You see the rating and status for the game and I think it’s expected but in reality, to me I’m kinda disappointed at how I had to give this rating, let me explain
I usually don’t like giving games the “Abandoned” status, It’s usually for rereleases or for special cases for game that I can get roughly the same experience with, that semi regins true here, I really wanted to say this game proved mine and everyone’s expectations of this game that we saw pop up every now and again wrong, but no, It was even worse than I and many others expected.
Everyone knows it’s so easy to compare this to Cuphead and it wouldn’t even hold a flicker of a candle, It’s so easy to do and I will try not to do that, but as you see so with this brief review as to why this is hard to do.
Enchanted Portals has been enrolled in controversy every since it was revealed back in 2019 for being a Cuphead clone, and then some controversy about Native Americans and then it vanished. Everyone who even thought about this game after the controversy thought it’d disappear like a lot of indie projects, but like the other half, it sure did release. 3 Months ago it got a new teaser trailer and then recently got its final trailer, revealing it was releasing soon. All of this leading to overwhelming negatively reviews, what are my thoughts?
This is probably one of the most miserable games I’ve played in my life.
Sorry for my scattershot texts here but there’s so much to dissect in why and how this game fails in basic simple game design, when the default Unreal engine icon was used for the game, I knew I was in for a treat. I don’t think I can even do my simple stick, It’s just that messy, so instead I’m just gonna bullet point stuff because there’s no other way to get my thoughts as cohesively as possible without doing this, so here we go!
-The Story wasn’t interesting, I knew I wasn’t gonna get a good story here but this arguably has more story than Cuphead because there’s full motion cutscenes rather than the static ones, not at all a dig to Cuphead they are rewarded with those especially with that animation, but here everything goes so quickly without and rime or reason to what you’re doing. I think you’re chasing a book or something? And you’re wizards? I don’t know. You feel dropped in without any good context
-The game looks awful, in terms of the sprites and backgrounds they look great! But in terms of movement, It’s stiff and feels cheap. I didn’t need Cuphead level animation but something passable at least. The Title screen looks like one of those porn animated ads, there’s just this dirty vibe to it where it just feels off, where you can’t discernible put your finger on it but no there is just something off about it. There’s some good ideas at play such as changing the art style mid fight, but in terms of transitions it feels empty and doesn’t feel satisfying both going into a new phase and defeating the boss because the animation quality isn’t there, if they were gonna do a game like this, then they needed to have a quality that matches it.
-The Music is fine, but the sound design is awful because it just doesn’t exist! And when sounds do happen they either just, to loud, too quiet, low quality or stock sounding
-The main focus of the game isn’t the bosses like Cuphead but rather Run and Gun stages, I actually like the Run and Gun stages in Cuphead and I wish there were more but in this game, yikes 😬
-Characters feel way too floaty, they don’t have enough weight to them and overall don’t feel fun to control especially when dashing, the shooting mechanics which are sightly different while functional, doesn’t have that punch, power or impact as it should have. Jumping as well feels unresponsive and the controls have this weird delay to them, which in a game about quick thinking isn’t very ideal
-Apart from the tutorial, levels are randomly generated, every stage has a different obstacle, length and difficulty depending on when you restart, which includes getting a Game Over. I like random generator games if they’re done right and can give a fair and fun experience, but for a game like this it doesn’t work, this game is inherently about trial and error and learning to get better at the game by replaying it over and over again, and that reigns true for the bosses but here making it randomly generated doesn’t give that satisfying gameplay loop that made the Run n gun levels and Mega Man so fun
-Enemies (At least on Normal) take way too many hits to kill, especially big enemies (which by the way are just lower res upscale versions of smaller enemies). Additionally, you can be bombarded with enemies all at once if you don’t take them out in time, which for a normal game that might be fine but here since they take too many hits, I just rather brute forced my way through these rather than play by the games rules since it was so monotonous
-Levels don’t feel dynamic at all possibly due to the aforementioned randomly generated aspect, A lot of them are straight lines to the finish that overstay their welcome to the point where Super Mario Bros on the NES is more involved and dynamic, You’d think the 50% marker the game taunts would be a checkpoint but nope, once you die you gotta start over again!
-Bosses are easily the “best” part of the game and even these are heavily flawed, they have good designs and even some good patterns but unfortunately, they feel just cobbled together with tape and glue, boss transitions as I mentioned aren’t fluid, cohesive or so unsubtle. A lot of them either feel like bullet sponges or glass structures, there’s no in between, which reflects the whole entire game I guess but it’s still not very fun or memorable.
Enchanted Portals is overall a mess, figures when you try and copy a game that was made for so an elongated amount of time and was brewed to perfection and then try to make it as fast as possible, it come out like this. This game was just absolutely miserable to play, it’s not even funny bad, just play Cuphead steer fair way from this.
