Legacy Review: Castle Crashers
Castle Crashers
Genre: Side scrolling brawler
Platform: PC (Windows 10 - Steam)
Developer: The Behemoth
Publisher: The Behemoth
Playtime: 6.6 hours (Campaign Mode, Steam Free Weekend)
Date Completed: 28/5/2018
Reviewed: 2018
Grade: A+
Castle Crashers is a Co-op side-scroller game that features intense and ridiculously fun combat. You play as a knight trying to rescue a bunch of princesses who got kidnapped by baddies (highly original story) and make use of a variety of weapons and fighting moves to basically kill everything in your path.
Even just by starting and playing through the first level,
you will quickly come to realize how addicting the gameplay in Castle Crashers
is. The concept of fighting games is nothing new, but the visuals, music,
characters, landscapes and smooth responsive input just come together to create
an immersive experience that grabs you and never wants to let you go. And for a
relatively simple genre with plenty of clones in the market, that’s not always
an easy thing to find in a game.
But let’s get into the meat of the game to see what really
makes it tick just besides its beautiful visuals.
Firstly, you have the combat itself. The character you play
can basically run or jump around and use a variety of moves and combos to beat
the pulp out of your enemies. You start out with just the basic light and heavy
attack but as your character grows and gains levels, he will start to learn
more and more moves that give you additional options for approaching your
battles. You also have access to a magic skill that (Each character gets a
different magic skill, but the one I was using specialized in a ranged poison
attack) is obviously slower than your melee attacks but can give you that upper
edge in battles if used right. Similarly to your melee moves, you also get more
magic moves as you progress, though there is a key difference in how those are
obtained, which will be addressed later. But I’m going to be honest, none of
this is very unique in and of itself. All fighting games feature moves and
combos, and have some form of ranged skills as well. It’s nothing special, but
it is done up right to give combat a fun feel to it.
Other than gaining a new move every few levels or so, you
will also find that the character has stats that can be improved by getting
skill points on level up. Yes, RPG mechanics have wormed their way into this
game, but give it that customizability you may not see all that frequently in
other fighting games. So you basically have four stats, Strength, Defence,
Magic and Agility and adding points in each affects your characters battle
style in different ways. The important thing though is that each point invested
makes a difference. That also means that you will always end up thinking
carefully about where to allocate them to best balance out your character.
Plus, investing into Magic is how you unlock new magic skills to use, and some
of them can be very useful. As a result, I, a person who normally just pumps it
all into HP and Attack actually ended up spreading my points quite evenly, even
into the Magic stat to unlock a few skills. This very welcome feature to the
game that starts to set it apart from other fighters.
To add on to the RPG mechanics, you also get weapons and
items that your character can equip. Each weapon raises stats (sometimes
lowering another one as well) and some even have an added skill that they
impart onto your character. So basically, you have the ability to collect or
buy new weapons, add them to your armory and pick out the one you think is best
suited to your playstyle, upgrading it as better ones come into your life.
True, at the start you won’t have too many options on the weapon you choose.
You typically just grab the one that raises attack and doesn’t lower any stats
and charge forward. But as time passes and you start really unlocking a large
amount of weapons, you’ll find that you need to make decisions on compromise
versus reward. While its nothing too crazy, it does add that flavour that makes
this game Castle Crashers and not just a regular fighting game.
I did also mention items, and yes you get access to a
variety of items (again, you only get the basic stuff like healing potions at
the start, but start to unlock more as time passes) and as far as I know, the
only limits placed on the items are a maximum count and your wallet. Items are
however underpowered compared to just hacking and slashing, so I hardly found
much use for anything besides the healing potions, only occasionally using the
ranged weapon and magic. Though you can buff them to do more damage than your
melee attack, they are cumbersome in comparison and usually sticking with melee
as the primary means of offense makes the most sense. I think more attention
could have been given to this aspect of game, giving players more items and
weapons to choose from at the start and giving them more interesting skills/power
to alter the flow of combat. It doesn’t negatively affect the game, but lost
potential is lost potential.
