Battle Princess Madelyn

amazon Battle Princess Madelyn reviews

In the early days of videogame (about 25 – 30 years ago), technological and technical limitations prevented many game makers from pioneering in expressing their ideas. One of the most popular expressive styles of the time was the pixel drawing with pure 2D views (horizontal or top view). Just like that, and with a little 8-bit color system, countless great works have been born and live forever with time until today.

Today, with the support of the most advanced technology, as well as the “dinosaur” machines with super strong configurations, it seems like everyone has forgotten about the ancient titles “pitting pups” that time.

In fact, it is not so, when the 2D pixel art game is still healthy, despite competing with AAA blockbuster with ultra-smooth 3D graphics. Of course to exist in parallel, they also split into different segments, of which 2D pixel art normally falls into indie games due to its time-saving advantages – the manpower it brings.

Causal Bit Games is probably a name that is not familiar to most of the global gaming community. No wonder, because this is just a very small game company with a scale of only 3.5 people (3 adults and a pretty girl). However, the truth proved that when we want to make games, and each individual is really talented, anything can succeed. Battle Princess Madelyn is a clear proof for this when the game was officially released at the end of 2018, and completely made from A-Z by this 3.5-person team.

Basically, Battle Princess Madelyn has the same gameplay as the classic series, Metroid and Castlevania – the main character will move back and forth many times in a large space of many small areas linked together by corridors and alleys. The element of discovering highly secret and movement skills, dancing of players is one of the main factors to make the journey in the game smooth.

The storyline in Battle Princess Madelyn talks about the revenge journey of the little princess Madelyn with the dark forces that have taken everything from her hand, from the kingdom, the family to … the pet dog (behind the scenes “Battle Prince John Wick”?). The player will follow Madelyn’s footsteps to look over a vast world but equally equally murky, demonic when the dark forces are now dominating everywhere. On that journey, Madelyn will meet a lot of “friends”, from human beings to demons and monsters. And of course, a Metroidvania game cannot lack the presence of countless types of enemies with all different shapes and behaviors.

With the focus on borrowing from the classic Metroidvania genre, most of the player’s time in Battle Princess Madelyn is going from one region to another, discovering every nook and secret hidden everywhere. Remember the places that are “blocked” (longer distance than the normal jump, the door is locked …) so that the latter can return when there are appropriate complementary skills … Of course, this is not a the walk in the kindergarten, when the path is arranged with countless monsters, from the “pretty little” like the viscous Slime to the monster monsters filled with tentacles.

Like most 2D action games, whether it’s platformer, role playing, path finding, beat ‘em up … Battle Princess Madelyn’s climaxs are also in dramatic boss battles. In most cases, players will be “locked up” in a large room along with the boss and some buffers are strategically arranged to take advantage. The boss battles in Battle Princess Madelyn are quite diverse when the bosses can be a giant spider moving continuously on a large network, or a “bullock” with a famous “run and ramble” owl attached … a long trail of fire behind the buttocks. Players will have to use a lot of evasion / counter-attack skills, as well as memorize the attacks of the bosses to be able to win (strenuously).

Once again, the phrase “indie game” has been attributed to the imperfections, omissions, inferiority … It is really hard to blame, when in the big game companies with a large team of testers along with Clear process / segment that still suffers from many problems – how can a small indie game company (with 3.5 people) be avoided? However, understanding it is something that fun to accept is another matter, so the writer felt obliged to list all the shortcomings of Battle Princess Madelyn.

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First of all, the most obvious and annoying problem of Battle Princess Madelyn is the very sketchy game guide, accompanied by an unclear graphic representation. Although the graphics in Battle Princess Madelyn have nothing to blame (with the standard of a pixel art game), the way the artist paints the background is too easy to confuse with the door or objects that interact. Countless times writers omit key interactions such as a lever to open a door or a secret path, simply because they … are too difficult to recognize when almost “sinking” into the background. Most online reviews also point out that the problem is … outstanding in Battle Princess Madelyn.

Next, it was the Battle Princess Madelyn that borrowed not only a lot of elements from the Metroidvania genre, but also from the classic Ghouls Ghost series on the NES. The amazing similarity between the two titles is that in both the main characters Madelyn and Arthur are … lost armor when hit for the first time, and … lost when hit the second blow. In fact, this “two networks” mechanism is nothing new, because it was Mario who used it in the early days. However, there is no way that the density of their enemies and their “Mario” level in Mario is comparable to the Battle Princess Madelyn. Therefore, the level of punishment in Battle Princess Madelyn can be considered quite high, since the game does not have any “temporary immortality” mechanism to help players really avoid 100% damage regardless of how good it is.

Finally, it is the problem of the screen design that comes with the camera so badly difficult to understand. The camera in Battle Princess Madelyn always tries to follow the main character at a distance of 1/10 horizontally below the screen. This makes it impossible to observe what’s going on downstairs. Meanwhile, Battle Princess Madelyn has quite a lot of segments where the player must constantly move on the place where the lower legs are placed to descend a deep gully. Many times the writer has to play a move … “jump to the top”, because basically it is impossible to see below what to accurately estimate. And with the characteristics of the Metroidvania series, usually between empty space, there will be some spheres, a pothole or some enemies … So the results of the “jump” times are often not fun.

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