The Eternal Castle: Remastered

The Eternal Castle Remastered is a stunning, evocative cinematic platformer that recalls a long-past era of PC gaming.

The Eternal Castle successfully captures the visual magic of cinematic platforming, but it's unnecessarily frustrating thanks to poor controls

The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] is a neo-retro masterpiece. Even if you play the game from start to finish just once in a single sitting and never come back to it, this minimalist post-apocalyptic epic will stay with you for years to come. If you already have Another World and Flashback in your Switch collection and are looking for the next true evolution of the genre, look no further. They just don't make them like this any more… and we found ourselves wondering 'why not?'.

The Eternal Castle [Remastered] is a mysterious cinematic platformer. The main character needs to find parts to repair their ship. In doing so, they will encounter ferocious beasts, find fascinating characters, and uncover the secrets of the world around them. Does The Eternal Castle [Remastered] stand the test of time? Find out in this Rapid Review.

The Eternal Castle is a fantastic experience with a stunningly unapologetic appearance that evokes strong retro vibes and has a very modern feel under its hood.

The Eternal Castle Remastered delivers a faithful MS-DOS inspired title. That means it comes with all the issues those games carried with them. If it was simply a visual representation with modern game mechanics, The Eternal Castle Remastered could have been an amazing title, but alas, the broken platforming, melee combat that sees you button mashing until you win an encounter and gunplay that leaves you running for your life more often then holding your ground all conspire to make The Eternal Castle Remastered feel desperately dated. The unique art design is visually appealing, and when the electronic music plays, it sounds incredible. Unfortunately though, it's not enough to save The Eternal Castle from being a below-average title.

The Eternal Castle [Remastered] is a big trap for the unsuspecting as it seduces them through the prism of nostalgia and, when you least expect it, delivers something new, captivating, a bit extravagant, full of retro personality, with some irritating elements (like an unresponsive gameplay system), but with an above-average narrative and aesthetic experience.

Aside from visuals that sometimes get in the way of reading the text parts and even understanding some of the actions, The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED] provides players with some interesting and totally different deep levels that have many secrets hidden in their nooks and crannies.

Watch a video of someone playing The Eternal Castle [REMASTERED], and you'll love it. The faux-retro, 2-bit colour palette has been used to paint a dark, grungy, and deeply atmospheric post-apocalyptic Earth, whose style will surely be appreciated by - very - old-school PC gamers. A great art style can never replace great game design, however. The visuals make it hard to understand what's going on, leading to even more trial-and-error that's already needed, not to mentions that the controls are a bit of a mess. There are things to like here, but the ride isn't usually that exciting.

Leonard Menchiari, Giulio Perrone and Daniele Vicinanzo have demonstrated, with this fake remake, the maxim that the current video game can be decomposed to return to the most basic origins