re actually quite smart with it, making sure you can always see at least something. Combine this with some mean enemy placement, spring platforms, and the flames you have to snuff out with his dash, and you get some interesting screens
162. King: Level: Lava Well. So try to be surprised but there’s a lot of lava in this stage, alongside the axolongls which are moving (and trailing fire??) but also frozen segments, flying enemies, bubble frogs… a final exam stage, in other words
163. King: Level: Warp Wrap Keep. This is bloody creative. So the ceiling and floor warp into each other at the start, which not only tutorializes the mechanic immediately but forces you to plan out your movements to avoid the spikes. Then they start really playing with it. This is basically a Portal level and I love it. Great usage of the warps on walls to force a ‘wrapping’ mechanic similar to Mario 2 or 3, lots of enemies to use as platforms. My favorite part is in the vertical scrolling section where you start off having platforms to stand on that wrap through the portals, then have to do the next segment WITHOUT platforms and just things to bounce on. This might be…
164. King: Level: …one of the only double positive stages in King Knight

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Visual Distinction: Several areas where it’s legitimately hard to see what you’re looking at in the background
2. Visual Distinction: This issue, it’s worth noting, persists throughout all four games here…
3. Visual Distinction: …causing repeating issues
4. Shovel: Difficulty Curve: Very spiky, and prone to death spirals
5. Shovel: Difficulty Curve: This is several mechanics combined but essentially it’s a bit too easy to fall into a death loop and have to go grind to get upgrades or access to areas
6. Shovel: Terrain Design: Some jumps and areas are just complete ‘screw yous’
7. Shovel: Padding: Boss refights
8. Shovel: QoL: The game does not allow exiting and keeping progress, which means if you miss anything you have to not only do the ENTIRE stage over again, but also fight the boss again, which is just aggravating
9. Plague: QoL: The stage exit problem again
10. Shovel: Interface: There’s just too many clicks to swap things around, which is already problematic in any game but is just weird in a high action, high pace platformer
11. Plague: Interface: The interface issue is so much worse as Plague Knight. The absence of presets or templates suddenly becomes awful as you have tons of enemies with tons of possible weapon configurations…
12. Plague: Interface: …leading to a second negative
13. Plague: Padding: Boss refights… again
14. Specter: QoL: The stage exit problem… agaaain…
15. Specter: Enemy: The Big Bertha wannabe enemy is honestly just a uniquely irritating frustration
16. King: Audio Spam: A sound effect plays every single time you dash and spin and… you do a whooole lot of that…
17. King: Audio Spam: …a whole… whole lot of it
18. King: Pacing: Joustus. The game just… slows to a crawl during Joustus matches, and that’s just off for a high paced precision platformer like this. The minigame itself is fine, really, but it takes entirely too long…
19. King: Seconds In Minutes: …and that’s the real issue here. Every single action takes too long. Not by a lot, just enough that you’ll notice. And you WILL notice because, again, you do a LOT of Joustus in King Knight…
20. King: Seconds In Minutes: …for a double
21. King: Traversal: Or lack thereof. I get that he’s supposed to be a big bruiser clunker but good lord
22. King: Music: By this point the songs have gotten repetitive. They’re GREAT songs but… there’s two games of music in four games here. This is actually made worse because…
23. King: Music: …there are SO many stages thanks to how they spread them out. Meaning just listening to these same songs over and over and over
24. King: Mid-Mission Checkpoints: Some issues with placement, especially in the longer and auto-scrolly stages
25. King: Outro: What the hell. The first final boss is whatever, the second is actively irritating (can’t be bounced on, most weapons don’t work, have to hit from the side) and…
26. King: Outro: …it leads into the THIRD final boss which is just awful. No health reset, instant death pit everywhere, and frustrating hand movements, incredibly easy to die thanks to nonsense or having done nothing wrong. This is such an aggravating way to end an otherwise fantastic game…
27. King: Outro: …so for the final final boss and the multi phase bullcrap of doom…
28. King: Outro: …an easy triple

