Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle Reviews
While somewhat antiquated in its controls and visuals, Hyakki Castle is a strange game that uses its stellar atmosphere and exceptional enemy designs to hearken back to the classic era of first-person dungeon crawlers.
Despite some great puzzles and an interesting group mechanic, I will be waiting before returning to Hyakki Castle. If you love dungeon crawlers and need something new, give it a try. If you are new to the genre then maybe start with the superb Legend of Grimrock. Hyakki Castle is out now on Steam.
Hyakki Castle looks and plays great, but simply has too many issues to recommend to a general audience. What the game achieves in its setting design and leveling system comes at the cost of a half-baked “party splitting” feature, a frustrating save system, and a 720p resolution lock.
the game falters for its repetitive scenery and total lack of tutorial or even on screen button cues.
Simple, satisfying, vertical and easy to binge on, like a tube of Pringles. Hyakki Castle feels like a generic alternative. It'll fill the gap for a while, but once you pop, stopping might be easier than you'd hope.
Hyakki Castle is a solid dungeon crawler with some fun classes, mechanics, and amazing monsters to keep drawing players into the labyrinth.
Hyakki Castle is a game with some clever ideas but falters in execution and implementation- leading to an experience that feels serviceable but decidedly bittersweet as I'm left wondering what could have been.
If you're in for some meditative classic gaming, Hyakki Castle is for you. It's a game that knows exactly what it is, and it has no interest in punishing you or making you feel like you don't get it. It's a friendly, old-style game that wants you to succeed, and that seems to be less and less present now. It also has cat people in it.
It is really depressing to play a game like Hyakki Castle. It has some things that could have made it a good game in a vastly underrepresented genre. It got the atmosphere just right, which is one of the most difficult things to nail perfectly. However, it is dragged down by many things that while independently does not ruin a game, it destroys the game when combined. Bad mouse and keyboard controls would not ruin a game, but the painful process of making gamepads work with the game does as it is almost mandatory to use a gamepad to enjoy the game at all, and do not even get started on the hunger system that makes exploring, which is one of the core pillars of enjoyment in the genre heavily, punishable. In the end, while it is easy to want to like Hyakki Castle and see how it could have been a great game, it is too hard to not see that it isn't a good game.
Hyakki Castle probably wouldn't be great for newbies to the dungeon-crawling scene, but if you already know you like the movement and combat system then it's definitely something to try. It has its mechanical issues, and requires a lot of fiddling to figure out at first, but is executed creatively and diversely enough to still be engaging. It just needs a little extra touch to become the beacon that it wants to be.
If you like strategy games and are really into ancient Japanese legends, Haunted Dungeon: Hyakki Castle takes art and story from the Edo period to create a unique strategy game. While it was not entirely my speed (it does put the crawl in "dungeon crawl"), it is a break from the frantic pacing of many dungeon crawlers with a central mechanic adds creative possibilities to puzzle solving and combat.
Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle is a clever twist on the traditional dungeon crawler, with a focus on the split-team function. Learning to work with separate teams can be tough at first, but it's well worth the effort. The combat is otherwise simplistic and easy to pick up, making it easy to jump in for hours at a time.
Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle may have interesting and satisfying dungeon crawling survival gameplay but its presentational aspects definitely take a lot of fun out of the equation.
Hyakki Castle puts up a welcome challenge and offers players something rooted in a very authentic Japanese (Shinto) spirituality. It's an artifact of the country and comes from the same place that the likes of Okami, Nioh and God Wars does. It's truly amazing that the Nintendo Switch has had three of those four released on it in the span of just a couple of weeks.
While overly ambitious, Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle is an enjoyable enough dungeon crawl, but could easily be ignored if you aren't absolutely in love with the genre.
Like most games, how good of a time you have with Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle will ultimately depend on what you bring to the experience yourself. If you're hoping for the next great dungeon crawler, then you most likely will be disappointed.
Despite the different setting, interesting environmental puzzles and the creative party-splitting mechanic, Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle fails in several basic aspects, with repetitive and tedious combat, weak story and a total inability to keep you interested in the game.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle certainly has some interesting elements - most notably its team-splitting mechanic and use of classical Japanese folklore - but thanks to the rigidity of its first-person dungeon crawling design it soon loses steam and you're left exploring a vast castle full of dangerous yokai and unimaginative level design. It takes plenty of inspiration from those that came before it, but does little to innovate on its own merit.
Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle may not be the greatest game ever made but that doesn't stand on its way of being a welcome RPG to arrive on the Nintendo Switch. Thanks to creative gameplay, a great variety of characters and a good dose of Japanese and Western themes, the game's qualities stand out against its rather uninspired level design and unimpressive soundtrack.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle has a lot of interesting elements. Unfortunately, it's most talked about feature, team splitting, could have used more work and it felt like there needed to be more to it besides switching on some floor panels.