Cave Story®+

TL;DR Download the freeware version instead of buying this sub-par remaster. This version of the game contains major bugs that aren't in any other release, is missing content from the Switch port (which was released in 2017), and is somehow outclassed by the janky 3DS remake in terms of overall polish. The main bugs are: -The game crashes when using the Japanese language option. -The game temporarily freezes at one point, forcing the player to miss a very important cutscene. -The game will sometimes run too fast or too slow. Cave Story is a freeware game, and as we all know, the paid version of a product is always supposed to be better than the free version, but apparently Nicalis thinks otherwise. If you bought the game here and want a better experience, I recommend using Doukutsu-RS. If you haven't bought it you should download the freeware version from cavestory.org instead, it's much more playable (also compatible with Doukutsu-RS). Nicalis should be ashamed of themselves for charging money for this garbage port.

Cave Story+ is now a decade old, the original 2004 freeware release a passion project by a single guy over 5 years. If you haven't played it, do it.

By the time I had finally got to play Cave Story, it was in the post-official-release times. I had heard rumblings of it on the internet and had gotten a copy on the Wii when it was available there, but had never decided to check it out in its true internet-culture era. When it wasn't just a game, but felt like the beginning of something. At the time, my heart had room for only one indie-platformvania with retro aesthetic, and that was La-Mulana, which would eventually get its own official release, which I would also end up getting on Wii and PC. As a game itself, I would say it's 4 or 4.5 stars. But I'm giving it the full 5 because it helped to set the bar for a lot of things we take for granted when it comes to independently-made games. A rating for importance, rather than pure merit. It's not the perfect 'vania, and some would argue that it only barely qualifies in that subgenre. But I would say it's a design that's lean on purpose. There's not so much that it will overstay its welcome, but there's more than enough for it to live in your head after you've put the controller down.

I remember back in like 2014 when I was in middle school. I had this one friend who was on the spectrum who praised this game. Saying it could have been undertale if undertale didn't come out. I baught this game on the switch when it first came out and I couldn't why it was good. however after playing on an actually decent controller like a ds4 I can say that this game lives up to its praise. its charming, the music is catchy, the gameplay is really good. The only reason I'm giving this game a 4 instead of a 5 is that the writing is a bit lacking, but its a japnese game localized so I can't really complain. What I can complain about is the inclusions this port brings. The new graphics kinda hurt my eyes and the new music is unbarable compaired to the originals sound track, the only reason I'm playing this version is cause it has better controller support and I've already this game more than once. acuably it doesn't do enough to seperate it from the nuberus other verions including the freeware version. Still happy I got it on gog. Kinda mad I did cause they gave it away on epic. Still a very is a timeless game that more people should play. Don't be like me and stop playing it just cause the switch version turned you off

I played it on Steam a while ago, but assume the GoG version is identical. A lot of love went into Cave Story. There are dozens of secrets, three endings and so on. The fundamental gameplay of running, jumping and shooting works very well. Weapon power-ups are implemented in a fun way, you can perform power jumps with the machine gun etc. My main gripe is that the distribution of save points is just badly done. Sometimes there are three in a row but there's usually none before a boss fight. Which means that if you fail, you need to traverse several rooms full of enemies and tricky jumps, and then endure lots of dialog (which you can speed up, but not skip) to try again. I also didn't like the "skating" of the main character. I personally like games where the character stops moving when I release the key. Also, some save game management would have been nice. I also consider it bad design that the best ending requires you to omit certain unsuspicious actions without giving you any hint. There are also technical issues. The scaling on widescreen monitors cuts of a good part of the upper and lower screen rendering the game unplayable. Forcing the game to run at 640x480 (through Win10 options) works, but stretches the display horizontally if your monitor can't compensate. For a reworked "+" version, this is just a No-Go. The game also crashed on me when I finished the machine gun challenge. Meh. Then, there's the final boss fight (normal ending) which actually consists of three boss fights in three rooms without any possibility to save or restock. Only about 20% of players seem to have reached the normal or best ending of the game. So 80% of players failed to reach a proper ending. Side note for the desperate: there's a file called profile.dat where the maximum and current life energy are stored at offsets 0x1C and 0x20 and the max/current rockets at offsets 0x58 and 0x5C.