Enchanted Portals

Enchanted Portals is an absolute mess, plain and simple.

While Enchanted Portals has some gorgeous art and animation to look at, it simply fails at the bits that really matter: gameplay and design. The shooting is tiresome, the randomised levels go on for too long and the lack of a more efficient saving system is just criminal. While the game is relatively short if you persevere, whether or not you’d want to is another matter entirely.

Overall, Enchanted Portals has the potential to be a wonderful game. Unfortunately, it missed the mark with clunky controls, slow loading times, and dull gameplay.

It's a pity that Xixo Games Studio's intentions with Enchanted Portals are overshadowed by so many negatives instead of positives. It is a tribute to Cuphead, and the intention is present, only that its execution does not reach what its managers surely wanted.

Enchanted Portals is a soulless, disappointing attempt at capturing the magic and ingenuity that filled Cuphead to the brim. Its bland gameplay, frustrating controls, and erratic difficulty spikes (for all the wrong reasons) don’t hold a candle to the mostly pleasant visual elements on display here.

Enchanted Portals takes the foundations of a familiar game in both style and substance, yet fails to provide a compelling experience in either regard. There's clear effort being put into this game in terms of the art and animation, yet the gameplay feels far more unpolished than appearances would have you believe. Random level designs and frustrating enemy placement leads to a game that irritated far more than I would have hoped, with a good amount of my losses not feeling close to my fault.

Although Enchanted Portals seeks to revive all those feelings that came to us when playing Cuphead in the form of a nice tribute, it falls short of accomplishing much of what it seemed to promote in its first ads.

Enchanted Portals should have been so much better, and it really could have! Give us more polished controls, more interesting characters, more engaging cut-scenes and more impetus to play!

Enchanted Portals looks delightful, with 2D animation reminiscent of childhood cartoon favorites, but its monotonous gameplay and artificial difficulty make for a hollow gaming experience that's frustrating in all the wrong ways.

Enchanted Portals falls far from its influences due to its poor execution. The controls are not tight enough for a precision-based shooter and the bosses lose momentum due to the transition between stages. There’s some creativity with the design and it does achieve the 30s cartoon aesthetic, however, gameplay issues hinder the overall experience.