Did you know the same director of the original Ghost 'n Goblins returned to direct this game? Did you also know he founded Whoopee Camp, the same company responsible for the Tomba duology? Crazy, right?
Absolutely brutal, but it does its best not to be discouraging. The easier difficulties don't berate you for picking them, and the occasional boss hints will inform you on how close you were to beating them with some nice blurbs added like "I know you can succeed". Doesn't change the fact that this game will nail your feet to the floor and ask you to run a marathon before your bomb collar blows up. The higher the difficulty, the less hits you can take and the highest one removes these extra checkpoints; so as the game puts it "pick your poison".
A huge factor to this games difficulty, and partially its enjoyment, is the use of RNG. Enemies will not always spawn the same way everytime, thus every run is different enough that you have to be on your toes at all times. And this game absolutely swarms you with enemies; but for the most part they will be in a non-harmful state when they initially spawn thus you have a brief moment to adjust to the new obstacle. And it's not like every section is completely random, but you have to be prepared for some on-the-fly decision making.
Another neat feature is that exiting out of a level will allow you to enter it later from your last checkpoint, that way you can take a break if the going gets too tough. You also keep any Umbral Bees, which are used for the... skill tree. The skill tree contains spells ranging from creating a doppelganger to copy your movements, drastically speeding you up, turning all enemies into frogs or stone, turning into a boulder that kills on contact and provides defense, and finding hidden treasure chests. It also provides the ability to store an extra weapon or two, which is a godsend, or a random chance to immediately return to life which I'm honestly pretty iffy about. In fact, I've seen people being iffy about the skill tree in general. I could be mistaken, but these might be people expecting a strictly arcade experience only. Which is fair, but from what I've seen these upgrades are never mandatory. If anything, you can treat them as an additional difficulty setting. You can disable each individual ability, so perhaps you don't want any spells but still want to carry more then one weapon. I personally made very liberal use of this skill tree, but I'm well aware that people have, frankly, gotten sick of this trend.
I wouldn't say this game is 100% fair either. While I personally think games don't always need to perfectly fair on a first playthrough if it means the replay is way more thrilling, if your game is as hard as this one then the "Think fast" moments can really deflate your motivation to try again. Respawning is at least quick and there isn't a live system, in addition to not needing to recollect any umbral bees, so it at least isn't the worst it could be.
Aside from the bosses being a mixed bag, this is otherwise a solid recommendation for those who enjoy pain.
Absolutely brutal, but it does its best not to be discouraging. The easier difficulties don't berate you for picking them, and the occasional boss hints will inform you on how close you were to beating them with some nice blurbs added like "I know you can succeed". Doesn't change the fact that this game will nail your feet to the floor and ask you to run a marathon before your bomb collar blows up. The higher the difficulty, the less hits you can take and the highest one removes these extra checkpoints; so as the game puts it "pick your poison".
A huge factor to this games difficulty, and partially its enjoyment, is the use of RNG. Enemies will not always spawn the same way everytime, thus every run is different enough that you have to be on your toes at all times. And this game absolutely swarms you with enemies; but for the most part they will be in a non-harmful state when they initially spawn thus you have a brief moment to adjust to the new obstacle. And it's not like every section is completely random, but you have to be prepared for some on-the-fly decision making.
Another neat feature is that exiting out of a level will allow you to enter it later from your last checkpoint, that way you can take a break if the going gets too tough. You also keep any Umbral Bees, which are used for the... skill tree. The skill tree contains spells ranging from creating a doppelganger to copy your movements, drastically speeding you up, turning all enemies into frogs or stone, turning into a boulder that kills on contact and provides defense, and finding hidden treasure chests. It also provides the ability to store an extra weapon or two, which is a godsend, or a random chance to immediately return to life which I'm honestly pretty iffy about. In fact, I've seen people being iffy about the skill tree in general. I could be mistaken, but these might be people expecting a strictly arcade experience only. Which is fair, but from what I've seen these upgrades are never mandatory. If anything, you can treat them as an additional difficulty setting. You can disable each individual ability, so perhaps you don't want any spells but still want to carry more then one weapon. I personally made very liberal use of this skill tree, but I'm well aware that people have, frankly, gotten sick of this trend.
I wouldn't say this game is 100% fair either. While I personally think games don't always need to perfectly fair on a first playthrough if it means the replay is way more thrilling, if your game is as hard as this one then the "Think fast" moments can really deflate your motivation to try again. Respawning is at least quick and there isn't a live system, in addition to not needing to recollect any umbral bees, so it at least isn't the worst it could be.
Aside from the bosses being a mixed bag, this is otherwise a solid recommendation for those who enjoy pain.