I have to admit, I've been lucky so far. Most of the time when I pick up a game, good or bad, I can at least see the people making it loved what they were making. Up until this moment I could point and laugh at the clear examples where this was not the case in the AAA world of gaming and the grilling the team got for their efforts. I knew that at least for what I was playing, the devs loved what they were making, even if they whiffed at doing it. I can't say that this time. This game just feels like modern day slop both in how it plays and how it treats the previous title it claims to be a sequel to.
Story: The lands of Kal Torin are in trouble. It has been many years since Lord Jair's adventures through the Living Castle, and those adventures are now legendary. But no quest will ever save the land forever... so when the magic of the lands began to recede, it was impossible to not notice the subtle changes hinting at a future calamity at hand.
Raven, the great great granddaughter of the Lakmir the Timeless (a legendary wizard of amazing power), certainly took notice. While living a relatively normal life, she has always held the power of her bloodline within her, so a thing like this causing her own power to wane was impossible to ignore, no matter how she tried. And with her bloodline, she was also privy to knowledge that it was receding to it's source: that same living Castle Shadowgate. Still, when a dragon shows up and pretty much insists to take you along for it's journey, it is not easy to ignore, so Raven let the dragon take her to that castle, the destination she knew she would arrive at.
This basic opening will be most of the story you will get as you play, as you are not so much investigating why the magic is retreating here from the land so much as you are making your way through the castle to see the source for yourself. You already know the problem is there if not why, but you clearly can't figure out how to fix it without looking it over like a magic-technician. This hints at issues with Raven herself, as her opening monolog makes her sound dangerously close to a "Mary-Sue" self-insert for a fan-fiction you might read about the game online instead of a proper sequel. But without any other real story beats it becomes easy to forget this until the end of the game, which we will unfortunately have to get to for this.
Still this gives you a very direct goal, allowing any and all writing to serve this basic outline. You will meet two other characters on your way who exist beyond simply a battle to fight before the final act: a skull named Yorick who fans of the series will know very well (and acts as a hint system since the NES port of the original title was then ported to the Gameboy Color), and a djinn who is imprisoned in these halls who is willing to help you... for a price. Their parts in the story are descent enough, one being a sarcastic source of hints when you need it and the other a character you will have to come back to to learn a new spell before you can finish each part of the castle to overcome one last magical barrier. They are not particularly deep so much as flavor and progress markers for your adventure, letting the world itself take the front stage and keeping for a very satisfying backdrop... until the very end.
Yes this is one of "those" situations we keep seeing in entertainment, be it video games, movies, or shows that say they are carrying the torch of the series, but then think they know better then the original authors so they just ignore cannon. In this case the developers thought they knew better then the base material and not only ignore the last encounter of the original game, but they then shit all over it's hero, Jair. To explain this is to give spoilers. As always, if you do not wish to read them, skip past the indented and italicized text below:
Raven finally made it to the core of the castle where the magic of the land is draining to and received the shock of her life. Staring at organs, bones, and tissue mixed in with the castle, it looks as if it were itself a creature... or perhaps the behemoth! She was wrong, as she expected to find the creature down here at the bowls of the castle, not for it to be the castle itself with it's dying heart pulling the magic of the lands in to try to heal itself... and there, standing in front of it was the very djinn who has been offering her help for trinkets she was finding for him around the castle the entire time. She already knew he was going to be here, but now that she saw him, she knew what she had to do and started to march forward.
Still, this place did have one last surprise for her as Lord Jair was also here, having made his own way back to the castle to investigate things as well. But he was clearly not ready for this as he has gone mad from the magics flowing around. Blaming her ancestor for sending him on his blasted quest and the curse the Staff of Ages placed upon him, he tries to take his revenge on the girl, not caring about her mission to heal the world.
There is so much to unpack in that, so let's begin. First and foremost the Behmoth is NOT part of the castle, but a demon that the Warlock Lord was trying to summon in the first game! Jair is in fact the hero of the title and "the Seed of Prophecy" who's fate would be to face off with the Warlock and either save the world or doom it. To make the castle itself the creature is to completely negate everything about that final fateful encounter that has now been replayed in no less then 3 versions of this first title, always making the creature it's own thing and a beast the Warlock Lord was trying to weaponize in his attempt to conquer and darken the world forever. This last chapter of this game can only make me wonder if the team behind the "sequel" ever finished, or at least watched a playthrough of ANY of those versions, or if they saw the 2014 release was successful enough they could just use the name and location to sell a game to an audience that clearly wanted more.