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Stage 1 and the train station and forest. The level of detail here is pretty indicative of the level of visuals the rest of the game will have. The train station, the forest, the clocks, the friggin’ train itself, the little details like the cobwebs or the parts of the handrails and benches…
2. Brickwork: …solid…
3. Brickwork: …triple
4. Brickwork: Stage 2 and the jungle. Jungle wastes, stalactites, wooden supports, and of course then as we descend it gets colder and covered in arctic hell surrounding an underground lake. Great stuff. Small aside; I like how we start off at a lake above ground by the forest and end at the frozen lake down below
5. Brickwork: Stage 3 and the golden, flowing sands of the crypts. This is admittedly one of the simpler tilesets of the bundle but it’s still good, and it still gets across the impression of this sand sea slowly being drowned. And considering the implication that this is all gold dust, not sand…
6. Brickwork: Stage 4 and the towers. Good lord the towers. The ruined walls, the distant castle, the detail… even within the first few screens I was sold on this place. They even do fun tricks like imply bricks with a few outlines, or use shading to indicate depth and give the feel of being in a 3 dimensional space…
7. Brickwork: …fantastic stuff…
8. Brickwork: …for another triple
9. Brickwork: Stage 5 and the partially sunken ship in the storm. I sort of hate how good the pixel art is in this game in some ways. This might be, unironically, some of the best spritework I’ve ever seen. No joke. Anyways, we have a rundown ship with all the beams and broken planks and overall look you’d expect it to have, with way too many visual details for what it is. How much time did they spend on this? Good lord. All of this is just the interior too! Then you go OUTside and you see the rigging and the storm and the sheets billowing in the wind and it’s just amazing…
10. Brickwork: …another…
11. Brickwork: …easy triple
12. Brickwork: Stage 6 and the bloody castle. This is technically more of a doodads thing because this place is littered with props. Bloody cages, broken chains, rough cobblestone walls, pulleys and other mechanisms, bloody smears on the walls, bloody spots on the GROUND… there’s a lot of blood is what I’m getting at…
13. Brickwork: …solid double though. I’m also fond of how it starts off like a normal castle and just gets bloodier the further in you get
14. Brickwork: Stage 7 and the morose halls. Can I just say good LORD this level looks amazing. The castle walls, the metal reinforcements, the bookshelves, the amazing doodads, the fancy railings, the storm in the distance…
15. Brickwork: …it’s all just incredible stuff
16. Brickwork: Stage 8 and the final spires of the tower. This is… pretty plain by this game’s standards, which naturally means it’s better than a lot of other games ever manage. I’m particularly fond of the gothic architecture and stained glass windows
17. Brickwork: Stage 9 and the japanese demon imprisonment. Lovely, if a bit horrifying spiked mountains in the distance, with japanese architecture and candles littered everywhere. And of course half of it is on fire. Great stuff
18. Spritework: Honestly just bonkers good designs for the enemies
19. Spritework: And good lord have you seen these boss designs? Incredible animation and fantastic detailing on them…
20. Spritework: …easy…
21. Spritework: …triple
22. Visual Continuity: The moon and its slow reveal (and finally consumed by the curse)
23. Visual Storytelling: I love the little touches here and there of the various chimaeras. The train engine merged with a mech, the ‘gold coins’ which are actually skulls, the woman made of blood, et cetera

