This game came out earlier this month on Switch (although apparently it's like a year and a half old on PC), and Gunstar picked it up and was enjoying it, so I decided to pick it up as well. I love me a good Metroidvania, after all. Around 15 or so hours later (no in-game clock that I could find) I had finished with it after quite the turbulent experience with it. It was a series of ups and downs that while I did enjoy most of it, there was a lot else I didn't so much.
Cathedral's story is pretty bare bones. Honestly it sits fairly nicely next to Demon's Crest as far as how much story there actually is. The game drops you, a nameless (no one even ever calls you "Armor." You literally never have a name of any description) mute suit of armor into the titular cathedral, and you need to find your way out. You soon come across a mischievous spirit named Soul, and they tag along with you since they don't know much of anything either. You go on a quest to collect five McGuffin orbs from around the land in order to open a big scary gate that the world eater sealed himself behind. It's a fine enough thing to set up the story, but it's not really engaging in any respect. It doesn't really have to be, granted, but even the limited dialogue in the game is largely forgettable even more than something like The Messenger, which was at least kinda funny from time to time. This game sorta has one joke (you don't talk, LOL!) and other than that some characters are kinda weirdly rude to each other. But this is a Metroidvania, story doesn't need to be the reason we're here.
And that's for the most part backed up by the gameplay. One look at any screenshot and most people will probably get BIG Shovel Knight vibes, and while the level design isn't nearly that good, it's still a pretty good action game. You can swing your sword left and right and you also have a Duck Tales-style downward thrust to bounce off of enemies. However, unlike in something like Shovel Knight or Duck-Tales where attacking downward means you're attacking downward, you have more of a thrust downwards in Cathedral, so you need to use timing to hit your targets. The game has a lot of little features like that to make the game just that much harder because it can, but we'll get to more of that later.
There is a succession of sub-weapons you can get that either allow for a ranged attack or for platforming help. You can also get upgrades like a double jump, a dash, a hover, and a sort of remote block pushing move, but the game has an odd approach to most of your upgrades. You get them in the form of charms, and you equip them at a charm shrine, but you can only have one at a time equipped for each type (a couple of really ignorable combat ones as well as the two movement and two Soul-related ones mentioned above). It's kinda a neat design idea to have to pick between a dash and a double jump, but then the game just gives you a charm that has the powers of both, so that whole factor of decision making doesn't actually matter, and that "it just does both" thing is something you get for all three types of charm. These charms largely just amount to giving you platforming challenges in a very inelegant way, and it's pretty annoying to have to backtrack in certain points if you happened to choose the wrong charm for the job. It's not a huge span of the game that has you yo-yo-ing between charms like this, but it's still just not super fun. It's a very neutral addition to the game's design rather than outright bad or good.
The game honestly has a lot of weird little design choices that make it just that much more irritating to play. There some little things, like your hitbox actually being far smaller than your sprite, which led me to falling off of platforms in the early game a fair bit because of thinking I was wider than I really was, but there's a lot more than that. The game is weirdly stringent about health, and warp points and check points don't refill health despite acting as respawn points (so you effectively get healed there if you die). You've gotta find a health shrine or a healer for that, and that only seems to be a way for the game to increase your ultimate death counter (I had about 86 deaths) because it can. Just getting healed at check points and warp points would've made the game way better. This is especially because, like Dark Souls, your healing is actually much more important than your health, and finding more health bottles (which are effectively estus flasks charges) is gonna keep you alive WAY longer than finding more heart containers is. It just adds up to you dying more because the game hates you, I guess.
This extends to UI and button layout as well, as the game just doesn't seem to have enough face buttons at times. Granted this isn't entirely the game's fault by any stretch of the imagination, but it just doesn't feel very tightly designed in that regard. Especially for the boss guarding the McGuffin door, I just felt like it'd be so much better if I could assign sub-weapons to different buttons instead of scrolling through them with R and L. Granted you can equip and unequip weapons from that R&L scroll list, which is cool, but even still you've gotta CLICK THE RIGHT STICK in order to pop a health potion.
