Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection

I went into Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection half-expecting a cynical nostalgia cash-in, and what I got instead was something more complicated: a game that is genuinely, sometimes brilliantly crafted, and also genuinely, sometimes infuriatingly hostile to the person playing it. Capcom has rebuilt the series from the ground up using the RE Engine, and the result is a storybook pencil-sketch art style that looks unlike anything else in the genre right now. Enemies rendered in watercolor ink, levels that pop with color and whimsy - the visual direction alone is worth watching in motion. Under that pretty exterior lives the same boulder-pushing, teeth-pulling action platformer the series has always been. Arthur runs left to right, throwing lances, daggers, hammers, and flaming potions at relentless enemy waves, and he does it with the unhurried momentum of a man wading through wet cement. Weapon throwing slows him down further, and he can only fire in four directions - the same constraints baked in since 1985. A new magic system adds screen-clearing spells like chain lightning and frog transformations, each governed by a short cooldown, but the magic rarely bails you out when the game really piles on. A fairy-powered upgrade tree lets you unlock and slot passive and active abilities between runs, which sounds like a concession to modern sensibilities - but the balancing is off enough that certain upgrades trivialize sections while others feel pointless. Co-op is available, with a second player controlling the Three Wise Guys, a trio of ghosts that can shield Arthur, lift him over gaps, or distract enemies. It is an inventive workaround for a game that was never designed for two players, though the second player is really acting as a support tool rather than a co-equal character. Five difficulty tiers span from Page (an almost no-consequence mode that strips out enemy density) to Legendary (the original series DNA: two hits and you respawn in your underwear). The middle ground of Knight and Legend is where the game lives best, but even on Knight the difficulty curve turns steep fast, demanding pattern memorization and pixel-aware jumps by the midgame. A magic metronome option slows gameplay to a crawl for players who need it, which is a thoughtful inclusion. The PC version itself runs cleanly, hitting 1080p at 60fps without drama on modest hardware, though the lack of frame rate options above 60fps and incomplete button prompts for non-Xbox controllers are small but real annoyances. The mixed Steam reception (76% positive across over 1,400 reviews) tells the story accurately. Critics who love the franchise's identity scored it warmly. Critics who wanted modernized controls and fairer encounter design scored it harshly. Both camps are right. This is a game that does one specific thing - the punishing old-school arcade gauntlet - with technical precision and visual imagination, while leaving quality-of-life upgrades to a handful of accessibility toggles rather than rethinking the core. If you bounced off Celeste or Salt and Sanctuary because they were too forgiving, this is your game. If you want challenge that feels earned rather than inherited from 1985 design philosophy, look elsewhere first.

Alex · Scout Team

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