Castlequest

The Short


Pros
- The box art is sort of cool
- The copy we bought booted up the first time without needing to be cleaned
- The quest is long. And length = value!
- It has a lot of good ideas and doesn't look completely awful

Cons
- All its ideas are executed horribly
- Controls are a mess
- You can easily break the game beyond fixing
- No save system
- Same one song will make you want to kill yourself
- I lied, the graphics actually look horrible

Let the quest begin

The Long

Castlequest is a game I'm only reviewing because of a long-running joke. My wife's family owned an NES growing up, and one of the game they bought for it was Castlequest. Since then it has always seemed to pop up in conversations about the NES regarding how completely horrible a game it was. I got my brother-in-law a copy for Christmas as a sort of gag gift (we gave him Duck Tales NES as well to make up for it), but not after I booted it up to test it and see what all the smack-talking was about.

So yeah, this game is pretty awful.

The general gist is bland but could still work for an NES game: it's essentially a puzzle/action platformer where you have to gather keys to open various doors to advance. You go from room to room and work your way through the castle getting keys, defeating enemies, and getting treasure. Does that sound like another game? Like...I dunno...

I can't believe I'm comparing this to Castlequest

So at its core, Castlequest might have worked. The problem is every step along the way is a terrible design choice that totally ruins the game. Hey, that sounds like my Fable 3 and Alone in the Dark reviews!

The first problem is the controls. To put it bluntly: they are bad. Jumping feels out of control and imprecise. Attacking is slow, locks your feet to the ground (like Resident Evil 5, hur hur hur) and has a horrible range. You die easily, which exacerbates the bad controls to "I want to destroy this game" levels. So there's that.

Second is that the game is hard, but not in a good way. See, certain key colors open certain doors. Simple enough. Even if the jumping and combat were serviceable, there's one big problem: some of the doors are "red herrings" (duds, essentially), meaning you can use a key on a wrong door and get stuck forever and have to completely restart.

And this isn't a small game. Screw up near the end, and you'll go back to breaking the cartridge again. 

Talk about gamebreaking!

Another massive perk is the fact that the game has pretty much one song, and every time you switch between rooms (either because you picked a wrong one or to check which doors are there) the song restarts. These screens aren't very big; imagine if in The Legend of Zelda every time you switched screens that catchy tune started completely over. I doubt we'd find the iconic tune as enjoyable now had that been the case. How hard could it have been to just make the song continue?

I'd say more but that's pretty much the whole game. Jumping, getting keys, praying you are opening the right door, and dying a lot to bad controls. My brother-in-law pointed out that the original game came with a map and a step-by-step guide on how to beat the game. They knew their game was impossible!

The title screen is the best looking part of the game

The graphics are awful, even for the NES. They aren't completely broken (you can see what stuff is and the main character actually looks like the dude on the box), but it's mostly just a black background with the platforms, enemies, and items. All on black. So boring!

As part of my "review every game" thing, I'm going to probably avoid reviewing games that are completely broken. These exist on the NES, the games that just don't work, are unbeatable, and completely unplayable. Castlequest isn't one of these games, to be honest. It isn't as bad as Milon's Secret Castle or Deadly Towers, but the fact it has so little to offer to begin with and still manages to screw it up is borderline impressive. As stated, plenty of games use keys, doors, and enemies to make something great. Castlequest could have worked (it might have been a but dull, but it could have!) if they had put just a little more time or thought into it.

But they didn't. So it's crap.

Don't buy it. Not worth your collection, unless your brother-in-law gives it to you for Christmas. 

One out of five stars.

I like how the back of the box is basically an essay about the story, and says nothing about the game itself. I'm seriously starting to think they knew their game was awful the whole time.