Ghosts ‘N Goblins Resurrected

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Ghosts ‘N Goblins Resurrection is a challenging Action-Platformer in Capcom’s long-running series about a knight named Arthur fighting through hordes of ghouls, ghosts, goblins, and other various nasty critters in order to rescue his repeatedly kidnapped lady, Prin Prin (or Guenivere in most English localizations). This series has been dormant since Ghosts ‘N Goblins: Gold Knights II released on the iOS in 2010, and hasn’t seen a major entry in the series since Ultimate Ghosts ‘N Goblins released on the PlayStation Portable in 2006, so when Resurrection released on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2021, it was a welcome return to the series.

Graphically, this game’s presentation is somewhat divisive, making use of 2D graphics (with some subtle 3D) in a “paper doll” style that might seem odd to players more used to the pixel art of most earlier entries in the series. While the art style may be something of an acquired taste, the quality and imagination of the 2D artwork itself is absolutely top-notch, with some really beautiful detail and imaginative designs for both the levels and the enemies. These visuals are backed by a decent orchestral soundtrack that makes nods to the themes from earlier games in the series, but doesn’t really top them in terms of memorability.

As for the gameplay, I’m just going to cut right to it – this game is hard. No, stop, wait. You think you know what I mean, but hold on a minute. The Ghosts ‘N Goblins series has always been notorious for its extreme difficulty, at times even bordering on outright unfair, with somewhat stiff controls, unrelenting enemies, and very little margin for error. But Ghosts ‘N Goblins Resurrection puts prior games in the series to shame.

Even on easier difficulty levels, you’ll struggle to find a moment to breathe in between enemy assaults, jumps will constantly require precision timing to make, and overall this is a game that seems more concerned with punishing the player than being fun. There are times when I encountered game elements that were seemingly designed to exasperate and infuriate players. In the very first stage, there’s a critical jump over a pool of water that means instant death if you miss, and the platform you need to jump to moves, requiring careful timing. However, it will also inexplicably stop and turn around, seemingly just so the game’s designers can laugh at your attempts to try to play the game.

I suppose I should mention that the game does include a difficulty mode that allows you to instantly re-spawn your character when they die, but this doesn’t seem like a particularly good solution to intentionally bad game design.

There are other mitigating factors here as well. As players play through levels, they can come across glowbugs (fireflies? fairies?) they can collect that they can later use to unlock additional abilities, such as magic attacks, the ability to store multiple weapons at a time, and so on. And this game does include the ability to attack directly up and down, introduced in Ultimate Ghosts ‘N Goblins. Unfortunately, this game does not include the double-jump from Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts and Ultimate Ghosts ‘N Goblins, something that was invaluable in helping players to make the sort of precision jumps this series demands of the player. And while these upgraded abilities are nice, none of them really counter the core problems of this game.

There is one other element I should mention here, and that is this game’s co-op option, a first for the series. At any time, a second player can join in, playing as a free-floating ghost character with the ability to attack enemies. This is a welcome addition to the series, and if it were in a less-compromised game, I could see this feature making for a huge shift in the series. As-is, it’s just another mitigating factor to help cut down this game’s endless frustrations.

In the end, there still are elements of Ghosts ‘N Goblins Resurrection that I thoroughly enjoy. This game still has a lot of old-school charm, and some of the ideas it presents like the new co-op mode and character upgrades have a lot of great potential. But these great additions to the series are trapped in a game that is just not fun to play. As someone who enjoyed prior games in the series despite their punishing difficulty, that Ghosts ‘N Goblins Resurrection seems to value that punishing difficulty far more than the enjoyment of the player is a huge disappointment.

tl;dr – Ghosts ‘N Goblins Resurrection is an Action-Platformer that takes the Ghosts ‘N Goblins series’ notoriously difficult gameplay and turns the “difficult” part up to 11 in ways that seem designed to frustrate players. It’s a shame too, because there are gameplay elements here that have a lot of potential, but it’s hard to enjoy them when the game is actively trying to make you hate it.

Grade: C-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Overrated, Most Disappointing

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