Castle Crashers Review - Xbox 360

8.5

Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 9
Audio: 8
Multiplayer: 10
Innovation: 8

From afar, Castle Crashers appears to be a simple adventure game where you face an ever increasing army of bad dudes, but this analogy would best describe the game in its simplest form. Castle Crashers, the latest RPG on the Xbox Live Arcade marketplace, is an amazing combination of gorgeous high definition 2D graphics, cute sounds, adorable music, and an incredibly detailed combat system.

Gameplay

Castle Crashers kicks off as the same old story, in fact the entire story is rather cliché but yet somehow still very enjoyable. Four princesses are taken by a wizard, one dragged by her face, and it’s up to you and your band of brothers (or just you) to save them from the evils that await you on your journey.  The game works through a map where you scroll from one level to the next, and there are also stores where you can buy health potions and weapons, and arenas where you can do battle. As you progress through each level, the game gets harder, the action gets tougher, and the comedy gets… stranger. The developers at The Behemoth definitely have a unique sense of humour which mostly includes secretion of bodily fluids from all sorts of orifices.

As the game gets harder, you gain more skills. Every time you level up, you can add points to Strength, Magic, Defense or Agility. Agility makes you run and shoot faster, and the other abilities are fairly self explanatory. Magic allows you to perform such actions as raining icicles down on your enemies, and is very useful if you’re not in to the whole melee beat-em-up style gameplay.  Not only can your skills vary, but your weapons do too. Every now and then you find a new weapon to add to your collection, and as mentioned before, The Behemoth has created a rather interesting armory that we’ll let you discover by yourself.

The interface in Castle Crashers is very solid and not confusing at all. It shows the special item you have equipped (most commonly your bow), your health, magic, and experience bars, and how much gold you have. Everything you need is right there in front of you, and there are no complicated menus at all which makes Castle Crashers possibly the easiest role-playing game to enjoy for gamers of all varieties.

There is little to no consequences for dying in Castle Crashers. Yes, you have to restart the level you were on, but you get all your health back and you get to keep any items/experience that you have gained. This usually means you can go back in a little stronger as you can add the talent points that you received from leveling. You can use health potions to stay alive though, and a health potion will bring your health back to full no matter how high of a level you are.  When playing by yourself, you have to make sure you use the potion before you die however if you’re playing with friends, the game works a little differently (continued next page)