Castle Crashers: A Retrospective Look at a Forgotten Game

I have a question who remembers Castle Crashers for those of you that grew up on the Xbox 360 I'm sure that name rings a bell personally Castle Crashers is a huge hit of nostalgia for me and upon replaying it recently I thought I'd make a video on it to not only remind people of it who used to adore this game but also bring it to new people who may not have heard of it before now for all of you fortnite loving fetuses out there that think Xbox one was the first Xbox let me give you a brief description of the game Castle Crashers is a 2d side score hack and slash that was released to the Xbox 360 in 2008. at the beginning of the game you can play as one of the four starter Knights which are fire lightning ice or poison as for the riveting objective of this game you gotta beat up the bad guys truly a unique concept as you progress to the game you level up your knight in which you get stat points these stat points can be used to improve your different stats whether it be strength magic defense or agility there are also lots of different swords you can choose from that can increase or decrease certain stats as well as animal orbs which all have varying effects on your player once you beat the game you're given a new character based on this progression chart and then this cycle repeats for those of you that haven't played Castle Crashers before I'm sure that description made the game seem a little basic but let me assure you the game is much better than I described it now that I've given a generic description of the game I want to go in depth into certain details of the game so let's begin with the gameplay the gameplay of Castle Crashes poses a simple question how fast can you Button Mash despite the extensive list of combos that Castle Crashers offers as long as you can mash the Y button for the most part you'll probably be okay for a large percentage of enemies the best way to attack them is to jump and then just Spam wide if done correctly your enemies are defenseless as you string them in the air for a long period of time of course there are some exceptions to this rule for example the beefy enemies that can force grip you out of the air and toss you across the entire map but besides that and a few other enemies but mashing is your best bet however for those of us that don't want to develop carpal tunnel in our 20s the combos are a good alternative the other major gameplay mechanic of Castle Crashers is the magic as I stated earlier every character has its own unique Magic and as you level up the magic with stat points you get more magic moves these magic moves can be anything I mean you got Fireball ice Shard poison ball flaming Hammer gummy bear wait what gummy bear seriously the point is there's lots of different magic in the game and it makes it fun to play every single character and beat the game with them also I should mention that the agility stat not only increases your speed but also the rate at which you can fire your bow it starts off being really slow but by the time you have Max agility you're basically handling a semi-automatic assault rifle now I want to touch on the swords and the animal orbs a bit more than I did earlier as I said before there are a lot of Swords to choose from and I mean a lot as of recording this I probably found only half of the available swords in the game as you go through the game the swords you can collect get better and better whether it be from increasing more stats or having a certain effect whether it be criticals flame Frost Etc once you collect a sword with one character you can use them for all of your characters while that might sound overpowered to ensure people aren't going into level 1 using the almighty Dragon Sword there's a level requirement on each sword that requires the player to be at that level to use the sword and then we have the animal orbs which they're a lot less of compared to the swords and I actually have all of them animal orbs can do a lot of different things while some increased stats just like the weapons do others have unique purposes for example shooting Fireballs letting you jump higher or having food give you more Health just like with the swords once you collect an animal orb with one account you have it for all of your characters the differences are is that animal orbits don't have level requirements like swords do and also you can only have one person using an animal orb at a time basically what this means is when you're playing with your friends and you enter the animal orb area it becomes a free throw Mad Dash to get to Rafi who gives you more XP don't get me wrong there are subjectively better animal orbs but come on who's gonna turn down free XP lastly for this section I should probably talk about fighting the different enemies for the most part the gameplay goes as follows you enter the level and counter a wave of enemies kill said wave of enemies move forward a little bit encounter more enemies repeat all the way until you fight the boss kill boss and you win although that may seem incredibly boring and repetitive each wave has a certain level of uniqueness to them which shakes things up a little bit and as far as the boss fights go they're very fun and creative and every boss has its own unique charm to them this gameplay Loop makes the game very fun and surprisingly very replayable at least for me but all of that aside can I be honest for a second the game is pretty easy if you can correctly employ the button mashing Strat and you have a good character you can probably beat the game in two or three hours at most as a kid I did find the game difficult but nowadays it's kind of a cakewalk to be fair there is an insane boat but come on how hard is this insane mode gonna be well I stand corrected