The marketing is pretty pretentious ("huhr duhr remember when vidya was HARD?"...failing to realize that not every game made before 1998 was an exercise in frustration) and there are simply better games that accomplish what it set out to do.
Cursed Castilla came out a year prior, actually looked like an arcade or Genesis game and had far better level design based around strict jump arcs and the need to think one step ahead since you didn't have the free-flowing movement of something like Super Mario. If you need a more modern example, Curse of the Moon went for the same thing with great results. Neither game needed to tell you it was "so hard" or "so retro", either.
Seems like this has its fans though. To be fair, it did release before the whole retro revival really blew up...but it just didn't feel any better to play now than it did upon release for me.
Cursed Castilla came out a year prior, actually looked like an arcade or Genesis game and had far better level design based around strict jump arcs and the need to think one step ahead since you didn't have the free-flowing movement of something like Super Mario. If you need a more modern example, Curse of the Moon went for the same thing with great results. Neither game needed to tell you it was "so hard" or "so retro", either.
Seems like this has its fans though. To be fair, it did release before the whole retro revival really blew up...but it just didn't feel any better to play now than it did upon release for me.
Simple gameplay kept engaging throughout with satisfying difficulty & level design. I'm a big fan of the very deliberate design choice where most actions are commitments that need to be thought out beforehand & Volgarr does this extremely well. Plenty of cool little details to discover & the soundtrack kicks ass.
The game's difficulty comes mainly from: A) old style jump controls (ie. you can't change trajectory once in the air, except with the double jump), B) somewhat newbie-hostile level design that results in plenty of trial-and-error gameplay, C) unforgiving health system where you lose gear when you take damage, and D) long distances between checkpoints.
And yet... this isn't as rage-inducing as I would've expected.
It kind of reminds me of Celeste, in the way that you first need to figure out a sequence of actions, and then execute it with little room for improvization or mistakes. Also in the way that you will die a lot. The difference is that Celeste has waaay more checkpoints, an interesting story, and actually enjoyable fluid movement.
While I've never beaten this and have uninstalled it several times, it has never made me go "I'm never playing this again".
And yet... this isn't as rage-inducing as I would've expected.
It kind of reminds me of Celeste, in the way that you first need to figure out a sequence of actions, and then execute it with little room for improvization or mistakes. Also in the way that you will die a lot. The difference is that Celeste has waaay more checkpoints, an interesting story, and actually enjoyable fluid movement.
While I've never beaten this and have uninstalled it several times, it has never made me go "I'm never playing this again".