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Choices: Kill or recruit? Both are completely viable options. Killing gives you new kit, recruiting gives you a new playable character. Speaking of which…
2. Core Mechanic: The character swap mechanic by itself is amazing. I have to really explain this because this is so damned good. First, you can swap with a quick button press on the fly. This controls incredibly smoothly and can be done literally in mid air, which by itself adds to the technique and skill ceiling
3. Core Mechanic: Second, each character has their own health independent of the others. This means that as you gather characters you literally get more health and can rotate around for healing
4. Kit: And of course each character has their own Kit to them. First we have our default with Zangetsu. Short range but fast attacks, and his sub weapons include a diagonal whip, a downward strike, and a big buff to double your damage
5. Kit: Also when you decide to kill characters, you gain new abilities; A double jump, a dash, and a huge aerial slash
6. Kit: Meanwhile if you recruit Miriam she gets a longer range (worse attack rate though), jumps much higher (which can be ‘hot swapped’ thanks to the amazing swap mechanic in mid air), slide (great for getting to new areas), and some basic sub weapons like the Dagger, Rapier, and Sickle…
7. Kit: …and all of this is already worthy of a double, but good lord her friggin’ Axe. The axe is just stupid strong if used correctly and can straight up delete bosses
8. Kit: Alfred’s an interesting one. His main attack is very slow and short range, barely useful for anything except proccing heals or desperation. But his spells… So he gets a Burning Sphere which is a damaging protective bubble (which, like all buffs, carries over on swap), a giant ice sword that destroys the hell out of whatever’s in front of it, a duplicate which can be used to bypass terrain, and finally the friggi’n lightning death balls of ultimate doom, which can be used to annihilate anything. Fun guy
9. Kit: Gebel! He’s one of the ‘weaker’ ons but has great utility. His attacks arc up, which is way more useful than it sounds, and he can friggin’ fly, which is also incredibly useful
10. Difficulty Options: Simple, but well done, and no penalty for selection
11. Level: Branching paths in general. There are quite a few throughout the game with variable power ups and challenges
12. Intro: Level: Stage 1, Moonlight Temptation. A fairly standard stage but strong for what it is, a good introduction to the game and a lot of its basic concepts (lamp types, sub weapons, minibosses, etc.)
13. Boss: The Glutton Train. Great introduction boss to the game and how use the boss’s attacks to your benefit
14. Level: Stage 2, Frigid Hell. Lots more platforming than before, with moving terrain and a lot more emphasis on precision jumps. The branches get more interesting in here too…
15. Level: …solid stuff
16. Boss: Focalor. Interesting example of an area denial boss; First it makes you limit your movement, then it slowly shrinks the area, then you have to dodge its attacks. And then its primary function is to slowly home in on you with a damaging shield up. A fascinating fight
17. Level: Stage 3, The Brilliant Void. Love the title by the way. So this is a bit of a timing stage, with moving spikes, sand pits, and a lot of threading the needle between terrain and enemies. Fun stuff…
18. Level: …and an easy double
19. Boss: Valefor. This is such a fun and creative boss. The giant piles of money which can be traversed or attacked to change their structure, and of course the split hands Andross style attacks. As an aside, each boss has a desperation attack they end the fight on when they’re already dead. Valefor’s my favorite, where he just cascades coins at you with a ‘safe’ spot
20. Level: Stage 4, Blasphemy Unto Heaven. This is probably the most Castlevania stage of the game. Mean platforming, mean enemy placement, great terrain usage, and phenomenal escalation in themes and general difficulty…
