Honestly one of the most pleasant surprises of 2021 so far. I'll admit to being far from charitable when this was first announced, entirely because its artstyle just did not hit my flavour palette right. However, after immersing myself in the game for a while, the pin-puppet and painterly style grew on me immensely, and it all culminates with its wonderful storybook presentation. I particularly enjoyed how even the levels themselves were thoroughly animated, using the tweening animation style to warp unrecognisably at points. Reminded me a lot of Rayman Legends levels.
This is the first Ghosts 'n Goblins game I've ever played, and I'll never pretend to be the biggest fan of masocore style gameplay or anything. But, Resurrection feels so tightly designed I was happy to put up with its cheeky bullshit and finally complete it on Legend difficulty. One thing I was particularly taken aback by was how much depth the game could wrangle out of relatively simple player controls - four directions, an attack button and a single jump with a fixed arc. While the level design is relatively cruel with its enemy placements and platforming, it never feels like I needed anything else. With the chests giving sequentially better rewards and gold armour that powers up your current weapon, every moment acts as a risk/reward assessment that could be the difference between life or death, and it is engaging to wonderfully stressful degrees right until the very end. Memorisation is king, so once I learned that every single hazard, enemy or boss in the game has quirks I could read and exploit, it all felt amazing. Music slaps too.
It does have some things that drag the experience down for me, though. For example, I'm not a fan of how weapon pickups persist through death - meaning that you could have a favourite weapon and lose it semi-permanently should you accidentally pick up something else. This problem is kind of compounded by the fact that the Knife is the best in the game by a shocking margin. Get knocked into a useless piece of shit like the Ball or something, and you're stuck with that until you luck out and get the Knife back again.
Completely unconvinced by the skill tree system in this game too. Levels will have a handful of Whisps hidden throughout; they generally trigger when you perform a certain action and remain permanently obtained even should you die after getting one. Some of which I swear are placed, so you HAVE to jump into a guaranteed death to obtain, and often quite far away from the last checkpoint. I found that this is the game giving the OK sign to suicide runs, which is imo a fuckin stupid plethora of unnecessary deaths for an already hard as nails game. It's a little annoying that there are a few genuinely game-changing good abilities you can unlock through obtaining them, like weapon slots and spell switching. I wish these abilities were just present in the game without such an extraneous system gatekeeping them.
I heard a review for this game mention that Super Ghosts n Goblins has the golden armour unlock unique skills for your chosen weapon, which sounds great!!
Should also note that the game also has a bunch of difficulty options and you can set them according to your comfort level.
This is the first Ghosts 'n Goblins game I've ever played, and I'll never pretend to be the biggest fan of masocore style gameplay or anything. But, Resurrection feels so tightly designed I was happy to put up with its cheeky bullshit and finally complete it on Legend difficulty. One thing I was particularly taken aback by was how much depth the game could wrangle out of relatively simple player controls - four directions, an attack button and a single jump with a fixed arc. While the level design is relatively cruel with its enemy placements and platforming, it never feels like I needed anything else. With the chests giving sequentially better rewards and gold armour that powers up your current weapon, every moment acts as a risk/reward assessment that could be the difference between life or death, and it is engaging to wonderfully stressful degrees right until the very end. Memorisation is king, so once I learned that every single hazard, enemy or boss in the game has quirks I could read and exploit, it all felt amazing. Music slaps too.
It does have some things that drag the experience down for me, though. For example, I'm not a fan of how weapon pickups persist through death - meaning that you could have a favourite weapon and lose it semi-permanently should you accidentally pick up something else. This problem is kind of compounded by the fact that the Knife is the best in the game by a shocking margin. Get knocked into a useless piece of shit like the Ball or something, and you're stuck with that until you luck out and get the Knife back again.
Completely unconvinced by the skill tree system in this game too. Levels will have a handful of Whisps hidden throughout; they generally trigger when you perform a certain action and remain permanently obtained even should you die after getting one. Some of which I swear are placed, so you HAVE to jump into a guaranteed death to obtain, and often quite far away from the last checkpoint. I found that this is the game giving the OK sign to suicide runs, which is imo a fuckin stupid plethora of unnecessary deaths for an already hard as nails game. It's a little annoying that there are a few genuinely game-changing good abilities you can unlock through obtaining them, like weapon slots and spell switching. I wish these abilities were just present in the game without such an extraneous system gatekeeping them.
I heard a review for this game mention that Super Ghosts n Goblins has the golden armour unlock unique skills for your chosen weapon, which sounds great!!
Should also note that the game also has a bunch of difficulty options and you can set them according to your comfort level.