This was a bit of a random buy. A friend told me about it, and the one trailer I checked looked cool, so I picked it up, knowing not too much about it otherwise. Had some cool retro game inspirations there.

I think I’ll make this a fast review, so let’s not waste time in the intro. Let’s go!

Developer: Berzerk Studio
Publisher: The Arcade Crew
Release date: February 14th, 2022
Platforms: Switch, PC, PS4, Xbone, Xbox Series X/S (Switch version played)
Genre: Metroidvania

Review

This is a side-scrolling platformer Metroidvania. I know people have been weirdly comparing it to Castlevania 2 and Zelda 2, but I feel the main inspiration for combat is Faxanadu, it’s very similar. You play as Alcedor, a crusader knight kinda dude, helping out the kingdom with their evil demon problem. Or not. Story-wise, very early in the game, you start making plot choices. The first: A dude is obviously suffering and asks you to kill him. Do or don’t, that is the question. This has repercussions for some parts of the game, but more importantly, this determines whether you can go the good route or the evil route. You have no way to know which choice leads to which ending, it’s really ambiguous for such a choice to be one of the first things you do. So then you run through the game, doing quests, beating dungeons, and trying to morally do what you want so you don’t end up in neutral as I did.

Combat is very simple. You press the attack button, your mace hits right in front of your face (in an Evil run you get a sword at some point). There’s a bit of a delay between pressing and the attack coming out, something you’d recognize from Castlevania. The attack itself hits high, so you can crouch and attack for bugs and such. The hitbox is a bit taller than it looks and goes like a couple of pixels further ahead as well. You do get extra attacks later on as you progress through dungeons. There’s a really shitty useless downstab ground pound (that does a shockwave when you finally hit the ground). There’s a really shitty charge attack that takes a second to charge and then you get a long sideways dash attack that is super awkward and awful to use. It actually prevents you from moving again until you touch the ground and even then you slide around a bit once you touch the ground after doing it in midair. This attack SUCKS. But you need to do it because it’s the only way to cross certain gaps. If you’re imprecise (which you will be because you tend to not see where you’ll land) you may just slide straight into a hole and die. Finally, there’s an up dash attack. It’s useless other than getting height so you can progress to certain areas. One fun note, non-magical projectiles can be hit back towards whoever threw it at you. And, when you die, you get a nice gruesome death animation. If you have remaining lives (which you can buy permanent upgrades at magic shops), you respawn at the start of the room you died in, with your HP and MP replenished. If you lose all your lives, it’s back to your last save point at a shrine.

Platforming is pretty standard. Alcedor has the legs of a god and he jumps like 20 feet high. No lower, no higher. He always jumps the same height. However you do have good air control, so you’re not stuck with awful jump arcs unless you do the sideways dash attack. Getting hit knocks you back so you gotta be careful when platforming that you kill things that might knock you into lava. There’s not really much to the platforming, other than the occasional use of up-dashes and side-dashes. It works well.

Magic is another thing you can do but it’s not super amazing. Most spells take 3 MP, some take 2 and some take 4. There’s healing, summoning familiars, increasing your defense, summoning lightning… fairly straightforward stuff, some spells have upgraded versions (that may be different if you’re doing an evil run), some spells have alternate uses (like the familiar being able to activate levers). The reason magic is hardly useful is that you have very little MP, even if you have all the MP upgrades. So, basically, magic is only useful if you need it for puzzle solving and keep the rest of your MP for healing. There’s other healing (going to bars to fill up your empty potion bottles), but this one fills up if you respawn so it’s somewhat reusable.

Progression is fairly simple. You have a Metroidvania-style map, which is actually pretty small. There are 3 towns in there with NPCs, a couple of separate houses with people in them, and more importantly, there are 6 main castles and a few optional ones. Talking to NPCs sometimes gives you quests. You can say yes, no and sometimes you can say “Never” which means this is for sure a morally-important quest for either the good or evil ending and might lead to a boss fight. Quests that you accept may have different ways to accomplish them. Some evil, some good. As you progress you do get access to skills and spells that will allow you to get further, such as the up-dash attack to gain more height. Talking to NPCs may give you hints, such as one in a bar telling you about a castle you can’t see, but giving you a big hint on how to make it appear. It’s pretty well made on that end.

Shrines are save spots (and also teleport points once you buy the teleport spell), but you also use them to upgrade your character using EXP. The 3 stats are health, strength and MP. It seems like a lot of EXP required for the upgrades, but a few castles in, I find it quite easy to get a lot of EXP from enemies. Not just because later enemies give more, but even the shittiest enemies give pretty decent amounts actually, with nothing giving less than 10, and some quests and boss battles giving a bunch. Sure you need to get 9999 for the final upgrade of a stat, but when you’re killing a bunch of enemies that give you 50-75 with a few 10-15 ones in-between, it goes up fast… and then there’s one enemy you can grind on very easily in a late castle.

Overall

I enjoyed this. The gameplay is pretty good though a bit jank at points, namely with some of the attacks being pretty awkward. The graphics look awesome with the pretty creepy enemies and I love the ultraviolent kill animations. The morality system starts out unclear, which is a bit of a shame that you can ruin your run without you knowing right from the very first choice in the game. But I do like that most quests have several solutions, some good and some bad.

There are definitely a few things that could be improved, but overall it’s a fun game that I give an okay recommendation for, moreso if you’re into the whole “playing through the game 4 times to get all the endings” thing. There’s definitely a good amount of content if you try to get all the endings.