21. Level: …I think this is our first…
22. Level: …triple positive stage. Great stuff
23. Boss: Valac. Also known as WOOOOO. This is a funny one since he’s probably the easiest boss since the first one, but they do some fun stuff with him. The orbs he spits can be destroyed, he has two attackable spots until you kill one (at which point it gets harder to hit him), and he has multiple attack vectors as well as ‘wave’ attacks where you have to time your jumps around him and his gigantic flame attacks. Fun stuff
24. Level: Stage 5, Sunder The Night, is probably the weakest stage overall. It has a few issues (those painting minibosses can go directly to hell) but it still does plenty right
25. Boss: Andraelphus. Area denial lightning attacks, big sweeping strikes with tons of windup (so you know they’re coming), swooping attacks in hard to reach areas, a wind attack to push you into damage (or off the edge)
26. Level: Stage 6, Tragedy of Slaughter. Another solid triple stage, gonna give that out right up front. More interesting enemies, great usage of platforming and traps, a lot of mergers of themes (enemies that track to your position alongside temporarily safe spots from blades kind of stuff), I love this stage…
27. Level: …so here’s…
28. Level: …that triple
29. Boss: Bloodless. Weird name for a woman who’s literally wearing blood but anyways. I really like this fight, probably one of the easier ones though. She has multiple methods to get up to her (kit, people, or umbrellas) and a variety of attacks (homing orbs you can destroy, an AOE attack the umbrellas can protect you from) oh and you can hit the umbrellas to freeze them in place. Fun stuff
30. Level: Stage 7, Defiler of Taboos. This is basically the same quality of the previous stage, but a bit meaner. Enemies with arcing attacks, temporary platforms, enemies with shields and homing attacks, great terrain design…
31. Level: …it’s all great stuff…
32. Level: …easily another triple
33. Boss: Bathin. This is an amazingly designed fight all about frenetic movement and action while never being unfair in its design. He moves so fast but all his attacks have defined patterns to them and encourage you to pay attention and anticipate
34. Level: Stage 8, Curse the Moon is… fine. The repeated motif of the chasing… whatever those are is a nice theme, but they don’t really do much else with it. It’s still a good stage don’t mistake me, just not as good as some of the bangers this game pushed out
35. Level: Stage 9, Cleave the Moon. I love this stage. Three mini stages, each one custom tailored to one of the people you’ll be using for it and their unique kit, with tons of creative traps, jumps, and enemy usage, and a miniboss each…
36. Level: …easily…
37. Level: …its own triple
38. Boss: I absolutely adore the Zangetsu final boss fight. This might unironically be the best fight in the game. He’s fast, has insane reach, a huge variety of attacks, and you fight him alongside your allies who help you avoid his attacks, each one in a way that still requires you to be on it but nonetheless helps a ton. LOVE this fight…
39. Boss: …take…
40. Boss: …a triple
41. Music: Yeah no, every single stage is just legit…
42. Music: …plus some absolute bangers…
43. Music: …another triple
44. Outro: Everything about the last stage gets a bonus neat thing but the final boss is honestly really awesome, between the party all fighting together and the great moveset
45. Controls: Precise, tight, well thought out, and programmable…
46. Controls: …for an easy…
47. Controls …triple. Honestly this is the triple standard for me, and I’ve used this game for years to judge what a triple positive control scheme is
48. Difficulty Curve: I’ve seen better, but it’s still a nice smooth curve upwards throughout
49. Enemy Variety: Good across the board
50. Replayability: Between multiple playthroughs and general quality, absolutely
51. Terrain Design: Very well designed to work well with the commitment platformer approach