Feeling sloppily designed is felt nowhere more than the difficulty. Like the last Metroidvania I played, Demon's Crest, this game has an inverse difficulty curve problem but way worse than that. The dungeon leading up to the 3rd orb fight, the Bone Church, especially is a really awful time to get through and you'll likely be dying constantly because of how hard the flying enemies are to kill as well as with just how quickly they can kill you. The bosses are often pretty well designed and good 2D action fights, but occasionally you will run into one that will just brick-wall your progress (the 2nd orb fight was my personal nemesis in that regard, but I had a good deal of trouble with that door-guarding boss I mentioned before as well). The game got progressively easier after that 3rd dungeon, even to the point where the final boss only took me three tries to beat. It was a much more fun level of challenge than the game had been getting there, but it felt more like the game was just better designed, not so much that I had necessarily gotten better at the game (and having a lot more health bottles helped a lot too, to be sure). It's not really a black mark, per se, but the difficulty issues the game has are definitely a big caveat in my recommending it to anyone.
The presentation of the game is really solid, even if it feels very derivative of Shovel Knight. Though this game does have quite good music and really pretty super-retro (pixelated but high animations) graphics, they're both SO derivative of what is probably one of if not the most successful and popular indie game ever that I cannot ignore the similarities in good conscience. They're good, but it makes the game feel overly derivative and without a real sense of personal style, and that isn't helped by just how "whatever"-levels of ignorable the plot and writing are.
Verdict: Recommended. For all the issues the game has, when it's good it's good and it made me wanna keep playing. It's a really solid, if very noticeably unpolished game, but only people who are really comfortable with 2D action games should give it a look. There are a lot of much better Metroidvanias on Switch you could better use your $15 on, in my opinion, but you won't have a bad time with Cathedral if you know what to expect. I look forward to the next game this studio makes, because Cathedral has a lot of potential design-wise, and some spit and polish would make a Cathedral 2 (for lack of a better prospective title) a really stand-out title in the genre.
Cathedral's story is pretty bare bones. Honestly it sits fairly nicely next to Demon's Crest as far as how much story there actually is. The game drops you, a nameless (no one even ever calls you "Armor." You literally never have a name of any description) mute suit of armor into the titular cathedral, and you need to find your way out. You soon come across a mischievous spirit named Soul, and they tag along with you since they don't know much of anything either. You go on a quest to collect five McGuffin orbs from around the land in order to open a big scary gate that the world eater sealed himself behind. It's a fine enough thing to set up the story, but it's not really engaging in any respect. It doesn't really have to be, granted, but even the limited dialogue in the game is largely forgettable even more than something like The Messenger, which was at least kinda funny from time to time. This game sorta has one joke (you don't talk, LOL!) and other than that some characters are kinda weirdly rude to each other. But this is a Metroidvania, story doesn't need to be the reason we're here.
And that's for the most part backed up by the gameplay. One look at any screenshot and most people will probably get BIG Shovel Knight vibes, and while the level design isn't nearly that good, it's still a pretty good action game. You can swing your sword left and right and you also have a Duck Tales-style downward thrust to bounce off of enemies. However, unlike in something like Shovel Knight or Duck-Tales where attacking downward means you're attacking downward, you have more of a thrust downwards in Cathedral, so you need to use timing to hit your targets. The game has a lot of little features like that to make the game just that much harder because it can, but we'll get to more of that later.
