[quote name='SAB-CA'](
Soodmeg, your rant inspired me to finally blurt all this out, lol. I felt much the same way you did, obviously... with a bunch more tossed in for good measure -_- )
You know, it's funny reading this thread. You do see people complain about CC not being worth 15 bucks, or the few that say they'd pay more for it.
When I play CC, the fact I'm playing "A smaller budget game" pretty much is nonexistent. The Game's Flash-based roots are irrelevant. It's like saying "Because this uses Pixel art, it must be an SNES game!" when talking about Capcom's Dungeon and Dragons Arcade games. The effect animations are extremely smooth. The characters themselves have lots of little animations that are rarely every used more than once or twice, such as shaking slimes off their heads, spiraling through the air in the "Wizard Castle Takeoff" stage, and climbing ladders in the "Full Moon" stage.
The game rarely ever reuses anything that it doesn't need to. Almost every stage has a unique graphic/gameplay element that often times doesn't exist anywhere else in the game. Examples being the Arbalest-like Rapid arrow shooters, the ice towers, the sparse use of the slime monsters, the scorpions in the desert stages, the mer-men in Medusa's Lair, and the Alien-Boss Homage in the alien ship.
Even the bosses that are reused are totally redesigned before you fight them again, such as the Cyclops, and the massive, Forest-sized uber-troll.
You could cite that different magic is reused between loads of the characters, but that's only slightly true. Most characters I've seen have unique elements (Some might share the arrow shower, but one might throw bombs as a projectile, one might throw a curved blade, and one might throw a straight blade.) And then there seem to be further unique details that still might exist, but aren't always apparent, such as the fact that the various NPC knights all seem to have different weight and armor to them. Examples: Royal Guards bounce extremely low when slammed or thrown, and Red Demons have uber magic and resist damage.
There are quite a few music tracks and ideas that are only used once in story, as well. For example, the Ninjas stage.
Games now-a-days often reuse and re-skin the same ideas all-the-time, because it saves on budget. XBLA games often reused elements and ideas all the time, because it saves on size. Castle Crashers offer one of the most fresh, continually renewing experiences in gaming since... err... wow. You know, I really can't think of many games that have this much attention to these kinds of little details.
And THIS is the kind of game we complain about costing 15 dollars? When Halo Mirrors it's original stages and stick a dark ambient light on them for "night time" stages, we complain, but still consider it worth 60 dollars. When Big-budget games throw the same enemies, with slight color mods, at us, over and over, back to back, we still consider them worthy of full price.
The only "fetch quest" in CC are for things that actually offer personality to you and your character, and actually effect gameplay. The "artificial" lengthening of the game doesn't occur till after the main meat of the game is over. What is given to you upfront, without searching, is STILL satisfying. And there is no feeling that the "meat" of the game was compromised in order to make these "extra" things happen.
Of course, all of this is without looking at the online problems, and other weird glitches. If full-on games didn't have these kind of glitches and exploits, I would say "obviously, Behemoth spent their money in the wrong place!" But come now, almost every single online game on consoles now-a-days has at least one of these: Matchmaking glitches, DRM issues messing up access to saves/content, or Leaderboard/EXP glitches. This seems to be more of an industry-wide problem, rather than just a single company.
In the end, as a mature gamer who often sees many of the things he likes in older games beginning to be contested as more casual players enter the gaming world, it's weird to see a game this inspired being undervalued or unappreciated, in any way. This game deserves to start trends that not only effect downloadable titles in the future, but all gaming as a whole. I guess I just hope random slander and negativity don't keep the real triumphs of this game from being brought to light![/quote]
ing stupid.
# - edited my post. Thanks