The customizability doesn’t stop there though. You also have
PETS which you can collect by playing through the campaign or by buying from
shops. Each pet gives you a unique perk and you can choose whichever one you
like to come along with you into battle. Similarly to the items, the pets tend
to be underpowered compared to just basic attacking, so the ones that give more
solid boosts like increasing stats end up getting used more. Again, this is an
area which could have been explored more in depth, but nevertheless it gives
the game more flavour to its name. After all, who doesn’t like a cute little
bird floating behind you while you pummel the life out of dozens of enemies?
I mentioned earlier that this is a co-op game, but you can
certainly play it solo. The main game itself is a lengthy campaign featuring a
multitude of levels laid out as nodes on a map. Progression on the map is
linear at the end of the day, but it doesn’t matter all that much. I think what
really makes the levels tick is how well they are designed. Each level looks
and feels different from the last. The landscapes and enemies are drawn
masterfully and together with the fluid animations, everything just looks
fantastic. You also, and more importantly, get variety in the gameplay of the
levels. Frequent boss battles, shifts in environments, breakable objects,
collectibles, ridable animals and other interactible objects all come together
to make each level not only look different but play different as well. You also
get a good variety of enemies that shuffle out pretty frequently and behave
differently in combat. Even little nuances like your king joining you in battle
every now and then or getting random reinforcements just make the game feel
alive and epic. It’s a surprising level of depth to be found in an arcade style
fighting game and I think it would be difficult for you not to thoroughly enjoy
every aspect of this game.
Even with all the praise I’ve given this game, I do also
have some gripes I think I must point out. Other than the missed potential with
the weapons, items and pets, you actually are able to unlock new characters by
fighting in special arena levels you can find on the map. Now, what I expected
was to be able to switch to a different character the same way I would switch
my weapon or pet. However, what I found was that each character gets his own
save file. I get that it gives replayability, but quite frankly, the only thing
that really changes is the cosmetic look and the magic skill. Thus I wouldn’t
really deem it necessary to replay the entire campaign more than maybe one or
two more times just to get to use the other characters. It really would have
been good to be able to swap out characters on the go just to test them out.
Also, I could see the logic for not allowing the character
to gain experience DURING an arena level, but not getting any reward AFTER
beating it other than a character made it feel a bit pointless. Especially
considering that the arena levels did have to be retried a couple of times
before I could clear them, and I basically just sank money into buying potions
each time around without getting anything back for my efforts. This doesn’t
detract much from the game overall, but still a flaw, in my opinion. I also
found some of the enemy ranged skills to be perfectly timed to the amount of
time it took the character to recover after getting knocked down… so you could
imagine the annoyance there.
Overall, Castle Crashers is ridiculously fun, and certainly
worth picking up and spending a fair amount of time on. You will have plenty of
fun just playing through the campaign alone, and just imagine. If the game is
this much fun in single player mode, multiplayer mode must be stark raving mad.
And I mean that in the best way possible. I didn’t touch the multiplayer
myself, as it is not something I ever do, but it’s a fair assumption to make that
it will be twice as much fun as single player, which as I mentioned, is
ridiculously fun itself. Play this game, enjoy the ride, and be careful not to
get overly addicted. You’d be hard pressed to find another fighting game quite
like this one or even anywhere near as much fun.
+ This game is ridiculous fun
+ Combat is fast paced, responsive to input and feels great.
+ Skills are learned with progression through the game and
slowly change battle style over time.
+ The environments and characters are beautifully drawn and
animated
+ Levels have a high level of variety. You have plenty of engaging
bosses to fight, and most levels have sections where you can break out of the
standard formula of just punching stuff. Environments constantly change
themselves up between levels as well.
+ Pets exist in the game as an added way to give flavour to
it. You find them in levels and they follow you along, aiding you in combat.
They don’t make too huge of a difference, but are a nice thing to have.
+ Presence of a sizable collection of weapons and items adds
an interesting touch of flavour to the game
+ Character progression in the form of levelling up and
assigning stat points.
+ You always really feel like you are engaged in thrilling
action and it really feels epic
+ The storyline is fairly typical but engages you all the
same.
+ Difficulty is just right, and is never frustrating.
Usually a loss can be turned into a win by altering your strategy.
+ Characters to unlock
+ Multiplayer
- Seems to be some lost potential in the items, weapons and
pets
- Some items and even pets seem relatively useless as their
damage is tiny compared to what you can do normally
- Characters cannot be swapped in the same save
- Arena levels can feel unfair
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