Cathedral

Little bit of a mixed bag. Has some excellent platforming ideas, but the developers added artificial difficulty by just spawning enemies everywhere so traversal becomes frustrating and obnoxious. You become less inclined to explore as the game goes on because it's just not worth it... Every room becomes a hellish slog. The boss fights are genuinely fun and well designed, but the common enemies are very lacklustre and annoying. The map and areas are cool, but the abilities you unlock don't really get utilized to their fullest potential. Checkpoints are SPARSE, especially towards the end game, really masochistic. I had fun I guess but I wouldn't reccomend it. Having said that I WILL probably buy the sequel getting released this year... hopefully they focus on what made cathedral good and get rid of all the bull.

This is classic NES in its mind, body, and spirit. Really f'n good, incredibly f'n fun.

Tl:dr review - Fun Metroidvania with a touch of Zelda mixed in. Highly recommend it, but be warned it doesn't pull any punches. For starters, let me start out by saying this is quite well done for how few people worked on it. The art is great for what it is, it has good game feel when you get the hang of it and especially when you get some of the different "charms" in the game, and the OST is really solid. I will say it's not perfect and I do have a fair few nitpicks and gripes, but I feel the game is still a decent time, even with the negatives I've got with it. To get things rolling, I guess I'll start with the nitpick of the game's difficulty, or rather the damage ratio as the game goes on. I don't mind a decent challenge, but I guess I've been conditioned by other games like this to think that when I get my gear upgraded, I'll be on even footing with enemies in the current area I'm tackling. Definitely not the case here. Even by endgame, with all upgrades, common enemies would easily do 2 to 4 hearts out of my max of 10, and the bosses could easily kill me in about 2 hits at this point. I also understand that's probably why they give you 10 potions you could use if you hunted…

It's overall a delightful if at times frustrating Metroidvania. My one complaint is the backtracking gets tedious. If they, say, doubled the teleport locations or gave you an item to fast travel back to a town (And not simply your nearest checkpoint statue) I'd give this a stronger recommendation. But it's still very enjoyable.

"Cathedral" is a retro 2D-action-adventure/metroidvania and plays a little like the later "Wonderboy"-games, with early "Mega Man" and "Zelda II" sprinkled in. You play a mute knight on his journey to fulfill a looming prophecy in a dark and colorful fantasy setting. The story is a little basic, but the whole presentation (the retro music and pixel-art) sure has a certain vibe to it. Some comments mentioned earlier that the fast-travel options are too sparse, but I think it is fine. The charm-swaps (what ability you can use on the field) sure is a little aggravating but makes sense, once you get the later ones. There are definetly more polished titles in terms of user friendliness but this may be by design. Difficultywise it was fine too - challenging, but fair in my opinion. Game length is also quite right for my taste (took me around 15 hours to casually beat it, but I didn't 100% it.) Pick it up, if you like the more retro-entries in the genre. No masterpiece, but earnest and solid throughout.

Great game, 7 hours in. I thought I had found a soft lock, emailed the developer. I sent him my save, he reviewed it and an issue i was having he said worked for him, showed a video and everything. Long story short? The developer helped me find out that my controller button died. Seriously though, I'm enjoying the game and found out that a sequel is coming out and it's alsready on my wish list.