Further pushing this impression is Jair himself. One of the single most resourceful guys in video game history, Jair is the hero who showed up at the living castle's door and with only a torch and the clothes on his back and thwarted the Warlock Lord's plans. The Warlock, btw and like Lakmir, being one of the legendary members of the Circle of Twelve himself, 12 wizards who until he betrayed them served as council to all the kingdoms of the land, servicing peace for all. It took the remaining eleven to stop him the first time, yet here Jair was, picked by fate itself to do it all with just basically what he could find in the castle, including the Staff of Ages, one of the most powerful single magical artifacts in this world. But somehow, he is so badly effected just by being in this room where the magic has gathered that he becomes a raving lunatic? Seriously? You expect me to believe this? You expect any fan of this franchise to believe this? No more then I can believe Raven "knew the djinn would be here" like she blathers out at him before the final boss fight of the entire game.
So yeah, between being as shallow as it is for a modern game, completely disregarding the most key event and characters of the game its supposed to be a sequel to, and even how much Raven "just knew" making her a bit off a Mary-Sue character, this is just plain awful.
2/10
Graphics: While I can not give this game any credit for the story, the graphical prowess is another thing. You will be greeted with a very nice title screen as a camera view of the outside of Shadowgate from the balcony your game will start in spins slowly, taking in the sights and setting up what you will expect to see. The castle is very well crafted with every inch of the the world you will explore looking absolutely great. No, it is clearly not the most technically advanced engine in use, but the detail put into it is absolutely fantastic as you wander through the various parts of this monument to magical engineering. From that rundown snowy balcony to the courtyard still green (though most often with weeds) to the jails to.. well everything, the world itself looks really good... when you can see it. A lot of this castle is dark, lit only by either torches on the wall or glowing stones or other small effects that really don't always cast a lot of light. You have enough to navigate, but not always much else.
And then you have the handful of enemies that populate this world. These generally look pretty good and are varied as anything, but they just basically have maybe an attack animation for when you are in combat and a stationary animation that is the same both between turns and when they wait for you to approach. And that combat keeps to the exact same first person camera the rest of the game does. The entire game outside the opening and ending cutscene will keep to this which admittedly is pretty cohesive. Those cutscenes however, are probably the star here, as they feature some actually really good artwork of the characters involved, hand drawn and lovingly put together.
Overall I have to say this game actually both looks great and the proper part of a true game in the series.
8/10
Sound: I also have to give this game credit for it's soundtrack. When it chooses to use it, the music actually sounds really good, taking notes from the dark fantasy of the world it takes place in as well as from the previous game with orchestral tones that, while you will never mistake them for the original game's are brilliant in their own. I do have to make the note, however as a lot of the time, the game simply doesn't, letting you wonder with only your own footsteps to accompany you, and I mean that literally. You may not be alone in this world, but NOTHING makes a sound until you interact with it, including friend and foe alike.
Which takes us the voice acting which again, I have to give solid credit to. You will only ever hear four characters acted and the actors of all four did their best with the writing they were given. I say this because Jair is one of them and frankly if you read the spoiler section of the writing section of this review, you know he was given a shit hand to play. He did what he could with it, but no one short of Tim Curry could have saved that one.
The second most screwed character of the two is sadly Raven herself... but not because what she was given was bad. More because she constantly has to interrupt the adventure to "remember stories" she was told as a child just in time for you to know to read it and use it as a clue for a soon to happen battle, but we will get into that later. It just gets VERY annoying when every couple of rooms the whole game has to pause to let her have her say which never amounts to anything more then "you have a new story to read in your book now."
The remaining two voices characters are the Djinn and Yorick, who both get a lot better if relatively shorter parts. The Djinn is calm and calculated, really never raising his voice. He's been around longer then anyone else in the castle and it shows, but he's clearly there for his own reasons, and not Ravens. It's just more convenient to help her in return for help to reach those reasons.