I usually don’t like giving games the “Abandoned” status, It’s usually for rereleases or for special cases for game that I can get roughly the same experience with, that semi regins true here, I really wanted to say this game proved mine and everyone’s expectations of this game that we saw pop up every now and again wrong, but no, It was even worse than I and many others expected.
Everyone knows it’s so easy to compare this to Cuphead and it wouldn’t even hold a flicker of a candle, It’s so easy to do and I will try not to do that, but as you see so with this brief review as to why this is hard to do.
Enchanted Portals has been enrolled in controversy every since it was revealed back in 2019 for being a Cuphead clone, and then some controversy about Native Americans and then it vanished. Everyone who even thought about this game after the controversy thought it’d disappear like a lot of indie projects, but like the other half, it sure did release. 3 Months ago it got a new teaser trailer and then recently got its final trailer, revealing it was releasing soon. All of this leading to overwhelming negatively reviews, what are my thoughts?
This is probably one of the most miserable games I’ve played in my life.
Sorry for my scattershot texts here but there’s so much to dissect in why and how this game fails in basic simple game design, when the default Unreal engine icon was used for the game, I knew I was in for a treat. I don’t think I can even do my simple stick, It’s just that messy, so instead I’m just gonna bullet point stuff because there’s no other way to get my thoughts as cohesively as possible without doing this, so here we go!
-The Story wasn’t interesting, I knew I wasn’t gonna get a good story here but this arguably has more story than Cuphead because there’s full motion cutscenes rather than the static ones, not at all a dig to Cuphead they are rewarded with those especially with that animation, but here everything goes so quickly without and rime or reason to what you’re doing. I think you’re chasing a book or something? And you’re wizards? I don’t know. You feel dropped in without any good context
-The game looks awful, in terms of the sprites and backgrounds they look great! But in terms of movement, It’s stiff and feels cheap. I didn’t need Cuphead level animation but something passable at least. The Title screen looks like one of those porn animated ads, there’s just this dirty vibe to it where it just feels off, where you can’t discernible put your finger on it but no there is just something off about it. There’s some good ideas at play such as changing the art style mid fight, but in terms of transitions it feels empty and doesn’t feel satisfying both going into a new phase and defeating the boss because the animation quality isn’t there, if they were gonna do a game like this, then they needed to have a quality that matches it.
-The Music is fine, but the sound design is awful because it just doesn’t exist! And when sounds do happen they either just, to loud, too quiet, low quality or stock sounding
-The main focus of the game isn’t the bosses like Cuphead but rather Run and Gun stages, I actually like the Run and Gun stages in Cuphead and I wish there were more but in this game, yikes 😬
-Characters feel way too floaty, they don’t have enough weight to them and overall don’t feel fun to control especially when dashing, the shooting mechanics which are sightly different while functional, doesn’t have that punch, power or impact as it should have. Jumping as well feels unresponsive and the controls have this weird delay to them, which in a game about quick thinking isn’t very ideal
-Apart from the tutorial, levels are randomly generated, every stage has a different obstacle, length and difficulty depending on when you restart, which includes getting a Game Over. I like random generator games if they’re done right and can give a fair and fun experience, but for a game like this it doesn’t work, this game is inherently about trial and error and learning to get better at the game by replaying it over and over again, and that reigns true for the bosses but here making it randomly generated doesn’t give that satisfying gameplay loop that made the Run n gun levels and Mega Man so fun
-Enemies (At least on Normal) take way too many hits to kill, especially big enemies (which by the way are just lower res upscale versions of smaller enemies). Additionally, you can be bombarded with enemies all at once if you don’t take them out in time, which for a normal game that might be fine but here since they take too many hits, I just rather brute forced my way through these rather than play by the games rules since it was so monotonous
-Levels don’t feel dynamic at all possibly due to the aforementioned randomly generated aspect, A lot of them are straight lines to the finish that overstay their welcome to the point where Super Mario Bros on the NES is more involved and dynamic, You’d think the 50% marker the game taunts would be a checkpoint but nope, once you die you gotta start over again!
-Bosses are easily the “best” part of the game and even these are heavily flawed, they have good designs and even some good patterns but unfortunately, they feel just cobbled together with tape and glue, boss transitions as I mentioned aren’t fluid, cohesive or so unsubtle. A lot of them either feel like bullet sponges or glass structures, there’s no in between, which reflects the whole entire game I guess but it’s still not very fun or memorable.
Enchanted Portals is overall a mess, figures when you try and copy a game that was made for so an elongated amount of time and was brewed to perfection and then try to make it as fast as possible, it come out like this. This game was just absolutely miserable to play, it’s not even funny bad, just play Cuphead steer fair way from this.