yeah so it turns out this insane mode is actually pretty difficult if the normal mode is algebra then Insane Mode is quantum mechanics in case you don't believe me let's compare normal industrial castle and insane industrial Castle in normal mode the enemies are pretty easy they're slow they don't deal much damage they don't have much health overall it's just a fun time and pretty easy to get through let's compare that to the good old Insane Mode on Insane Mode enemies are as fast as you even on Max agility plus they do hundreds of damage per hit and they also have a million Health seriously look how long it takes me to get past each wave this is just unbearable especially this section with the elevator I mean before I had places to run but now I'm confined to this limited space so I'm basically just screwed if I make one mistake I'm getting killed no matter what if I had to describe insane mode in one word I probably probably say insane oh my God it's Albert Einstein it's Albert Einstein oh my God I'll probably make a full video on Insane Mode later on down the line but for now I'll just leave it at that anyways let's move on to the next major section art and music as far as the art goes I already know what you're thinking oh my God these Graphics are prehistoric why would I be playing this Internet Browser flash game when I could be playing Elden ring you see back in the good old days of Xbox 360 nobody cared about having the newest and greatest graphics card like the g-force RTX 490 no everyone's Graphics were the same in other words trash thanks to this even playing field where everyone had the exact same graphics people can focus on the things that actually mattered like having the worst mic quality while in an Xbox live voice chat [Music] seriously though to this day I feel like the art of Castle Crashers holds up pretty well it's obviously not meant to be anything fancy or groundbreaking it's just supposed to be good and hey I think it checks that box pretty well the OST on the other hand now that's a Hidden Gem the music of this game is absolutely amazing it fits the atmosphere of the game perfectly and it gets me hyped up to play just listen to this you're lying to yourself if you don't think this is a certified Hood classic the music of Castle Crashers brings me back to an Era of Music That's long been forgotten I don't know exactly how to describe it it's kind of like an arcady dubstep twist I don't know exactly what it is but it has not been used in the game for a long time all of the songs come from Newgrounds and one of the songs in the game jumper is even in the official levels of Geometry Dash which is another favorite game of mine I I can't I can't I can't overall the music of this game has been sadly overlooked and I wish that more games would bring back this genre of music the last major thing I want to talk about with Castle Crashers is the story I know at the start of this video I poked fun at the overly simple mission of this game but at the same time it tells a simple yet fun story for that I wanted to adjust this and talk about the entire story especially for those of you that aren't gonna go and buy this game after the video oh yeah and spoilers I guess I don't know why you need a spoiler warning for a decade and a half old game but don't say I didn't warn you um We Begin our story in the interior of our home castle where our fellow Knights are partying okay doing that voice is gonna get annoying fast Let's uh not do that so yeah everyone's partying and having a good time when uh oh one of our fellow Knights just came to the door and he's dead you see I may have failed to mention the fact that we're all in the middle of a teeny tiny major global war the real question is how did nobody in this room notice the sounds of D-Day going on outside of the castle anyways we cut to this rather unintimidating hooded guy with a wand who steals the crystal of the king and then flies away now why this Crystal is so important that's never explained in fact part of me believes that this is actually just a really large Shard of crystal meth but since this isn't breaking bad it's probably unlikely so after generic evil dude flies away the king sends us after him uh sir he just wiped out the entire Army what do you think me a singular Knight is gonna do against him I mean if you want your Crystal back so badly come and help me at least oh wait I know why you aren't helping your magic sucks you just heal yourself you know what that reminds me of sage from ballerin and nobody likes Sage [Laughter] something [Music] so we go out fight some barbarians and then we notice that the princesses are being dragged away wow those are some very realistic cries for help nonetheless we continue to fight the enemy barbarians watch your step I just mopped the floor uh I think you might have to do that one again chief after a few more waves of enemies we come across our first boss battle oh my God it's like the Trojan Horse and it was easy okay okay I know I said we were stupid for partying in the middle of the war but come on you guys are sleeping mid battle pull it together a few minutes later we arrive at our first major boss battle okay this guy seems pretty easy I don't think he's much about okay now that's just Overkill okay turns out this guy's pretty slow which makes sense since he's basically the Shaquille O'Neal of Barbarians oh no they're taking the princesses away uh you guys forgot one by the way and he's dead boom all right who's coming at me next I'm prepared let's go or you guys can just stand there uh hello you guys just gonna let this happen are you okay with this why does this barbarian look like a child are there children in this game I don't want that on my conscious well anyways one out of four makeout sessions achieved yep those