Cleared on April 26th, 2023 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 6/160)
Review updated on May 14th, 2024.
Thinking back to my review of Castle of Illusion, I thought to myself that maybe it was too harsh because I played on the wrong difficulty. I accused it of being unfair, but when somebody said it was "easy". I thought it was strange to say, but then I remembered I played on Hard difficulty because when I accidentally set the game on practice, I thought you had to play Hard mode to get the full game experience, but now that I've gone back to play the game on Normal, I can say that the majority of the game's problems do not apply.
On Hard difficulty, the enemy placement was atrocious. I still remember that one bat that spawned right out of nowhere at the end of the Storm, all of those bats that kept gimping me on the flood, and just so many bats that it feels cluttered and undodgeable. To my surprise, that didn't even apply on Normal mode. There are still some level design nuisances like the falling block trap in The Castle that requires trial and error to know how to avoid because there is no indicator which one will fall and which one doesn't, but I think having three starting HP and not as many enemies to worry about throughout the levels do help give you more breathing room to figure that out. The bosses also go down much faster and by fast, I mean the tree boss took around 3 hits to beat, but on Hard mode? It reportedly takes 10 hits. Its attack pattern is also even faster.
I'm still indifferent to the slow movement speed, but it doesn't bother me as much as it used to, and after having played that god awful Fantasia game, I've come to better terms with how the jumping mechanic works.
Visually, I still love the well varied environments with an enchanted forest, a toyland, storming lands, candy land, library, and the castle itself. I still don't like the saccharine sprite for Mickey himself.
When I was replaying the game, I was expecting maybe a 2.5 stars at best, but this game managed to be an actually good game, and I can now see why people think positively of it. It still doesn't hold a candle to the remake, but I wouldn't going mind another round.
Moral of the story: Hard Mode sucks.
Review updated on May 14th, 2024.
Thinking back to my review of Castle of Illusion, I thought to myself that maybe it was too harsh because I played on the wrong difficulty. I accused it of being unfair, but when somebody said it was "easy". I thought it was strange to say, but then I remembered I played on Hard difficulty because when I accidentally set the game on practice, I thought you had to play Hard mode to get the full game experience, but now that I've gone back to play the game on Normal, I can say that the majority of the game's problems do not apply.
On Hard difficulty, the enemy placement was atrocious. I still remember that one bat that spawned right out of nowhere at the end of the Storm, all of those bats that kept gimping me on the flood, and just so many bats that it feels cluttered and undodgeable. To my surprise, that didn't even apply on Normal mode. There are still some level design nuisances like the falling block trap in The Castle that requires trial and error to know how to avoid because there is no indicator which one will fall and which one doesn't, but I think having three starting HP and not as many enemies to worry about throughout the levels do help give you more breathing room to figure that out. The bosses also go down much faster and by fast, I mean the tree boss took around 3 hits to beat, but on Hard mode? It reportedly takes 10 hits. Its attack pattern is also even faster.
I'm still indifferent to the slow movement speed, but it doesn't bother me as much as it used to, and after having played that god awful Fantasia game, I've come to better terms with how the jumping mechanic works.
Visually, I still love the well varied environments with an enchanted forest, a toyland, storming lands, candy land, library, and the castle itself. I still don't like the saccharine sprite for Mickey himself.
When I was replaying the game, I was expecting maybe a 2.5 stars at best, but this game managed to be an actually good game, and I can now see why people think positively of it. It still doesn't hold a candle to the remake, but I wouldn't going mind another round.
Moral of the story: Hard Mode sucks.