In Just Three Words? Style. Over. Substance.... | The Eternal Castle Remastered for Nintendo Switch
16The Eternal Castle Remastered for Nintendo Switch was an interesting experience. It has been a long while since I reviewed a cinematic platformer of any type. The Eternal Castle Remastered immediately caught my eye due to its striking visual style. I was sincerely hoping that the gameplay would stack up. How did Eternal Castle Remastered for Nintendo Switch fare under a Dayton review? Well, it's certainly not all rainbows and sunshine, but it didn't fall flat on its face either. Join me and find out as I ramble about The Eternal Castle Remastered for Nintendo Switch.
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The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED], a game that was inspired by rumors, bald-faced lies, and half-remembered dreams is not coy about its influences. It aims to deliver something authentic to the experience you would have gotten somewhere in between Prince of Persia and Another World.
The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] is not a remaster of anything, but you think it is because of its commitment to 2-bit CGA graphics. Then you realize how foolish you were by not realizing the obvious, because aping off retro aesthetics is what indie devs do to cater to nostalgia.
With The Eternal Castle, things are a bit different. It kind of feels like the developer is drawing inspiration from misremembering and mixing up specific games together.
The way how vague the story is told, with anachronistic imagery meeting sci-fi and the surreal vistas meeting the incredibly low-fi presentation, makes the experience feel like lost game from the 80s.
The retro synth hum that permeates the ambiance of every scene would be a cliché in something more polished or slick looking. The way The Eternal Castle uses its music only further adds to the authenticity of being some kind of forgotten late 80s PC platformer.
The 2-bit CGA aesthetics have to make liberal use of inky, crushed black real estate, because actual CGA processors back in the day relied on black being a color. This shrouds The Eternal Castle in shadows and silhouettes, with only highlights giving the impression of defined shapes.
This can lead to visuals becoming utterly indecipherable, since the overall art direction is also intended to be very scratchy and crude. The protagonist can become completely lost and will have no defined silhouette, with only a few speculator highlights to give the impression of their place on screen. The effect can make the player-character look like a guy wearing a mo-cap suit with dots.
The Eternal Castle is designed around the player choosing which stage they wish to play after the tutorial level. Outside of the aforementioned stealth sequence, there is an area that will test your skills and patience at hand to hand combat. Another area is focused on using guns and after completing all three areas, the final level opens up that puts all skills to the test.
Aside from sluggish playability, the frame rate can tank hard which truly makes this feel like a game programmed in the 80s. This frustration is further compounded by the way the game’s settings tend to change every time you die, as if it’s mocking you for wanting to play with a specific control set-up.
When thankfully, The Eternal Castle works, it is acceptable, but hardly riveting. The scenarios are milquetoast and verge on being overly drawn out, which is unusual for a game that is as short as this.
The Eternal Castle is supposed to be some kind of science fiction adventure- at least the intro suggests as much. The story revolves around finding pieces of a space ship, and rescuing what might be your significant other.
It really does come across that the designer wanted to throw everything in that he vaguely remembered from a game he can’t recall. Why would there be a spaceship piece hidden in a graveyard? It never makes any sense.
The Eternal Castle is ultimately not worth the eye-strain, and better options like Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition or Flashback exist on Nintendo Switch.
Only the most desperate who are easily swayed by retro visuals will be impressed by The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED]. With a bit of polish, this could be an interesting and worthwhile cinematic platformer.
The foundation is much to shaky, and substantial chunks of the game would require some redesigning. Even the controls need some refinement and simplification, like reducing the combat to one button and having run be mapped to a face button.
If this was the “remastered” version of The Eternal Castle, I would hate to see what the original was like. The best thing about this was the marketing gimmick and the music.
-Niche Gamer