Imagine you’re chatting with friends about your favorite restaurants. One person mentions the fish market, another talks about a tucked-away little Thai place, and then someone says Olive Garden. The first impulse might be to laugh, but at that moment, my number one wish would be to go with them and see what’s good. I mean, how many people have the integrity to go against the grain like that, to be unembarrassed and unapologetic with their taste, and not lie or make excuses like I probably would. Even if I ended up not enjoying it, I would at least get to hang out with someone who has a unique take on things and expand my perspective.
That’s how I ended up playing this game. On my recommendations list, user Lot0 mentioned that they were in the minority for appreciating it, which piqued my interest. Even as a huge Castlevania fan, I rarely heard people talk about it, and the few times they did were decisively negative. But a lot of people think even Castlevania on NES is bad, so why should I trust them on their assessment of The Adventure? After all, these platformers are simple games, there’s not much you could do to ruin the formula, as long as it all functions properly it should still be a pretty enjoyable game.
However, the operative phrase there is “as long as it all functions properly”. The movement is pitifully slow, jumping from a standing position seems to not work sometimes, inputs randomly drop, it just has an inexcusably bad game-feel. A couple stages have some neat concepts, but mixed in with the fun parts are challenges that border on unfair. That’s certainly not a unique problem within the series, but since this game has no subweapons, there’s no room to strategize your way around it. In the original game, bosses were designed to be weak to certain weapons, so by removing them, bosses in The Adventure are all about finding a spot where you just can’t be hit. It’s like playing a Castlevania title as explained by people who don’t like the series, who would tell you it’s just clunky controls and unfair difficulty set to a decent soundtrack. That’s why I'm so curious about the people who enjoy it, I want to see what they love in something I found to be a comedic exaggeration of the series’ problems. There doesn’t have to be a formal reason for loving it of course, everyone’s entitled to what they enjoy and don’t need to justify themselves, but I would love to give the game a second look from the perspective of a fan. Maybe after that we could go get some nasty breadsticks.
That’s how I ended up playing this game. On my recommendations list, user Lot0 mentioned that they were in the minority for appreciating it, which piqued my interest. Even as a huge Castlevania fan, I rarely heard people talk about it, and the few times they did were decisively negative. But a lot of people think even Castlevania on NES is bad, so why should I trust them on their assessment of The Adventure? After all, these platformers are simple games, there’s not much you could do to ruin the formula, as long as it all functions properly it should still be a pretty enjoyable game.
However, the operative phrase there is “as long as it all functions properly”. The movement is pitifully slow, jumping from a standing position seems to not work sometimes, inputs randomly drop, it just has an inexcusably bad game-feel. A couple stages have some neat concepts, but mixed in with the fun parts are challenges that border on unfair. That’s certainly not a unique problem within the series, but since this game has no subweapons, there’s no room to strategize your way around it. In the original game, bosses were designed to be weak to certain weapons, so by removing them, bosses in The Adventure are all about finding a spot where you just can’t be hit. It’s like playing a Castlevania title as explained by people who don’t like the series, who would tell you it’s just clunky controls and unfair difficulty set to a decent soundtrack. That’s why I'm so curious about the people who enjoy it, I want to see what they love in something I found to be a comedic exaggeration of the series’ problems. There doesn’t have to be a formal reason for loving it of course, everyone’s entitled to what they enjoy and don’t need to justify themselves, but I would love to give the game a second look from the perspective of a fan. Maybe after that we could go get some nasty breadsticks.
FrozenRoy
2 years ago