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Boss: Gremori. Long, irritating phases which can be hell to dodge if you don’t have the right setup, and/or long invuln periods
2. Unskippable Cutscenes: They’re minor, but they’re there… mostly for boss fights, which sucks when you die and have to see them again (and again and again)

Story Positives:

1. Humor: Terrible voice acting… so, so terrible hahaha
2. Brickwork: So let’s get this out there. Castlevania Symphony of the Night is in the running for some of the best sprite based brickwork of all time. Hell even amongst more modern games the only game that comes to mind immediately in challenging it is the Diablo 2 Remaster, Hitman 3, and Red Dead Redemption 2. So almost every ‘biome’ is going to be bonkers stupid good and most of them will just be triple positives across the board. With that out of the way! The opening area, usually called the Entrance. The forest, the properly setup front halls, the marblework…
3. Brickwork: …it is absolutely amazing looking and a great way to get us into the zone on the visuals
4. Architecture: I’ll interrupt my gushing to mention that, similar to other Metroidvanias we’ve covered, a lot of work is done to make the castle actually feel like the enormous castle that it is. Wonderful layouts and design…
5. Architecture: …for a solid double
6. Brickwork: The Alchemy Laboratory is a personal favorite of mine. Incredible detailing, giant marble columns, detailing even on the floors, tons of fancy filigree…
7. Brickwork: …easy…
8. Brickwork: …triple
9. Doodads: I’m also super fond of the various doodading here. Books, glass jars, lamps, statues… spikes for some reason… it’s great
10. Brickwork: The Underground Caverns is probably one of the least good looking areas in the game. And that is saying something because this place is better looking than a lot of games ever get
11. Brickwork: The Abandoned Pit is shockingly good looking considering it’s just a cave. Honestly this is even better looking than the previous cave, with some great visuals as you slowly descent…
12. Brickwork: …for a solid double
13. Brickwork: The Catacombs on the other hand is another one of those crazy well done areas. The wall tombs, the dead laid up in droves, the crumbling bricks of the long abandoned structure, the statues and glass paintings, the giant piles of corpses…
14. Brickwork: …absolutely love it…
15. Brickwork: …easy triple
16. Doodads: I also love all the little details in the catacombs down here
17. Brickwork: Marble Gallery is another of those ‘best areas’ again. I wonder how many we’ll have by the end? Anyways seriously, look at this insanity. Marble bricks, shading to imply three dimensional space. And this is on top of tons of detailing, pillars, statues, even a good variety of backgrounds and floors…
18. Brickwork: …another solid triple…
19. Brickwork: …positive
20. Brickwork: The Outer Wall is another of those basic areas. But the styling on the wall (making it look like a round tower) and the storm and forest in the distance really make it work
21. Brickwork: Skipping to the west end for a second. The Royal Chapel is a bit repeated, but good lord the detailing is through the roof. I don’t even have words for wha tall this stuff is but it sells itself perfectly. And of course it’s all perfectly capstoned by the pseudo 3D chapel area…
22. Brickwork: …another solid double
23. Brickwork: The Colosseum is interesting. This is another area with some repetition going on but the detail per segment is still crazy good. The preperatory areas, the crude lanterns, the viewing area, the central colosseum itself, the spiral staircases, the baths, the bloody area…
24. Brickwork: …another solid double
25. Doodads: Also love the weapons, supply boxes, pikes, lanterns, and statues around here too
26. Brickwork: Olrox’s Quarters are a weird one. Some of this is somewhat bland, but then you have the prison area which is good, the actual boss arena which looks like a church complete with stained glass window, and o fcourse the outdoors segment with the houses and blood fountain
27. Brickwork: Skipping back over to the east end, I think the Long Library might be the best looking zone in the game. So far, at least. The detailing here is absolutely insane. Sure there’s ‘merely’ the amazing looking bookstacks with variable amounts and types of books, but there’s also the giant ladders and staircases and viewing areas and the broken down warehouse area and private reading booths and a friggin’ fanciful resting area and it’s just crazy how many of these rooms are bespoke…
28. Brickwork: …easy…
29. Brickwork: …triple
30. Brickwork: This was the last zone I thought might challenge the Library, but the Clock Tower, while amazing, I think is merely excellently amazing. The gears, the pipes, the switches, the way it all fits together, the incredible amount of animation, it’s fantastic. Great look for what is functionally the last dungeon…
31. Brickwork: …and another strong double
32. Music Direction: In almost every area music is used to really accent the tone and vibe
33. Atmosphere: Similarly, the atmosphere just oozes from every area
34. Animation: Mid-cutscene animations really add to the storyboarding
35. NPC Set Dressing: Okay this is a weird one but there’s… a weirdly large amount of little flavor details just… everywhere
36. Spritework: Some of the best spritework in the business. We first have to acknowledge just Alucard himself, who has a truly insane level of design by himself…
37. Spritework: …for two positives
38. Spritework: Then there’s the bosses which, yeah, lotta great stuff there
39. Spritework: And finally the absolutely insane quality and quantity of enemy designs throughout…
40. Spritework: …for a full…
41. Spritework: …three positives

Story Negatives:

1. Localization: For however funny it is, the localization really is just terrible… only getting so few negatives by virtue of how little dialogue is in the game

Gameplay Positives:

