Before the recent cinematic platformer revival The Eternal Castle had already landed on the Switch and the story and mythology behind it is just as intriguing as the game itself. You see, the ‘remastered’ part of the title is a misdirect, there was no Eternal Castle to remake. The idea put forward is that the game is the completion of an uncompleted game from 1987 that developers remember from their youth. In truth, no such game exists and the story is just a legend developed to set the up the context of how the game plays and looks.
The first thing that hits you is the incredible unique style of the game. Initially it is a little eye melting but you’ll soon get used to
the faux retro look and it works perfectly in getting across the feel and environment.
It’s difficult to describe to those who don’t remember games from the time
period the game is supposedly set in but it certainly conjures the memories of
the more ambitious platformers of the time. If you can visualise Another World
running on a BBC Micro with only a few colours being used at once you’ll be in
the right area.
The game plays much in the way we have come to expect from
cinematic platformers. Your character takes extra frames to do things, so you
know you have to make a slight adjustment to jumps and combat but the whole
thing moves in a much more cinematic way. The game is also responsive and
sharp so there isn’t much need to panic if you’ve struggled with these sorts of
titles before. The main causes of death are due to the games difficulty and traps
being hidden in the graphics rather than due to elongated movement.
Though difficult, Eternal Castle isn’t particularly long so
when you hit difficulty spikes you’ll likely want to push through them. After
an initial introduction stage you have the choice of facing the next three
stages in any order. Each stage has a unique look and focuses on different skill
sets. One is a haunted castle which requires sneaking, while another is focused
on using guns for instance. Each contains a string of near-constant set pieces and impressive boss fights at the end. it certainly lives up to the cinematic moniker. Once these have been completed and the parts to
your space craft collected you can then fly off to the final level and
eventually take on the big bad at the end.
In the two-hour runtime the game certainly throws a lot of
variety at you so you’ll always be doing something new. It’s a carefully
crafted game where every minute of it has been considered and set out to provide
a unique experience for the player. The short run time also makes it more likely
that players will return for another run through. There’s certainly plenty of
law and things you may miss the first time as well so it’s well worth diving
back in.
Overall, The Eternal Castle Remastered has both an intriguing
back story and is a great experience in its own right. There isn’t really anything out there like
it, even other cinematic platformers aren’t really the same. Players will
certainly need to take some time getting used to how the game looks and works
but once you do you’ll experience an adventure like no other.
Overall 9/10
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