cries for help are still not commencing hmm I sure wonder who shot that Arrow at me as we walk through the forest we keep hearing these loud Stomps in the distance and for some reason it keeps making all the animals around us themselves even this ginormous bear pooped himself after hearing that honestly I thought he was the one doing the Stomps after defeating some more enemies we come across some thieves running okay why in the world are they running oh my God I now know why they're running this absolute freak of nature may be hard to look at but hey at least it's a good XP farm after putting that thing out of its misery we run into an abandoned Mill to be met with the giant monster that was making those loud stomping noises and cue the chase scene so we run for a minute or two dodging logs and going through doorways and after making the animation glitch out we're now in the river is anybody gonna ask why there are sharks in a freshwater river that's not normal so we fight through some waves of bats and also frogs I think they're supposed to be then as one charges straight for us we're saved by a magical Cannonball nope never mind it's just the king just as help arrives a massive Fish Cat hybrid comes out of nowhere what is this game at first we do very little damage to him and it seems like an impossible boss however the cannonballs multiply the damage we do to him after many cannonballs and a lot of hitting we finally killed the cat with the MLG pro gamer move known as the boat slam back on land we find some bears and we find out that they can use magic too man no fair I wish I could turn into a tornado oh no an impenetrable wall of arrows whatever shall lights after fighting through some more bears and getting a sneak peek at the bosses will beat later we enter a cave this cave is home to the objectively most annoying enemy in the entire game slimes just why who thought this was a fun idea after beating the slimes we come across this giant bat boss the bat isn't really hard or anything he's just annoying especially with that toxic poop I mean it's just oh of course I beat all those enemies in the giant bat and that's when you guys show up okay but hey at least I get some sweet go did you just take my gold what did you do you weren't even here you aren't beefy enough to break down this door all right man we'll see about that anyways we exit the cave into a field and after fighting some very angry bees we get launched into a castle oh my God I'm fighting an entire wave of enemies by myself and my backup is moving at snail's pace pick it up boys after beating all the roof enemies we jump through a window and into the castle really I was the only one that survived that really after fighting through more lightsaber dudes we come across another lightsaber dude with a tuxedo so that's how you know he means business but come on I just killed tons of these dudes how can one stand up to me okay then after we damage him enough he goes over to his piano and starts shooting cannonballs at us dang he is going off on that piano he looks like he's about to make peace with the aliens foreign these cannibals are getting a bit too much to handle no worries though I'll just stand over by the princess because there's no way he's gonna oh my God never mind the princess is dead anyways we've finally killed the lightsaber dude and just when you think it's all over [Music] at first I was wondering why he was in the bathroom that long but after taking one glance at that toilet I know he was fighting for his life in there so then out of grief for his friend the Cyclops takes the princess and runs away bro thinks he's cardi as we enter a forest while pushing off lightsaber dudes and thieves off our cart what the since when did you get laser eyes you must have gotten buffed in the most recent patch during this encounter we make sure to kill him that way you won't show up a third time I just want to take a quick Moment of Silence with a small percentage of players that had one Health and were killed by this unavoidable damage the next few scenes are pretty predictable we enter the cave fight some enemies including those God forsaken slimes then we enter lava world fight some more enemies and then we come across the Cyclops dude uh listen I know you're mad and all but when in the world did you have time to set all of this up I killed your friend like 10 minutes ago like where did you get this coffin from did you just have a coffin lying around ignoring that the Cyclops is a very predictable attack pattern and once we hit him enough times he trips and falls into this very convenient pit of lava huh Terminator reference I laughed that makes two out of the four make out sessions completed we now enter what appears to be hell and fight a ton of demons before coming across this door with a sandwich on it killing the demon that approaches us here gives us a sandwich and once we eat the sandwich we become beefy and we can tear down the door hmm a sandwich that makes you beefy why does that sound familiar anyways we fight through more waves of demons before coming across the big bad himself oh geez that Dark Knight he's with seems really powerful but either way I'm ready to fight or not once we kill all the skeletons we come across a volcano that can only be killed by the beefy sandwiches immediately after destroying the mini boss we go straight into the final boss which is a dragon and a sock puppet oh my God that demon just got owned are you okay man anyways we win the fight after beheading the dragon keep in mind we only attacked his chin the entire time so I have no clue how that works out logistically oh and the sock puppet it just goes away uh never to be addressed again I guess but now we have one of the three items needed to cross the sea meanwhile oh hey man