1. Minigame: Richter mode, while problematic, is a way to vary up things
2. Music: I mean come on
3. Music: Definitely gets a second positive
4. Controls: Street fighter moves aside the game controls like a breeze, very smooth and very precise…
5. Controls: …and earning two positives
6. Core Combat: A fairly central aspect of the game, and well done beside
7. Itemization: The placement and drops of items, outside of a few super-rare things, is honestly very well thought out and helps with the Metroivania’ness thereof…
8. Itemization: …earning two positives for Normal…
9. Itemization: …and another two…
10. Itemization: …for the Inverted castle
11. Encounter Design: Good usage and presentation of enemies in conjunction not just with each other, but with the terrain in which you fight them
12. Encounter Design: …earning a second positive
13. Enemy Design: Surprisingly good enemy designs, earning…
14. Enemy Design: …two for normal
15. Enemy Design: And another two…
16. Enemy Design: …for Inverted
17. Enemy Variety: Enemy variety is bonkers in this one. The huge, huge variety of not just appearances but of different types and styles of enemies is insane, so…
18. Enemy Variety: …two for the Normal castle…
19. Enemy Variety: …and then another two…
20. Enemy Variety: …for the Inverted castle
21. Guidance and Flow: Especially early on, the game is really good about giving you guidance on where and what to do
22. Visual Continuity: As it pertains to navigation, it’s always well designed and possible to (at a glance) tell where you are and where you can go…
23. Visual Continuity: …earning two positives
24. Visual Distinction: Similarly, in good metroidvania fashion, it’s very well distinct and capable of telling enemy, player, interactable, and terrain…
25. Visual Distinction: …earning two positives
26. Sound Design: Good, distinct, and helpful
27. Kit: Spells, while irritating to use, are available from the start (or learned from the librarian)
28. Kit: Sub weapons and their usual variety are easy
29. Kit: Weapons and variety thereto, however, is where the kit really shines. Lots of different weapons with different attack speeds, angles, reach, recovery time, and visuals… the fact that there’s multiple ‘ultimate weapons’ alone lines up with this…
30. Kit: …earning weapons a strong double positive
31. Viscerality: Let’s be honest, the game has pretty good viscerality in spells, hits, attacks, and enemies…
32. Viscerality: …earning a second positive for all three aspects
33. Pacing: The game maintains a very good pacing between explore, breather, combat, boss, and keeps that throughout both castles…
34. Pacing: …earning two positives
35. Overworld: Surprisingly good connective tissue between the ‘stages’
36. Terrain: When it’s well crafted it’s fantastic, keeping in mind what areas you should be able to access at what times
37. Traversal: Mostly in kit, but it’s still there
38. Intro: Gets across a lot of what’s going on here, what a metroidvania is, and how the game unfolds
39. Level: Initial loop. This is the initial run through the Castle and contains most of the ‘central’ areas. Very well thought out, lots of good guidance, and generally fun platforming and layout…
40. Level: …earning it…
41. Level: …three positives
42. Boss: Olrox. This is a fairly simple fight but I’m with it. Floating, homing skulls, laser beams, fireballs. It’s a good fight that rewards mobility
43. Level: Lower loop. This is the lower areas, the descent into the mines, caves, waterways, and catacombs. While there’s a couple of irritants here and there this, too, is nicely layered and loops smoothly back into the middle loop, earning it…
44. Level: …another three…
45. Level: …positives
46. Boss: Granphaloon. Sometimes referred to as Legion. Ignore the fact that it’s a gigantic corpse pile for a second. This enemy absolutely buffets you with corpses as you slowly break open parts of its, uh, corpse shield (the words you type when covering Castlevania games…) in order to hit its cores. And you can knock away as much or as little of it as you want to attack said core
47. Level: Upper loop. This is the chapel, upper castle, outer wall, and clocktower. While not as good as the other two loops, there’s still some good and inventive stuff here, and really stretches with the verticality…
48. Level: …earning two positives
49. Boss: Normal bosses, general. Following that logic this would be for all the normal bosses not covered. Why yes I didn’t mean to do these out of order, but here we are
50. Boss: Galamoth, the hardest boss in the game. Tons of health (which is actually his only bad part), several big AOE attacks, huge hit and hurtboxes, lightning attacks… he’s designed to be built around and that’s what makes him worth a damn. You are encouraged to out think the fight and come prepard rather than just out perform him
51. Boss: Inverted bosses, general. The bosses have good spectacle in SoTN but not a lot of strong gameplay mechanics so… consider this an aggregate for all the Inverted bosses
52. Boss: Shaft. This is edging over the line of an individual positive a bit, but his floating positioning (which rewards the player for using their more vertical attacks) and orbs with the damage spam is dcent enough
53. Replayability: As with most games of this type, generally replayable

