Enchanted Portals (PlayStation 5)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): September 5, 2023
- Release Date (EU): September 5, 2023
- Publisher: Perpetual
- Developer: Xixo Games Studio
- Genres: Action
- Also For: Computer, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Game Features:
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but when you're so heavily inspired by a specific game that is so well-known and so great, it's all the more disheartening and unflattering to produce a title that is so confounding.
Enchanted Portals takes heavy cues and stylings from Cuphead, however, its slightly mundane take on the run-and-finger-gun genre leaves me feeling massively underwhelmed, and a bit short-changed. Sure there are some unique boss battles and characters, but my goodness is it repetitive and monotonous!
You begin the game with Bobby and Penny, two low-value characters, who knock over a spell book whilst cleaning. They read something from it, and something happens. They cast a portal, they get sucked in and chaos ensues. That's about the long and short of the rather low-energy introduction that sets the tone for the game.
Slick Animation, Interesting (in-game) Visuals
Jumping in, the game's animation is nothing short of silky smooth with a definite nod to the Disney cartoons of yesteryear and the more modern games it wants to emulate. It is gorgeous in itself, with zero slowdowns no matter the number of sprites on screen, and plenty of animated projectiles and mindless enemies trying to prevent your progress.
The tutorial level gave me Ghouls 'n Ghosts vibes which was initially compelling but it failed to really teach me much or prepare me for the proceeding levels. Sure there is a legend you can look at in the game options, but it's no use there, you need to have an example and give the player a chance to feel out what the game is about and how it should work going forward.
Controlling the game is pretty standard fare too with Cross to jump or double jump, Square to dodge, Circle to block, R1 to Melee, and L2 to shoot. The left analogue stick controls movement whilst the D-Pad selects which of your three special powers you will be spamming throughout the proceeding level. Moving with the left stick and changing powers with the D-Pad is clunky at best and at worst it slows down your gameplay. Given its bullet-hell-style gameplay of dodging and firing, it would have been just fine had the developers not included the coloured aura system that sees you only able to down green-shrouded enemies with green firepower.
Perhaps I'm too critical, but when you tap the D-Pad direction to change your chromatic ammunition while moving, your character stops moving, which breaks the flow and causes you to take a hit or three if you're lucky. When jumping it's floaty, and really hit or miss whether you make the jump over an enemy you literally just managed but for a second time. It's frustrating to have to endure these controls, and you get overwhelmed with projectiles and crowded enemies in places, even on the baseline easy difficulty.
Platforming Perils, Bullet Dodging Hell
Enchanted Portals would be semi-passable for the platforming part if there were more interesting platforming sections, and if there weren't any baddies. When having to switch projectile type to take down enemies in order to regain health, I found it infuriating to fire at a crowd of enemies only to not destroy a single one. The reason is that the clipping of the enemies can prevent you from striking the right one with the right colour because of their pixels overlapping as they layered atop one another.
I also didn't initially understand why the first boss fight (a witch on a moon) enters phase 2 of the battle with the characters looking completely different and somewhat like a cheap flash animation. Later on, I would realise it was a stylistic choice to alter the characters into different styles at the end of each battle, like shiny-eyed anime style, or 2D Tim-Burton-Esq, only for them to then revert to "normal" 1930s-looking animation.
Later levels see you flying on a broomstick to take down a cyborg cow, flitting around under-da-sea as a mermaid out-manoeuvring a monocled octopus and ghost crustaceans, dodging lava and jumping on dragonflies to thwart a princess frog, buffalo with miniguns and mobster roosters with a time-travelling chicken defending the fountain of time, and finishing it off with a good old fashioned tree battle.
I can see the creativity wanting to shine bright, and I can feel the enthusiasm of the developers bubbling up and itching to really pull out all the stops, but something stifles it all: the core pillars of its control system.
With a minimal HUD of just your health status at the top left, EP is a game that forces you to do better in order to progress further but unfortunately, the low-energy aura it gives off did not inspire me to play for too long. I got annoyed at the difficulty spikes, I hated the switching mechanic, and I really deplored having to restart the entire level sequence if you died.
Perhaps something more "meta" like a scoring system of some kind would have given this game more replay value. As it stands, when it's done it's done: in under one hour. I would give a cliche like "short but sweet" but honestly it's not sweet. If anything it's left a very poor impression on me and I probably won't return to play it on harder difficulties unless the developers re-jig the core gameplay physics, controls and overall feel.
Half Baked, Half Fun, Half Points
Personally, I think Enchanted Portals needed a longer in the oven. A lot longer. There is a kernel of an idea here that could easily be reworked and retouched to take it from a mid-range under-whelmer to a high-end corker. Let's see if the devs make that a reality through updates, listen to critiques, and stop focusing purely on the visuals; because graphics alone do not make a game.
Verdict
- Silky smooth visuals
- Never slows down regardless of the sprite count
- Interesting boss-fights
- Co-op mode
- Horrible controls & physics for a game of this genre
- Repetitive and annoying from the get-go
- An hour long
