I loved playing this game back in the day and was surprised to see it show up in the store. The game as a whole still holds up. The jump is definately old-school and difficult, but fortunately they added a continue option so it's possible to keep practicing without starting at the beginning. The new graphics are also really nice while still keeping the spriit of the original game.
The game is billed as a tower defense-puzzle game. The idea is interesting. However, there are three majors problem: the randomness of it, the fact that your units behave like idiots and the need for money to progress. Opening jars in the game is random. Hence, on each playthrough you will get different units, items and emeies. There are some levels, especially later on, that will make the level unbeatable unless you get right things in the jars. The AI of your units is also frustrating. Weak units will valliantly charge right into a strong enemy and get immediately killed. Some (very) slow moving units will crawl towards the enemy and right before they start attacking, decide to turn around and see what's the other side of the screen. Flies that would work great as an attack group decide to just hang around and check out different things. The final problem is the money system. Each level earns a decent amount of money and the perks are not all necessary and there are many duplicates, so if that's all money was used for it would be fine. However, there are some parts that you need to purchase a new unit type to progress. The new unit types are really expensive and if you don't have the money, you have to go back and keep replaying the old levels until you get enough cash to move on.
The later games are really fun, but this one is just too unrefined. The difficuly curve is out of whack and there are parts that might have worked on mobile, but do no translate well to the PC (for instance, in one level, you have to click the towers to prevent them from being locked. Considering the mouse cursor is really small and does not have good contrast with the background, it's hard to target the towers and it's easily to accidentally sell one instead of stopping them from being locked).
I played Castlevania: Symphony of the Night when it came out back in '97 and loved it. I was disappointed in the various "sequels" that were released over the years. When I heard this game was going to be a spiritual successor, I was cautiously optimistic. However, after playing it, they really captured the spirit of the original game with a modern Metrovania experience. I enjoyed it so much, I ended up unlocking all of the achievements, including the one where you craft every possible item.
A fun hack'n'slash game. If you liked the originial Gauntlet, you will like this one. The gameplay is not mindblowing but it's definately fun, especially with two or more players. Keep in mind that you are always connected to a server, even if it's local. Local networking problems can make it seem like you can't play, which was the source of my older poor review.
