Generally a fun game. I played this in 2023, and I have no nostalgia for it or the PS1.
Exploring the castle is fun when you have some idea of where you haven't explored yet. The map is very basic, showing you rooms you've explored, non-secret doors in those rooms, and save rooms. Once I uncovered a lot of it, I kept getting stuck not knowing where to go next. Some sort of map marker system like in Hollow Knight would have been welcome here. It doesn't need to hold your hand, but could give a bit of direction.
Only being able to save at save rooms worked to prevent the player from brute forcing victory. It was at times frustrating, but generally ok. What wasn't ok was having to watch a (relatively) long game over screen, then go back to the menu, then load your save, just to get back to playing after each death.
The game is cryptic and obtuse at times, and I needed to look up hints on a few occasions.
The difficulty was pretty good in the first quarter of the game, but it got too easy in the second quarter once you leveled.
There is a point in the game where you have to play the game again, with some changes, to proceed. This is where I dropped it. I know there are differences to the first half of the game, but this really killed my motivation. If it were just the first half, I'd give it 3.5/5.
Exploring the castle is fun when you have some idea of where you haven't explored yet. The map is very basic, showing you rooms you've explored, non-secret doors in those rooms, and save rooms. Once I uncovered a lot of it, I kept getting stuck not knowing where to go next. Some sort of map marker system like in Hollow Knight would have been welcome here. It doesn't need to hold your hand, but could give a bit of direction.
Only being able to save at save rooms worked to prevent the player from brute forcing victory. It was at times frustrating, but generally ok. What wasn't ok was having to watch a (relatively) long game over screen, then go back to the menu, then load your save, just to get back to playing after each death.
The game is cryptic and obtuse at times, and I needed to look up hints on a few occasions.
The difficulty was pretty good in the first quarter of the game, but it got too easy in the second quarter once you leveled.
There is a point in the game where you have to play the game again, with some changes, to proceed. This is where I dropped it. I know there are differences to the first half of the game, but this really killed my motivation. If it were just the first half, I'd give it 3.5/5.