Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness

Genre: Action / Strategy

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local, Local Wireless, Online)

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Review:

Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness, released on the Nintendo Switch in 2022, is the third game in this game series after the 2010 Xbox 360 Xbox Live Indie Game release Protect Me Knight and the 2016 Nintendo 3DS game Gotta Protectors. The core premise here is roughly the same – players take the role of one of multiple archetypal medieval fantasy archetypes and fend off a horde of incoming monsters, keeping the princess safe. The twist this time around is that the princess’s castle is wheeled and running along train tracks, with each level finishing only when she pilots the castle, ramming it into the enemy castle.

I give the game credit for trying something new and different, but honestly I don’t think this quite works out to the game’s advantage. What was so great about this game’s predecessor was the way it made players balance different possible strategies for keeping the princess safe, but the way this game requires the princess to be mobile really limits the value of any emplacement you can place – if you’re going to be leaving the area soon, how useful can such an emplacement be, after all?

There’s another frustration I have with this game, and that is that it cuts down tremendously on the game’s feeling of leveling up and customizing your team as you proceed through the game. Here, you can only change your team’s loadout, with one slot for “cartridges” you find hidden in the game’s levels that can improve a specific stat. However, in the middle of each series of levels, all of your character upgrades only apply to that series of levels, and they apply to all characters, meaning there’s no weighing one character’s upgrades against another.

The underlying game here is still enjoyable, and still presents a very unique take on the Tower Defense genre, if you can even call it that anymore (it’s more like a series of escort quests now), but it’s nowhere near as engaging as this game’s direct predecessor.

At the very least, the presentation here is still absolutely charming, with old-school 8-bit-style 2D pixel art visuals, a decent chiptune soundtrack, barely-intelligible digitized speech clips, and a great fourth wall-breaking story and characters that are genuinely funny. The surprise is somewhat dulled this time after the prior game already tread this ground, but it’s amusing all the same.

I’m sorry to say it, but I found Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness to be a big disappointment. While the game is still a unique and enjoyable blend of Action and Strategy, all of the changes from the previous game are dubious and result in a game that, while still good, just can’t hold a candle to its Nintendo 3DS predecessor.

tl;dr – Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness is a game that combines Action and Strategy elements as players protect a princess in a mobile castle as it travels on rails to bash into an enemy stronghold. It’s a fairly unique and enjoyable game, but it’s nowhere near as good as its Nintendo 3DS predecessor.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Misc. Game, Most Disappointing

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