Lords of Exile

Simple, straight forward action platforming in the style of 8-bit castlevania. It's a solid game with moderate difficulty. Much more accessible than actual retro games. You get infinite lives and very frequent checkpoints. The graphics and music are great. But the gameplay is a little undercooked here. It's not bad but it could have used some unique mechanics that set it apart from other retro-style platformers. This is basically just Castlevania with a little bit of Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden DNA in there. The game is very short, can be beaten in under 2 hours. And like I said, it's moderate difficulty at best. Many of the bosses are pretty easy as I defeated them on my first try. A few deal massive damage so they will kill you a few times before you learn the patterns, which are pretty simple. It's not a baby game though, it really is about mid-level difficulty. So it's in an awkward place between being totally modern difficulty and hardcore difficulty. Personally I enjoy a little bit more challenge then this but at least the game challenged me enough to not put me to sleep. It was fairly fun overall. I haven't started the 2nd playthrough yet but I will do that later. One criticism I have of the game is the main character's walking speed. It is way too slow. It's not just Castlevania on the NES slow, it's more like Simon's Quest on the Gameboy slow. The vast majority of my deaths were due to me over-estimating how far I can jump. You can only clear about 2 blocks of horizontal space. This slow speed also makes dodging projectiles quite difficult. I think they undertuned the movement quite a bit here, but other than that the controls are fine. The weapons and abilities are all very generic. Most of which are just "stronger sword" or "faster meter", a real missed opportunity. They really didn't even need to have them if they weren't gonna flesh out the concept more. Same can be said for the summoning mechanic, it is mostly just cosmetic as it really adds nothing to the gameplay. Anyway, get the game on sale, it's a short but sweet retro action platformer with solid level design and great music. It won't blow you away but it's a nice little classicvania game worth a few dollars and a few hours. EDIT: The final stage is a massive difficulty spike. Mostly due to instant death spikes and pits everywhere. Still, not too hard but you'll need more patience to make it through. The final boss however is a gargantuan difficulty leap from previous bosses. Very fast movement and a tricky pattern. It's predictable and can be learned but your extremely slow movement and large hitbox will really test your patience. Than you have another phase to fight that's extremely agile, and you get no health in between. That fight alone will probably take you more time to learn than the entire game up to that point. So prepare yourself for a very brutal final gauntlet.