I'm back wow of course this guy is a giant painting of himself we come across some waves of imperialists and once we defeat them we find that this guy has set up some traps for us dude how many traps did this guy have who was he Dr Doofenshmirtz oh nice a relaxing elevator ride here I'll put some music in to set the mood [Music] after some more fighting we finally reached the boss but of course Lord Farquaad over here doesn't want to fight us himself so instead he uses his machines can you not laugh every time I get hit it's pretty annoying once we destroy all this gadgets he runs away like a little girl [Music] karma's a [ __ ] and with that we have two of the three items needed and the last thing was at our home base I was just too lazy to go get it ah the open ocean so peaceful so calm and now we're getting raided by Pirates oh cool these guys have the magic ability to disappear you know the only other person I've ever known to be able to do that was my dad so we fight a few waves of the ninja pirates and their ship sinks now we're in the desert and immediately I'm confused what in the world is that thing supposed to be also I hate these stupid scorpions they serve no purpose other than to be annoying yeah that's what you get after finding some more waves of generic enemies we come across a UFO it dies easily and we move forward to another UFO again it dies easily again we move forward and again we come across another UFO although this one's uh tad bit bigger and now it's time for my favorite game how long can you evade the UFO suction beam let's rock it [Music] eventually were kidnapped by the UFO and brought into the ship after solving the world's hardest escape room we come across a couple of aliens and an alarm starts to go off unfortunately I can't read Minecraft enchantment table however I'm assuming that text says all aliens report for Mass genocide because what we do next is commit Mass genocide after completing the extermination we free this other alien prisoner how does he thank us for his Newfound freedom by blowing up the ship thanks man with only a minute on the clock we navigate through some aliens and some obstacles come on come on come on come on my controller died after the UFO explodes we're still in the desert and this nice fellow brings us a camel we thank him accordingly well everyone I think I discovered the real reason why the Scorpions exist after fighting some more desert enemies we enter a sand castle and yes I do mean a Santa Castle this is a castle made out of sand I don't know how they did it but uh congratulations to them then we fight wave after wave of enemies on the rooftop before reaching the final battle foreign excuse me I came in for a boss battle did I go to the wrong location oh okay then volleyball match it is with the map acquired we find ourselves at the flooded Temple unfortunately we can't continue until we have the horn hey man you doing all right you're not looking so hot damn these skeletons are just disrespectful like he is dead 100 you you don't have to keep doing that see you made the rest of the peasants mad and now they're gonna kill you actually I take that back they're fighting you with a fishing rod I don't think that's lethal wait where you guys going what they went right past the main bad guy and they did nothing what are you guys doing well at least the Dark Knight has finally come to fight me or not why am I not surprised after killing the skeletons we start encountering these green dudes and eventually no another one of those oh hey The Peasants are back say assuming there are more enemies over on the right that means he came from where the enemies are that doesn't add up and look at this peasant he's not even helping he's just running face first into a barrel and now that it's time to fight the boss look at them they're doing nothing to help me nah nah I gotta pause this real quick you see I have a theory I believe that the peasants are secretly working for the bad guys exhibit a these two peasants ran straight for the enemy the enemy did nothing and they did nothing exhibit B this peasant came from the right side of the screen and when you go to the right side of the screen there are more enemies which means he came from where the enemies are Exhibit C that sane peasant is running face first into a barrel instead of fighting and finally exhibit D during this boss fight these peasants do not help they just sit and watch in conclusion The Peasants are helping out the bad guys okay back to the story so we have to fight this corn boss he's not very difficult he's just very annoying in the way he fights after we finally defeat him our quote-unquote friends go and get the horn for us okay so in the end you guys did help but don't think for a second that I trust you because of this as Hank Schroeder would say you've been seeming sus lately it's almost like we have an imposter Among Us don't lie to me Walt you sussy [ __ ] now that we have the horn we can open the door in the flooded Temple here we fight you know I'm gonna be honest I don't even know what they're going for with this one this is just hideous after fighting through some waves of them we come across Medusa dang Medusa's kind of bad though huh whoa whoa whoa hear me out hear me out I retract my previous statement she's got snake slug things coming out of her hair I I don't like that after hitting her enough times she ironically turns herself into stone we move on to the level full moon but the only thing this level is full of is these guys legitimately like that's the entire level rocks one mile swamp 96 miles and Burr ah yes Burr my favorite unit of measurement for distance just like the previous level snow world is just fighting one enemy the eskimos the problem is that they don't want to fight to the death they just