indigozeal

The music is lackluster; the save rooms are far between and in really odd locations; you visit the castle's treasury - Count Dracula's treasury - but it's a grim cinder block as opulate and ornate as the county jail and completely devoid of Scrooge McDuck piles of gold coins or any sort of jewel-encrusting; Juste is way way overpowered with the magic "fuck you" Hydro Storm powers he has nearly right off the bat, and though you're encouraged to play around with different combinations of spells and subweapons, if Ice Bible can cause Valmanway-scale collateral damage, why would I really try anything else, thank you; toggling between your subweapon and your subweapon spell dearly needs to be assigned to a button rather than the menu screen; the bosses stick to "I'll just stand over here and occasionally spit stuff at you" tactics or, if the designers want to go for challenge, "I'll just unavoidably run into you" tactics; I'm only three hours in - not even three hours in; more like 2:30 - and already 60% of my way through the castle; though I'm not as schooled in Castlevania as the folks on the 1up boards who assiduously dissect these things, man, even I can tell this is lazy, boring copypaste level design. Also, they gave us a Hundred-Hand Slap subweapon, but it is weak as fuck.

Additionally, I'm currently stuck, and the cart's previous owner abandoned his or her game at nearly exactly at the point where I am now. Our castle completion rates are a single tenth of a percentage off. This does not bode well.

But the backdrops, while generally sedate palettewise, do often betray a good deal of detail and care, and for all the grief he gets, Juste seems to be a genuinely nice fellow.
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