If Enchanted Portals does one thing, it makes you appreciate Cuphead even more.
It’s hard to talk about Enchanted Portals without bringing up Cuphead (a quick look at the art style makes the reason fairly obvious). Cuphead is one of my favorite games around. It’s super challenging, but feels extremely rewarding when you beat each level. Everything about it was fantastic, right down to the art and gameplay.
Enchanted Portals
Developed By: Xixo Game Studios
Platforms: PlayStation 4|5 [Reviewed on 5], Xbox Consoles, PCs, Switch
Release Date: September 5, 2023
When I saw Enchanted Portals would take “inspiration” from Cuphead, I got excited. I thought this new style of gameplay could be explored, maybe add some fresh ideas to it, and simply replicate my fun experience I had. Sadly, Enchanted Portals struggles to replicate the experience, and offers little variety in the genre. While I love the art/style of gameplay, and appreciate the effort that went into the game, it clearly still needs some work.
I tried to like Enchanted Portals. I’ve spent hours upon hours trying to perfect my gameplay and figure things out; but it isn’t a polished game. Right away, it gives you the feel of a retro-style game with fantastic art and environment designs that replicate the dated cartoon look extremely well. I was in awe when the game started up because I’m such a huge fan of this art. The animations, backgrounds, and enemy designs are absolutely perfect. It doesn’t have the hand crafted feel of pencil to paper, but it still has the lively vibrant feel of a classic cartoon. Combined with a musical composition that adds to the creativity with just enough oomph to bring the world alive.
But the good things end there. Everything about the game feels like it merely touches the basics of Cuphead without actually getting into the details. The “cutscenes” consist of slideshows with no audio or voice overs; no bringing the characters to life. The art really carries these moments so you can get the idea of what’s happening through the images, but it feels like I’m being cheated. Fortunately the game is very swift about getting you into the action, as you dive directly into levels when the slideshow ends and dying allows you to skip it so you just go right back within seconds.
Much like the game that inspired it, Enchanted Portals will have you dying…A lot. I don’t mind a challenge as long as it’s my own failing. In Cuphead I could look at the loss screen and think “okay, what can I do better? What was the pattern? What did I mess up?” In Enchanted Portals, there’s a little bit of this element, but the game itself makes things complicated for no reason.
Jumping is extremely floaty which leads to oddly timed dodges. The controls overall are really sluggish for how fast-paced the game wants to be. For example, there is a stage in the second world where you absolutely need to use your shield, but there’s a slight delay in activating it and then it only lasts for a split second. This makes figuring out the proper timing more of a struggle than it should be.
And to top it off, the shield has to recharge. So if you move through the level too fast you won’t even have the option to use it because the RNG on some enemies and traps cause you to miss certain patterned moves easily.
One of my biggest gripes about the mechanics is there are no invincibility frames when you get hit. So if you happen to jump awkwardly into an enemy they could hit you 2 or 3 times at once. If you get stuck inside a bigger enemy it will continue to hit you until you get out range. It’s especially awkward when an environmental object takes a good chunk of health due to one mistake.
Speaking of those things…flying projectiles are essentially the main focus of the game. Lots of stuff flies at you while you platform and dodge, while at the same time you’re shooting at key enemies. Much of this isn’t fine tuned either and it’s very easy to get enemy spammed if you try to “speedrun” a level (which is something you’d want to do after restarting upon a death).
Ultimately, the biggest issue I have with the gameplay design, is that many enemies are completely silent with their attacks. As such, there’s no “warning” to let you know what is about to happen. Oftentimes, sweeping enemies (literally and figuratively) will come storming in off screen to hit you. Some enemies are shooting at you from off screen too. If you could hear it, you could at least try to time your jumps instead of watching the entire screen flood with projectiles. Louder and clearer clues would be a welcoming change so at least you know you need to jump or dodge an incoming attack, or wait before trying to platform a level.
This is what I mean when it comes to overall polish. Some environmental enemies, and certain main enemies, do have sounds and proper animations to warn you about upcoming attacks. But the lack of consistency feels like the devs ran out of time or were too overwhelmed.
The second most important aspect of the game, shooting, falls flat too. You have three different spells, a slash, jump, dodge, and shield all unlocked and ready. All three spells basically do the same thing with one being slightly weaker as it splits off into three lines. Some enemies will glow a certain color so you need to use that colored spell to fight them, or you won’t do damage to them. That’s about the only reason you have three different colored spells though; making it a lame addition to the game that takes no real skill to use.
The biggest problem with this, however, is the game doesn’t explain any of this to you. So you’re given all the mechanics up front and tossed to the wolves. At most, the game offers random pictures in the levels to hint at what you’re supposed to do. But there’s no button indication, no explanation on what the spells are/do, or anything. For example the first wall/vine you come across, there is a picture behind it to slash it to get through…I spent way too much time wondering not only what button that was, but how to do it.
Even worse, the controls for attacks are just as floaty/delayed as the other mechanics. Switching between spells takes a second, and again has some odd cool off period which doesn’t feel entirely intentional. So if you happen to panic and press the wrong color spell, you have to wait a second to switch again. On top of that, switching spells not only stops you from shooting, it also forces your character to pause as well. You can’t switch on the fly or swiftly go from blue to green (it’s also worth noting the game has zero accessibility options, so color blind people will struggle hard!).
This may not seem like much, but in the midst of chaos it’s brutal. Shooting has a massive deadzone that I couldn’t get past. I tried moving my gun up and down while shooting and could never get a smooth burst of shots to cover the screen. You either aim straight up, straight across, or at a harsh angle. If an enemy falls in between that zone you need to run around or move to a spot that allows your spell to hit the enemy.
If you’re platforming, it’s hard to pinpoint enemies properly. Plus enemies seem to know where this deadzone is and will fly or hang out in it, forcing you to move to better attack them. Shooting and moving is a huge pain in the ass because not only is it clunky, it makes your character even more sluggish. At this point, dying in the game rarely felt like it was due to my own lack of skills that could be improved, but rather the game’s clunky design.
The overall level design is another area where Enchanted Portals struggles. The beginning of every new world/level/boss is super creative. It has obstacles, enemies, and patterns to figure out, and then it just fizzles. It starts to repeat itself constantly, and to increase difficulty it just spams the shit out of you. And then to make it more tedious the game only has a soft save during boss battles.
For levels in Cuphead, you would be jumping around platforms while shooting enemies, or trying to find patterns in boss battles. In Enchanted Portals, however, you’re very much grounded unless you hit one of the pure platforming moments. In one boss battle I was literally just sitting in a corner holding my spell button while jumping an obstacle every other minute. The repetitiveness and “bullet sponge” enemies make it an overall grueling experience where simple mistakes frustrate the hell out of you.
That said, boss battles are one area where Enchanted Portals shines. It seems all the imagination and work went into the battles. Honestly if the game more heavily revolved around them it would be better off. Since your character is already “max level” anyway with all the attacks unlocked from the start, and there’s no hidden power ups or anything to benefit you, the platforming sections of the game offer little, to no, value other than getting in the way of boss battles. Instead, the boss fights are super creative with better pattern based attacks, and more animations to really showcase the artistic nature. They are challenging, and rewarding once you figure it out, but once again the games mechanics are to blame for a majority of my failure.
I very much like the idea of Enchanted Portals, but not so much the execution. The art is fantastic, the enemy ideas are great, it’s just missing another layer of depth and more refined mechanics. If this game sat in “early access” for a while it would have benefited greatly, but hopefully the developers can still put that same effort in with some modification via future updates. In its current state it is really hard to recommend this game to anyone I don’t hate.
