Lycanthorn II - Rain of Beasts

TL;DR 'I didn't really enjoy this, but it did deliver a unique gameplay experience. You might not play it for long, but it's still worth having a look at purely for the aesthetics.' -------------------------------------- Lycanthorn I comes free with this game, so I started there. The graphics are gorgeously old-school, it feels like playing a first-person SNES game. The sounds match perfectly as well, from the digital plink of the SFX to the perfectly-emulated 8-bit-sounding music. I could probably be easily convinced the music was actually done on a Commodore 64 and ported over to PC. The map design follows this logic too, which is another great thing about the game. No labyrinthine twists and tunnels to get lost in here, you'll always know where to go as long as you're paying attention. One quick thing before we get into the issues: I thought you'd play a werewolf but it seems you play someone who hunts them. Sadly, the combat is where the game design goes awry. This matters because the game is mainly concerned with combat. The combat itself is fine, if a little stilited/janky. That's fine for a free ZDoom game. What isn't fine is the balance issues. See, it has old-school…

Lycanthorn 1 and 2 are in here, so no need to get the first game on itchio if you want to play through everything -- There are a few differences from the actual Lycanthorn 1 compared to the version in here, but not much reason to get the itchio version. + I mainly found these series of games through Mohrta which I recommended a friend to play. I just find the world and design to be very interesting. Games that are easy to pick up and put down are just more of my thing, not much investment and story buildup needed. Personally, I find these sorts of graphics to be charming and I wish to see other developers just make what they're interested in, no matter how niche it is, doesn't need to be the most polished thing ever to be fun and enjoyable.

It has a cool NES era CastleVania look and sound but the gameplay and boss fights are quite boring and repetitive

One of the best doom wads I've ever played! It kind of reminded me of heretic, hexen and castlevania all at the same time. The first game is a bit too simplistic to the extent of being unbearable to play at times so I would just recommend you play the second one. You wouldn't miss out on much.

Clearly inspired by games like the Castlevania series and The Legend of Zelda, this provides an interesting take on the idea. An open world, dungeons to explore, bosses to encounter. The weapons are replaced with other characters, which you collect in the dungeons and use to access further dungeons. It all mostly works. Melee in the Doom engine is a proven thing, even Doom had the punch and chainsaw and Hexen's warrior class was largely melee based. This is not a perfect game though. It's rather on the easy side, and fairly short. You get a nice hit flash when you hit an enemy - good touch - but it seems that bosses either don't always flash when they should, or they have a lot of times where the hits just don't register. Autoaim is turned on by default and it likes to shoot low, so you'll miss enemies on higher platforms when using one of the ranged characters. The final boss arena has invisible walls that you can get trapped against when attempting to dodge, which can lead to taking a lot of unnecessary damage. But I still would recommend this experience. It does come with the original Lycanthorn as well in the levels. That one plays more like a proof of concept. A s…

this games vibe and art style are legendary. can't believe it's free!