Cathedral Reviews

This game is brutally hard and unfair, but I loved the music. I don't have the patients

First of all I want to say that I haven't beaten the game as of yet, but I am very near completion and feel I have experienced enough of the game to give my opinion. Now Cathedral is what you call old school hard gaming at it's peak. Though they are completely different genres of games, I am reminded of the brutal arcade game by Capcom called Black Tiger or Black Dragon in Japan. One is a 16 bit arcade dungeon crawler with slight RPG elements and the other an 8bit style Metroidvania. They are both going to test your patience to the limit and then some. While Black Tiger makes Cathedral look like a Sunday picnic in the park in terms of difficulty and game play, Cathedral is a much much much bigger game with mazes and puzzles and enemies that will have your head spinning at times and bosses that will make you want to push your eyes into your skull. Having said that, the feeling of reward when you do accomplish a task or defeat a boss is EPIC! The game is very well designed, the game play is crisp, cool 8 bit style graphics and catchy tunes, though some tunes can get annoying at times. Is Cathedral always fair, hell no, you are going to see your arse more often than you want to, but this forces you to be cunning and come up with new and creative ways to complete tasks and defeat foes. There was one occasion where I had absolutely no idea what to do, and was stuck for a very long time. Eventually I found the solution but this was my fault for not thinking out of the box, and trying new things, though I will say maybe a slight clue could have helped in this one case. In the 80s and 90s when we got a game, no matter how hard or frustrating we had to get good or go play outside in the streets until the next Christmas or Birthday, LOL I just don't know if kids today or young adults are going to enjoy this because they are spoilt for choice, but if you hang in there you might learn a valuable lesson. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward.

Fun metroidvania. The graphics remind me of Shovel Knight. The music and sound is average at best. Basic but serviceable map with layers can get confusing sometimes. My biggest gripe is you can't pan the camera up and down so you sometimes have to take leaps of faith. So far it's challenging, but fair. I'm having a good time.