And then there is Yorick, who is tragically under-used. He is basically the help system who will lend a clue with a bit of snark (and a lot a casual observation if you die). But this is easily the best acting in the game. You will enjoy hearing this guy.
As for sounds, well they are a lot more of your standard fair with the usual screeches, crunches, crisping, and whatever else is needed for the action being done. Its nothing special. Frankly the game lives and dies with those voices when it comes the the audio, and to that end, it does fairly well. It's just annoying that the devs still can't get away from the impression of making Raven a Mary-Sue when even the game has to pause whenever she has anything at to say when entering a room.
8/10
Gameplay: And here this game fails, if not as badly as the story section. You will play the game from a first person view as you free-roam the entire castle, unlocking each of 5 sections in linear turn. You will never be prevented from going back to any place you have been, which is good as it can be incredibly easy to leave key items behind... sometimes multiple sections behind. Backtracking may well be something you have to get used to for some puzzles here.
And that will be one of the main things you do in this game. Much like other games in the series, a lot of the challenge comes from environmental puzzles which boil down to finding the right item to use on this or the right spell to cast on that to get the desired effect to progress. However this time the game is a lot more forgiving, as most "mistakes" will not mean your life is over, but rather that the game did not let that interaction happen as it is the wrong one. The downside to this? Part of the fun the first time around was all the ways the castle tried to kill you, and messing up often meant you would get to see the devs get creative with how Jair ended. Raven almost never gets such things (though Yorick does NOT disappoint when you manage it). These puzzles also seem more rare as most places in the game seem to exist to hold a key item you might need and little else, leaving a lot of this place empty in more ways then one.
Rather death in this game more often then not will be hit in combat, which is where this game really flounders. There are only a handful of monsters you will fight and every single one of them will wait right there in place where you HAVE to cross paths with them for you to walk up to and engage. That engagement will involve a commentary by Yorick, which will require you to hit the button to clear his text window BEFORE you get the choice to fight or flee. You will never be stopped from running so if you feel you are not ready you are never cornered even now.
And when you do decide to fight, get ready for turn based combat, but one of the worst versions of it you will encounter in most games. Basically the entire battle is about exchanging blows in a scripted encounter that, once you know the process, will always play out exactly the same. They are frankly boring, and potentially require you to repeat them multiple times to figure out not how to fight them, but the order of spells to cast like a script. Not that you will do this blindly, those stories Raven keeps remembering are basically directly comparable to the fights to offer hints to you, meaning it is worth the time to read, even as the stories themselves usually suck like the reading assignments they are. Seriously if you remember the summer reading assignments you had to complete for high school, you know how bad these are, but at least they are each maybe a page long at most.
The only other thing this game offers here is a new mechanic for time control. You will on occasion come across pink glowing crystals which when used with the orb of time you have at the beginning and the djinn activates for you, lets you travel between the past, present, and future, which you will use for for some of the puzzles in the castle. Admittedly these are actually highlights as some of them are legitimately clever... but it's unfortunate those moments are few and far between.
3/10
Bugs: I can not even say this game ran flawlessly for me. Don't get me wrong, nothing game-breaking happened, but there were a few places where the game simply forgot I collected something effectively letting me double up on items I didn't need by collecting it again.
Digital Rights Management: Unfortunately I could not find a reliable source on this one, but the Steam page for this game does not list one, so we can assume at most that release will use Steam itself as the DRM. Since I played the gog version (DRM-free) I can not speak for certain.
Score: This is one of those games I walked in wanting to love. After all I've been a fan of the franchise since I played the original on NES. But as I walk away, this feels like the personification of the more sinister side of game design made by a team who really had no interest in the franchise so much as wanted to make their own game and used Shadowgate as the vehicle.
They completely disregard the previous title and the lore it established, tore down the original main character, and while Raven was not a completely unlikable character, her total struggles both in the game and as she described her life before it basically boils down to when she had to ask the Djinn about unlocking powers within her that she already had, even as she knew all about what he was scheming somehow. It feels like this is more a fan-fiction then anything else with boring gameplay to support it... In short this is a prime example of what modern trash looks like.
2/10
System Requirements:
- Intel i5-7400
- 8 GB RAM
- Intel HD Graphics 630
- Windows 10
- 16 GB Hard Drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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