I played through Gauntlet: Dark Legacy in co-op with a friend and had a lot of fun. Gauntlet is an arcade top-down shooting game with a few extra mechanics—bump attacks, heavy melee attacks, blocking, special moves, and a variety of item power ups—on top of this there is a leveling up and gold system, which can be used to buy items or stat upgrades. There are a number of character classes, and each one has a different set of starting stats—the knight is slower but more powerful, the wizard has stronger magic attacks, the jester, who I chose, is faster but starts weaker. As you level up your character across the game, each character becomes more and more like the other. Since you can buy stat upgrades—which I did almost every chance I got, in leuie of buying health items between mission—you have some say in how your character develops. By the late 70s or early 80s level, my jester had their speed and strength all the way maxed out.
The game is pretty economical. There are different enemy models for each world, but there are only a few different character classes that have more damaging tiers—rushing enemies that blow up, long range enemies, short range melee enemies, commander style enemies, and small type enemies that can be overwhelming in large numbers. Then there are unique minibosses like golems, grim reapers, and dragons that take and do more damage than the usual enemies.
The basic loop is working your way through a series of themed levels finding collectibles and keys. You unlock different worlds through finding colored stones, and can move between worlds at any time from the hub area. Each world will have a special item in it that will do major damage to the boss of another world, so you're incentivized to explore the available worlds before taking on the each world's bosses. My favorite levels were the jester levels, which are all fantastical and dreamlike, EC Escher inspired. I also liked the Doom-inspired flesh-wall/blood level.
The game is mindless fun, but I wish there was just one more layer of something to it. What I really felt was missing was a way to avoid damage. Taking damage in regular levels is usually pretty harmless, but since boss fights have a ton of moves you can't dodge, they mostly feel like rote HP checks—can you dish out enough damage before dying? Usually, you can. But I would have liked a dodge roll or a stronger block move or something like that, which could have made the boss fights feel a little more active.
I had a good time playing through this—it took about 11 hours. It made me curious about the earlier Gauntlet games.
The game is pretty economical. There are different enemy models for each world, but there are only a few different character classes that have more damaging tiers—rushing enemies that blow up, long range enemies, short range melee enemies, commander style enemies, and small type enemies that can be overwhelming in large numbers. Then there are unique minibosses like golems, grim reapers, and dragons that take and do more damage than the usual enemies.
The basic loop is working your way through a series of themed levels finding collectibles and keys. You unlock different worlds through finding colored stones, and can move between worlds at any time from the hub area. Each world will have a special item in it that will do major damage to the boss of another world, so you're incentivized to explore the available worlds before taking on the each world's bosses. My favorite levels were the jester levels, which are all fantastical and dreamlike, EC Escher inspired. I also liked the Doom-inspired flesh-wall/blood level.
The game is mindless fun, but I wish there was just one more layer of something to it. What I really felt was missing was a way to avoid damage. Taking damage in regular levels is usually pretty harmless, but since boss fights have a ton of moves you can't dodge, they mostly feel like rote HP checks—can you dish out enough damage before dying? Usually, you can. But I would have liked a dodge roll or a stronger block move or something like that, which could have made the boss fights feel a little more active.
I had a good time playing through this—it took about 11 hours. It made me curious about the earlier Gauntlet games.