want to have a snowball fight sorry guys but we didn't come all this way to have snowball fights mix snow angels and drink some hot cocoa no we're here for blood eventually we enter the castle of the Ice King oh my God out of all the things to put in your Castle why would you choose to put signs that show the player how to beat the level that's so counter-intuitive and now it's time to fight the Ice King I gotta hand it to him if this was a laughing competition he'd definitely take the cake eventually we kill him and he freezes himself to death [Music] also ironic and just like that three out of four makeout sessions accomplish we finally reached it the start of the final level it's here that we get a stare down with the Final Bosses of the game The Dark Knight the revived Cyclops the main bad guy and of course a painter what where did he come from also the way he's holding the princess is really concerning to me like are you gonna use her as a paintbrush or something but before we fight them we have to fight basically replicas of the final boss so wait what makes a difference between these guys and this guy is it the wand he has because if so that kind of seems like a captain smack situation there is only one super move on this ship and you know who it is you gotta looking at him and look at this I have the shusher anyways we defeat the minions and we head on to the Final Bosses first up the painter foreign now this may come as a shocker but he paints things that's about it oh hey look he drew me at some point he stops painting things in and just starts spawning them I'm not really sure how he does that but okay no it was probably the hundred times I hit you with my sword but sure yeah give me free food next up Cyclops 2.0 foreign no hard feelings okay there are definitely some hard feelings oh that's even more horrifying I I'm so sorry eventually we defeat them and they become Angels they can finally rest in peace the third boss is the Black Knight finally after all these times he's evaded me he can fight oh come on after we defeat two waves of him responding in enemies he finally comes down to fight us the Black Knight is the only enemy in the entire game to use their Shields the gameplay feels a lot more interesting also his magic is just sick and once defeated he doesn't jump a chest like the other two he has dropped a sword a really good sword in fact and now it's finally time the final boss foreign whoa some crystals okay that was easy whoa he has the same exact magic as his minions further confirming my theory that the only thing that differentiates him and his minions is the one that he has okay once again that was easy Whoa We turned into a Discord mod once again very easy whoa that was it really I I can't believe it I spent so long on the other levels and the other bosses but this this is rather short I I can't believe that wow uh okay well I guess it's time to open my chest and see like how what the oh my God this guy's like Mike Tyson with those left and right hooks yes let's go he's finally dead oh my God and he's back to a Discord mod okay surely after that many Transformations you don't have any more tricks up your sleeve he did indeed have one more trick up his sleeve and there finally grab that dragon sword and we are done I know the game wants me to land on the crystal or whatever but what if I don't [Music] okay this is boring but of course it's not as boring as the nearly three minute unskippable credit scene that follows this seriously why did you guys not add a skip button oh cool we're back where it all started wait a minute is that a bandit are these enemies why are they in our territory uh Guys these people are literally just trying to kill us why are we all hanging out with them now and look at this guy he's still trying to kill him why are we all smiling about it what's happening you know what I don't even care anymore let me just get the fourth and final makeout session and this can all be uh oh [Music] what is this the devs really said let's put a random Acid Trip in at the end that should be funny well anyways that's the end hey look a new character all right time for my concluding statements are you guys still here if you're still watching thank you you're a real one but anyway in conclusion Castle Crashers is just a great game I mean its charm holds up even 15 years later and I still recommend it if you haven't played it before I recommend you buy it now it's only like 16 on Steam so if you have the money I'd recommend you play it but anyways guys that's gonna do it for today's video If you enjoyed make sure you like subscribe sorry this took so long for me to get out uh if you can tell it took a long time because well it's over half an hour long but uh hopefully you guys enjoyed my switch of content if this is your first time watching you're probably confused because you know it's like your first time watching but I usually post uh content on a game called brahala and I've recently started to you know step away from that still gonna do it don't worry I'm still gonna play brahala It's Gonna Do brahala content Bros that you know are wanting that but yes I am going to be playing uh other games I do have some Castle Crasher video ideas and some other games as well that I'll be doing so can't wait to see how that goes but yeah anyways I'm out of here

Channel: TrippedUp

Views: 216,203

Keywords: castle crashers, retrospective, video game history, castle crashers retrospective, castle crashers story, castle crashers walkthrough, castle crashers playthrough, Castle Crashers: A Retrospective Look at a Forgotten Game, forgotten game, TrippedUp, gaming, xbox 360, alien hominid hd, battleblock theater, pit people

Id: AVwPOUrox3s

Length: 33min 27sec (2007 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2023