Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

So overall Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a retro inspired platformer and shows the genre at its finest. Not to mention it feels right at home on the Switch despite being a multiplatform release. If you’ve never played a Monster Boy game but have been looking for anything to scratch that Metroid or Castlevania itch then this is for you. And if you’re a Monster Boy fan wondering if this installment is any good then you should probably already own it. But if you don’t then take it from me you won’t regret your time with Cursed Kingdom.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is one of the best surprises of 2018. A great adventure that everyone should play.

Wonder Boy is finally back, in his greatest adventure yet. An old-school, visually stunning, funny and engrossing adventure.

A great neo-retro game that manages to be fresh and a perfect homage to some old classic like Wonder Boy.

The beautiful platform exploration of Wonder Boy transcends into the present with Wonder Boy adding clever puzzle elements.

Both a faithful spiritual sequel and a fresh adventure, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is an excellent platformer with some truly gorgeous visuals.

It’s a beautiful throwback adventure that is, overall, quite enjoyable once it picks up steam, but its problems are hard to ignore. Simply put, the janky hit detection from decades-old games is a flaw that breaks up the flow of otherwise smooth controls, forcing the player to spend their first few hours with the least enjoyable transformations, leaving a poor first impression.

A game I really enjoyed playing. The difficulty can be a bit high sometimes but never hitting a frustrating point. The places/dungeons you go through are different and each will bring new tricks and items. I loved the creativity coming from the combined story, soundtracks and art work. I didn't play Wonderboy however I am a big fan of platform and adventure games and this one truly delivered. Another "detail" I would mention is the collectibles that are well included in the game. There is a variety of armors with improvements that can help in dungeons, the music sheets,... and the drops that can help complete the game at 100%. All in all, the hours I spent on this game were fun and I would highly recommend it

This game starts easy like a really nice sword plataformer, a huge tribute to Wonder Boy series. Then in some parts the difficulty steps up and the game turns into a Mario-like quick-jumping game. You have to absolutely master the special skills of each character and change very quickly between them. That was not what Wonder boy III and IV where like. In the end I found it a bit frustrating.

If you love platforming and '90s nostalgia then this game should be on your radar. If you are anyone else be cautioned this game is hard. "This is my revised review as I have since finished it" The game starts off pretty tough once you turn into your first monster, but if you can whether the storm for about half the game there is something addicting, at least addicting enough to want to finish. I truly hated this game for the first half of the game, but after collecting items and upgrading equipment it started to become kind of fun. There are still moments where it really ticked me off and I wanted to smash the controller, but I stuck through and glad I did. My advice if you're interested in this game, that would be don't take the video reviewers at there word, when they say this game is great, it's not great, well at least not great if you only have a passing interest in platforming, otherwise they're probably right. While I enjoyed it at the end I still don't agree with all the praise, It really becomes frustrating unless you're really a die hard platformer gamer. This should have been pointed out, I don't know how or why it wasn't. At the end The game made me much better at platformers so That's pretty cool. Because of that and The surprising amount of fun I was having after I unlocked most of my forms and upgrading my equipment, I'm bumping up my original score from a "4" to a "6 out of 10". Slightly above middle of the road depending on what kind of gamer you are. If you want a challenge this game will challenge you, if you want to relax this game will not be you're go too for such. At the end of the day I'm glad I purchased it, I beat my first platformer and now im much better at them.

Pretty much a miserable experience from start to finish. Cheap enemy design and placement. Many enemies fly through walls and floors making them invulnerable. Others constantly rain projectiles on you. Found myself using nothing but cheese strategies because it’s a miserable time otherwise. Your main attack is one of the most pathetic hit boxes I’ve ever seen. Magic is next to useless. Monster forms are poorly balanced, you’ll spend most time in lion and dragon forms and only switch to the others when necessary. Music is pretty bad and sounds like grade school band class. Couple decent tracks, but locked to areas or boss fights. Most of the puzzles are nothing but try-hard time trials. Shame because there is potential. Balancing seems either rushed, or only tuned for a hardcore audience that demands digital misery. Seriously don’t get it. Why does every game need to be a try-hard ****? And banking on cheap tactics is not helping this title at all. Monster forms needed more polish and the amount of equipment is completely unnecessary. In fact a lot of the equipment bonuses should be power ups for the monster forms, so they’re all viable and balanced through the game. Metroidvania elements need work too because a lot of paths were blocked by story related keys, rather than power up. Boss fights are probably the best part of the game. They usually utilize the monster forms best.

This is a game that starts out deceptively easy, then quickly ramps up to "Nintendo Hard" levels of frustration. I bought it thinking it'd be a nice, casual romp. Instead, it became an absolutely frustrating slog. It's not the kind of game you play and win. It's the kind of game you just get through, so you can say you did it and put it away, never to touch it again, so your obsessive-compulsive disorder won't constantly be thinking about it as something left undone in your life. I finally beat the game, but I should have given up on it and walked away so many times. I wish I did. But, my obsessiveness kept me going, wasting my time and making me regret playing the game. The problem with the game is it's trying to do too much with not enough need. There's multiple sets of armor & weapons, but you only "need" a few parts of them (like double-jump boots) or the set ability of one to make an area easier (the ice armor helps in volcano zone). They spread your abilities across many different characters/monsters, equipment, spells, etc, then throw every puzzle imaginable at you and hope you can remember which ability or thing you have that you hardly use and have forgotten about might work in this one situation. If that's not enough, they then throw in the need for perfectly timed jumps, monster character transformations, etc, to get through area, all while fighting the awkward controls. YES, I said the controls are awkward. Other folks are saying the controls are responsive. I found myself fighting with them almost every step of the way. The controls are just awkward enough that they add frustration to the split-second platforming you have to do in some areas. Then they try to use the games wonky physics in some puzzles, and you're getting frustrated. Because it's not you who's bad, it's the game that's bad and the game devs using a poor game mechanic to add unnecessary difficulty to a puzzle. It all feels like the game devs went "it's not a bug, it's a FEATURE if we can bake our shoddy controls and physics into obtuse puzzles to add extra unnecessary difficulty!" I read one person's review where they play Dead Cells, and don't have a problem. Same here. I've played it and beat it through the various enemies and endings. The controls are spot-on, the physics "just work". But, in Monster Boy, the controls are off a bit and the physics are, too, but the game devs decided to make many puzzles require perfect control work and physics. So, with controls and physics not good, the puzzles become extra hard. You're punished for the developers being poor at their job, and trying to capitalize on it by thinking that ADDS to the experience. That doesn't even go into how obtuse some of the puzzles can be. I had to crack out a FAQ to figure out what to do or where to go every 30 minutes. There's the "Nintendo Hard" areas, then there's just the "how was I supposed to know to do that or go there?" areas. A good game provides enough hint to figure things out. This game does not. Meanwhile they throw in treasure hunts to find gems to upgrade your gear. But, a lot of gear does the same and you feel like an idiot upgrading it just to realize you really didn't need it. The ending area of the game is an absolute pain designed to be sadistically frustrating. But, it's the exclamation mark that just underlines how frustrating the game has been up to that point. Some folks love this "Souls-like / Nintendo Hard" stuff, and I don't mind it if I feel it's fair and I'm just bad and need to "git gud". EG: Dead Cells. I "got gud". But, this game prides itself on being punishing, and prides itself on handicapping you then acting like YOU'RE the problem. There are moments of fun in the game, but then they are rudely interrupted by bumping into yet another frustrating area, or getting lost and not knowing where to go. Overall, I just can't recommend this. I slogged through it, and regret that I didn't just give up and walk away. I could have done something better with my time.