Best Ghosts 'n Goblins, this and Castlevania The Dracula X Chronicles made psp into a sidescroller power house.

I didn't expect to write this much but oh well. This is gonna seem pretty doom and gloom but tbh it's super easy to focus on the negatives of this game though I do mention the positives toward the end. I also didn't get around to playing this game until 2023 but here goes: I recently played through Ultimate Ghosts n' Goblins 100% twice (once with save states and once without like on original hardware) on it's Normal difficulty and man, what a frustratingly tedious experience. I honestly have no idea what the developers were thinking, the game is riddled with instances of awful game design. It would take a long time to detail every flaw in this game tbh so there's no way I'm even willing to cover everything here. Just to name a few of the biggest flaws: In true Ghosts n' Goblins fashion, the random elements of it's design ruin this game. The amount of enemies on screen and non-stop enemy spawns are terrible, they'll spawn on top of you often. They've designed it in a way where enemies fill up the screen and make it nearly impossible to not take damage. They tried to compensate by giving you strong power ups, magic and multiple lives but you lose said power ups and lives extremely easily. You also run out of magic quickly, especially on the 1st loop of the game. The weapons are imbalanced like all games in the GnG series also, which is to be expected as someone who has played basically every game in the main series besides the mobile exclusives which probably **** anyway. You also have to 100% the game + complete every level numerous times to get the true ending w/ the actual final boss. In order to reach said boss you have to collect many different items including but not limited to: - 48 HIDDEN red chests - Numerous HIDDEN blue chests - 33 light rings - 9 witch ingredients (3 witches need 3 items each, the witches are hidden and most of the ingredients are hidden too) Not to mention that the game forces you to complete 1 loop of the game with few resources. Then you'll REVISIT most if not all of the levels to get HIDDEN magic spells you'll need to collect 22 light rings to fight the faux "final" boss (said boss is miserably easy at that, quite a letdown). Then you get booted to the start of the game and complete a 2nd loop of each level and boss again but the levels are harder this time around. Then you have to collect another 11 light rings in order to fight the true final boss at the end of the game who also is so insultingly easy that I beat him first try. With how cumbersome it is to find some of these collectables I imagine very few ppl who played this game back in the day actually finished it entirely, and most of which who did likely had to use a FAQ. A large portion of these items are incredibly hard to find. The difficulty alone isn't the game's problem, also I LOVE difficult games and retro games in general. The problem lies in everything else like the RNG elements, save system and having to go through each level a minimum of 3 or 4 times (at a casual level) even with the most efficient route possible. Without a guide you'll likely go through each level many more times than that tbh. There also aren't many GOOD guides for this game either which is a bummer. It's a real shame too b/c this game has some cool level design, damn good music, fun power-ups/spells/weapons and some good bosses (as far as the GnG series goes anyway). Overall it's egregious as a complete experience but really has it's merits. I think this game had a chance at being up there with some of the best games in the series but Capcom shot themselves in the foot on this one. I can't justify giving this game a 7 or higher. 6.8/10

I never played the original, and this one gave me the opportunity to try it. Too hard, so impossible to really enjoy.