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Controls: Richter is the worst, but even Alucard still has some hand cancer in the form of having to do street fighter inputs for basic movement stuff
2. Early Game: Between health and lack of kit and spread of save rooms, there is a bit of an Early Game Hell problem in this one
3. Guidance and Flow: There are a few points of ‘well now what’ where it’s not super obvious what to do and, honestly, the game just kind of wants you to go roaming to wherever you haven’t been
4. Info In Game: There’s some… pretty bad issues with info not being in the game. The very existence of the second castle, how enemies and spells and items work, what leveling does, all kinds of stuff…
5. Info In Game: …earning two negatives
6. Interface: Just using items is far more aggravating, delayed, and click-heavy then it needs to be
7. Music: The MP3 problem and non looping music can get irritating
8. Terrain: Actively gets in the way of traversal later on, and lots of empty padded rooms regardless
9. Walkthroughitis: Accessing the second castle at all and how to progress to the final boss

Story Positives:

1. Visual Storytelling: Everything about the Intro. I talk a lot about the difference between visual elements like Brickwork and Spritework and NPC Set Dressing and of course Visual Storytelling. Visual Storytelling specifically is the part of the visuals that is conveying the plot and events and… y’know storytelling without needing dialogue. And that’s this to a T
2. Music Direction: The music direction for it is excellent as well
3. Cutscene: The entire cutscene is great. Honestly, and I don’t mean this as an unkindness, I imagine a lot of people remember this game MORE fondly than it already is because of the impact of this Intro
4. Themes: The Themes of the game are also all right there on display right in the intro. Death and family (more on this later)
5. Visual Continuity: The mountain and the tree. As you progress up the mountain or up the tree it’s pretty clear that you are shuffling up and around and helps you keep mental geography of where you are
6. Atmosphere: Yeah, it works, between the dying and the revitalized forests
7. Architecture: Most Metroidvanias manage this well and this is no exception. The usage of the distant skybox where you can see the other areas of the game helps tremendously with making the forest feel large and fleshed out, especially with all its verticality, the frozen area, and the mountain
8. Moment: The deaths of the owlets. Those poor things
9. Moment: The waters returning to the Ginso Tree. As much as I absolutely hate this segment gameplay wise it is an incredibly powerful moment story wise
10. Music Direction: Second overall positive to music direction for proper usage of dynamic, thematic, and situational music
11. Pacing: Brilliant pacing between moments of calm, excitement, danger, gloom, doom, and peace
12. Brickwork: Swallow’s Nest. You can already see where this is going. I’m going to be honest, I know a lot of people turbo praise this game for the visuals but I’ll admit I think it’s a bit too bloomy and leans on the light a bit too much. That doesn’t make it BAD just not amazingly awesome. So we start off with the soft, fond greens and safe light colors
13. Brickwork: Sunken Glades. The rotting waters (which we fix later), the trees absent flowers, the chunks of foliage which are all falling apart
14. Brickwork: Hollow Grove. The cave, the trees in the distance, and of course the foliage
15. Brickwork: Moon Grotto. Absolutely over-grown vines, trees, bushes, and grass
16. Brickwork: Ginso Tree. Again, I hate this stage, but I love looking at it as we go. The whole tree looks just rotting enough without being completely gross, the spikes being a great visual indicator
17. Brickwork: Thornfelt Swamp. The game has shown us several pretty bad, rotting areas up until now (to showcase the stakes and the problem we’re here to solve) so the Thornfelt Swamp is a wonderfully lush, bright, golden area filled with bright greens and amazingly aqua waters…
18. Brickwork: …also probably overall the best looking place in the game
19. Brickwork: Valley of the Wind. Forest visible in the distance (as well as that volcano, hm) and very barren crags, durable foliage, and sand-bladed cliffs
20. Brickwork: Misty Woods. I love how dark, creepy, and ephemeral this whole place is. Very suitable for an illusory forest
21. Brickwork: Forlorn Ruins. Ahhh the Forlorn Ruins. The frozen wastes, completely snow blasted and covered in harsh looking ice. But also…
22. Visual Storytelling: …all the indicators of the civilization that once was before it was destroyed by the horrible blizzard
23. Brickwork: Sorrow Pass, and hoo boy it’s well named. Spikes. Spikes everywhere. This whole place looks dry, barren, and brutal
24. Brickwork: Mt. Horu. I love the volcano. The whole place FEELS exactly as molten and oppressively hot as it likely is
25. Themes: Death and rebirth, and families. Death is a part of life, new life coming out of death is a huge element of nature, but most importantly of all is how people from all over can band together and form their own new families
26. Outro: The sacrifice, the families re-united, death and rebirth
27. Spritework: Mostly for the four principle characters, but it’s still good

