This Cuphead Clone Failed BADLY

[Music] thank you look Enchanted portals has had it pretty rough it launched a Kickstarter that failed partly due to articles and tweets and posts about how it was a cup that ripoff and a clone an unoriginal were just clones sir we're meant to be Expendable then after going dark for a while they released some new footage which sparked another controversy it seems they had made the error of putting some chickens in Native American outfits in their game what's worse is they were dressed in historically inaccurate stuff you know things like wearing War Bonnets and using a bow and arrow and having anything to do with Buffalo you know things that just never happened now this was quickly remedied by replacing the Native American aesthetic with the white Cowboy aesthetic so in the end all was well wait a minute I didn't really know what to think of this whole thing at the time but I had many comments from people claiming Native American Heritage weighing in saying that the boss wasn't offensive at all it's just a cartoon they liked the representation or that they didn't care either way you guys let me know your thoughts on the Whole Thing Down Below in the comments but for me at this point it really seemed like outrage that sparked a worse solution than even the original problem after this event they went silent again you wouldn't be crazy for considering the project dead until all of a sudden out of nowhere they announced a shadow drop release date right when Starfield was launching in the middle of the busiest gaming month of the year with next to no marketing leading up to it ladies and Gentlemen even if you are not prolific in marketing this should seem like a bad move and I was rightfully suspicious but I love cuphead and I wanted some good run and Gun Boss shooting action so obviously I grabbed the game I went into Enchanted portals telling myself I won't compare to cuphead because that would be unfair it didn't have the budget the support or even the Mass Appeal of that game a massive company like Microsoft didn't swoop in and invest all that money in Enchanted portals like they did with cuphead this was just a small team trying to make something with next to no budget but wow this game feels like the developers have never even played cuphead people play cuphead for mainly three reasons the gameplay the difficulty and the animation aesthetic whole thing without outright comparing to cuphead I want to go ahead and tell you why Enchanted portals fails in all three categories I've always been Pro take inspiration I'm a massive Crow's worn enjoyer I like it when any game takes inspiration from my Favorites so for enchanted portals I had the same mindset granted they didn't have much funding or experience so I wasn't expecting something as outstanding and indie game defining as cuphead was but I was at least expecting a competent video game that could give some hours of enjoyment and some good boss fights well ladies and gentlemen of the jury it's official Enchanted portals is a crime if I had to guess the last game these developers played before making this was pong or something really old you know the ones made while game developers were still figuring things out what do I mean by this Enchanted portal suffers from so many things that game development as a whole has found solutions for it's obvious it's a low budget production and that's fine they could have made this work but there's so many basic ass things that just do not work in this game for example the save system it just doesn't exist I beat the first two worlds put the game down for the night and the next day I realized I had to do it all over again there wasn't saved data to lose because save data itself doesn't exist the control scheme is terrible I mean it has everything you would expect in a 2d platform or Boss Rush game Run jump air Dash parachute but it feels so bad to control I refuse to believe they had anyone test their game before launch or if they did the game testers must have lied directly to their faces with the feedback it's floaty unresponsive at times the jump has no air control which means if you overshoot a platform screw you and the jump Arc Never Lands where you would expect so double screw you the air Dash has a delay the hitboxes feel terrible there's no Precision oh the game has rebinding of keys ninety percent of indie games or even AAA games good or bad can never seem to have this feature on launch but somehow this hot mess actually has that function but of course it's broken it doesn't remember your bindings After exiting the games you have to rebind every time you want to play the game consists of Worlds each a run and Gun level and a boss fight I need to camp out on these levels my guys I am actually speechless the first level had me laughing my ass off the tutorial has images of what you were supposed to do but not which button does the thing it's literally a straight line occasionally a wall to block you some death pits and it just spams enemies at you these enemies can be normal or color coded to each of your three weapon types red blue or green and these levels go on forever with no checkpoints like I mean literally minutes of walking to the right with no elevation change or anything and on top of all of that they are randomly generated but it's not interesting generation it's more like each level has two or three segments and these are randomly in a row but the segments are