There is a succession of sub-weapons you can get that either allow for a ranged attack or for platforming help. You can also get upgrades like a double jump, a dash, a hover, and a sort of remote block pushing move, but the game has an odd approach to most of your upgrades. You get them in the form of charms, and you equip them at a charm shrine, but you can only have one at a time equipped for each type (a couple of really ignorable combat ones as well as the two movement and two Soul-related ones mentioned above). It's kinda a neat design idea to have to pick between a dash and a double jump, but then the game just gives you a charm that has the powers of both, so that whole factor of decision making doesn't actually matter, and that "it just does both" thing is something you get for all three types of charm. These charms largely just amount to giving you platforming challenges in a very inelegant way, and it's pretty annoying to have to backtrack in certain points if you happened to choose the wrong charm for the job. It's not a huge span of the game that has you yo-yo-ing between charms like this, but it's still just not super fun. It's a very neutral addition to the game's design rather than outright bad or good.
The game honestly has a lot of weird little design choices that make it just that much more irritating to play. There some little things, like your hitbox actually being far smaller than your sprite, which led me to falling off of platforms in the early game a fair bit because of thinking I was wider than I really was, but there's a lot more than that. The game is weirdly stringent about health, and warp points and check points don't refill health despite acting as respawn points (so you effectively get healed there if you die). You've gotta find a health shrine or a healer for that, and that only seems to be a way for the game to increase your ultimate death counter (I had about 86 deaths) because it can. Just getting healed at check points and warp points would've made the game way better. This is especially because, like Dark Souls, your healing is actually much more important than your health, and finding more health bottles (which are effectively estus flasks charges) is gonna keep you alive WAY longer than finding more heart containers is. It just adds up to you dying more because the game hates you, I guess.
This extends to UI and button layout as well, as the game just doesn't seem to have enough face buttons at times. Granted this isn't entirely the game's fault by any stretch of the imagination, but it just doesn't feel very tightly designed in that regard. Especially for the boss guarding the McGuffin door, I just felt like it'd be so much better if I could assign sub-weapons to different buttons instead of scrolling through them with R and L. Granted you can equip and unequip weapons from that R&L scroll list, which is cool, but even still you've gotta CLICK THE RIGHT STICK in order to pop a health potion.
Feeling sloppily designed is felt nowhere more than the difficulty. Like the last Metroidvania I played, Demon's Crest, this game has an inverse difficulty curve problem but way worse than that. The dungeon leading up to the 3rd orb fight, the Bone Church, especially is a really awful time to get through and you'll likely be dying constantly because of how hard the flying enemies are to kill as well as with just how quickly they can kill you. The bosses are often pretty well designed and good 2D action fights, but occasionally you will run into one that will just brick-wall your progress (the 2nd orb fight was my personal nemesis in that regard, but I had a good deal of trouble with that door-guarding boss I mentioned before as well). The game got progressively easier after that 3rd dungeon, even to the point where the final boss only took me three tries to beat. It was a much more fun level of challenge than the game had been getting there, but it felt more like the game was just better designed, not so much that I had necessarily gotten better at the game (and having a lot more health bottles helped a lot too, to be sure). It's not really a black mark, per se, but the difficulty issues the game has are definitely a big caveat in my recommending it to anyone.
The presentation of the game is really solid, even if it feels very derivative of Shovel Knight. Though this game does have quite good music and really pretty super-retro (pixelated but high animations) graphics, they're both SO derivative of what is probably one of if not the most successful and popular indie game ever that I cannot ignore the similarities in good conscience. They're good, but it makes the game feel overly derivative and without a real sense of personal style, and that isn't helped by just how "whatever"-levels of ignorable the plot and writing are.
Verdict: Recommended. For all the issues the game has, when it's good it's good and it made me wanna keep playing. It's a really solid, if very noticeably unpolished game, but only people who are really comfortable with 2D action games should give it a look. There are a lot of much better Metroidvanias on Switch you could better use your $15 on, in my opinion, but you won't have a bad time with Cathedral if you know what to expect. I look forward to the next game this studio makes, because Cathedral has a lot of potential design-wise, and some spit and polish would make a Cathedral 2 (for lack of a better prospective title) a really stand-out title in the genre.