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Controls: Layout and style of buttons
2. Guidance: Ignoring the obvious map pings, the flow and nature of the level design…
3. Guidance: …but also with regards to placements and layout
4. Intro: Some very good Metroid style tutorialization, flow, and presentation in the Intro…
5. Intro: …earning two positives
6. Kit: Bash, by itself, gets a positive
7. Kit: Plenty of fun stuff, if a bit simple. The homing attack, the charge jump, doubl ejump, stomp, climb, charge… you get it
8. Level: Black Root Burrows. I love this segment. It’s turbo dark, which means your first time through (when you’re trying to turn on the lights) you’re slow, cautious, and there’s a lot of density to the platforming
9. Level: Forlorn ruins. This is such a creative level. So as you move through it your gravity alters based on parts of the level you can walk onto. You have to work with it while also carrying orbs that light up things, also activating heated segments to change the terrain alongside the frozen areas, and just… good lord I LOVE this stage…
10. Level: …easy…
11. Level: …triple
12. Level: Ginso Tree. No, not the escape that I won’t shut up about, just the level itself. Portals, spikes, lots of aerial jumps
13. Level: Gumo’s Hideout. This is a fun area where we start to stretch with switches and traps
14. Level: Misty woods. Great on the story axis and the gameplay axis. The platforming here is fun, the enemy and terrain usage are great, and the illusory maze itself is great…
15. Level: …fun stuff
16. Level: Moon Grotto. These are, purely personally, my favorite platforming segment of the game. Lots of great usage of traps, spikes, timing puzzles, frickin’ laser beams, all fun…
17. Level: …and worthy of a double
18. Level: Route to the valley. This isn’t a single named area so much as the entire trip west towards the windswept valley
19. Level: Sorrow Pass. I do love these spikes, which I know sounds weird, but they do so much cool stuff with the wind and of course Bash
20. Level: Sunken Glades. Plenty of fun navigation and platforming around the broken husks of the forest
21. Level: Thornfelt Swamp. This serves as a gameplay breather in addition to a narrative one, mostly easy gimmes and some nice chill swimming segments
22. MSQ: Strangely the post Forlorn Ruins stealth section is properly intense and gradient in its detection
23. Music: Honestly I love this soundtrack, especially from how it’s used…
24. Music: …earning a second positive
25. Saves: The ability to place down saves (almost) anywhere and their eventual upgrades into usefulness
26. Terrain: Usual good style from a Metroidvania
27. Traversal: Between Bash, Dash, double jump, and the wall interactions
28. Visual Distinction: Lots of color distinction
29. Boss: The Forlorn Ruins escape sequence is, contrary to the earlier one, actually fun
30. Level: Mt. Horu. Intense, mean, fun, and brutal. I love the lava walls and the enemies giving you projectiles to progress on
31. Fast Travel: Simple but decent, with find / use system and an acceptable spread of warp points
32. Replayability: Generally fun to replay
33. Song: Restoring The Light, Facing The Dark

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Unskippable Cutscenes: Yyep
2. Controls: Lack of any kind of rebinding
3. Controls: Imprecision of jumps
4. Visual Distinction: Visual noise in combat
5. Saves: The saves requiring mana, being required for leveling, and having potential issues, on top of only having one save slot
6. Core Combat: Boring at best, probably shouldn’t even be in the game
7. Boss: The escape sequence from the Ginso Tree can go directly to hell. Visuals that get in the way of navigation, zero checkpoints in a lengthy sequence, very very tight timing on every jump, and just… everything…
8. Boss: …earning two negatives
9. Level: Mt. Horu and the Quest For Bullcrap
10. Difficulty Curve: There are several jarring cliffs and troughs of difficulty that don’t work super well
11. Difficulty Options: Usual lazy difficulty