Game of the Month #8 - September: Maldita Castilla

i'm not gonna check this one out -- but i did see a playthrough of it on summer games done quick, and it seemed awesome. excited to see what you guys think of it.

Gave it a quick try just now with the keyboard... not bad at all! :D Definitely a controller game, though. Also I like that continues will just take your score and start you back and the last checkpoint. It makes it possible for me to actually beat it :p

I started the game and didn't realize this was one of those games that you have to just finish in one sitting (or at least I'm pretty sure it is), so I just finished it. I was enjoying it at first, but by the second half of the game it was more frustrating than fun. I've enjoyed harder games, I even played through the original Ninja Gaiden this week and enjoyed it, but this game just wasn't doing it for me. Maybe it would have been better if I was playing with my brother and switching back and forth like we usually do with extra hard games to keep them from getting tedious. But the controls just felt a little "off". This was especially evident to me in the turtle part where I frequently found myself jumping shorter or farther than I intended. If it had the jumping style of Mario or Donkey Kong Country, that part would have been no problem, but I kept having issues with simple jumps. By the time I got to the forest (particularly the cauldron part), I was cursing the game's name. I didn't hate the game, but I didn't really enjoy it either.

I got the bad ending, as you need 5 items to get the true ending and I only got two. I found a third but couldn't get to it. The other two I have no idea where they were and I know most people would not find them all in their first playthrough, so it seems designed to have you replay it and most people will get the bad ending first. I have no intent on going through that again so I guess I'll never know what the real ending is.

The good ending requires you to find 5 items, do a couple tasks and only use 4 continues. I anticipated that I would need waaaay more coninues, so I dind't bother finding those and I went directly for the bad ending. I enjoyed the game a lot, It's hard but the checkpoints make it manageable. I also enjoyed that the game takes place in my country and constantly references classic literature and myths. The plot itself is based on the book Amadis de Gaula