literally just a few assets and spammed enemies on top of that if you try and rush through the level the enemies don't despawn so you end up with a cluster clock of projectile and enemy spam while you use the horrible controls to try and bum rush the ending is the game difficult it depends the running gun levels are annoying overly long and if you want to rush through them to get to the good ports then it becomes a difficult slog if you take your time take out each enemy and slowly move forward the difficulty is removed and it just becomes a boring slog the boss fights have some great ideas but their difficulty doesn't come from attacks or move sets but rather the horrible controls and hitboxes most fights it's better to just find blind spots and deal damage ignoring the boss moveset entirely and that's the worst kind of Boss design people who play these games want to engage with your boss fights that's where the whole fun is you also have three difficulties and they are Bethesda difficulties easiest lets you take six hits before you die normal is three and insane is one life no Health regener pickups allowed per World there is no change to enemy amount boss attacks or stuff like that and I don't know why anyone would want to beat insane to put themselves through that hell but it honestly might be entertaining to watch in the animation it's like half done I didn't really expect the mind-blowing phase transitions of cuphead or something like that but when you beat up boss face there's no animation at all usually just a slideshow where the screen gets washed over the general animation is fine but the art style is nothing going for it I think the intent was to go for a fairy tale storybook comic book aesthetic but this ended up being a problem as there's really not enough shading or depth to help separate background from foreground or characters from everything else which makes the controls feel worse because it's harder to gauge where you're even going the music is actually one of the few positives I have for this game it's not going to win Awards but there's honestly Some solid tracks that fit the theme of the stage so Props to the music artist the sound design is honestly a meme it really does feel like at the last second they got stock sounds and placed them but forgot to play some so it feels like half of the game's enemies and effects don't have any sound at all and my personal favorite detail is you can actually hear when the level or Boss song loops like it's a hard audio cut it's hilarious foreign the sound design is such a Monumental failure it's honestly impressive I actually recommend checking out some no commentary gameplay just to experience the audio Bliss the worst part is it feels like there's a good game buried somewhere in all of this mess the boss designs and ideas are actually all pretty great the space cow is Fun the Frog Prince is a great theme for a boss that replaced Native American with American Cowboy bosses well it's what the people wanted I guess if it wasn't for the terrible gameplay and controls there could be some great fun but the Run and Gun levels are honestly just trash I refuse to believe even the devs themselves like them they really should have just thrown the levels in the dumpster and focused on the bosses I don't know the running gun levels are seriously just wasted energy the only good idea in them is the color-coded enemies but it absolutely does not work here it would be cool for a few actually designed encounters but in these random levels it just bogs down the pace even more as you shoot endless amounts of non-threatening goons in a way this is actually very similar to the gleamlight and Hollow Knight situation you see gleamlight took inspiration from holiday some people called it a clone or a rip-off but the fact that matters is when it came out and to this day it was in a similar state to Enchanted portals horrible game design and controls bad marketing and support and a bad release but here's the hard truth gleamlight was not a bad game because it copied holony gleamlight was a bad game because it was a bad game no amount of inspiration can cover up horrible controls terrible level design and bad gameplay Enchanted portals took clear inspiration from cuphead that much is obvious but that has absolutely no bearing on the problems Enchanted portal suffers from I could make a game that is clearly inspired by bloodborne but if I have no idea how to make a good game or even just good gameplay feel no amount of it being like bloodborne is going to make people like it Pro sworn has so much support and interest because on top of its obvious Inspirations it has the good gameplay and game design to support it unfortunately Enchanted portals does not the one thing it does have going for it is that there are so many good games out or releasing soon that had it will probably be largely ignored and forgotten who knows the devs might commit and put in the work to make this a good game to do and they have my full support in doing so but until then sea of stars is amazing I highly recommend grabbing it for you indie game lovers out there foreign

Channel: Pogobro

Views: 430,655

Keywords: Cuphead Clone, Cuphead 2, Cuphead Sequel, Enchanted Portal Review, Enchanted Portals Before You Buy, whatever happened with that cuphead clone, dlc island, delicious last course memes, cuphead memes, Pogobro Lore

Id: ABmaKZoik84

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 08 2023