During the 1980’s, first person dungeon crawling role playing games were at their peak with the amount of releases currently available. As time passed and the games evolved we come to have games such as Etrian Odyssey and Skyrim, however the traditional form of grid based movement and combat has faded into the background. Few games such as Legend of Grimrock have been keeping the traditional format alive. Hyakki Castle also attempts to keep the traditional format while moving it into japanese lore and atmosphere.
Hyakki Castle
Publisher: Happinet
Developer: Asakusa Studios
Platform: PC (Reviewed)
Release Date: November 14th, 2017
Players: 1
Price: $24.99
The slight telling of story really does not have much impact on the game as a while. During 17th century of japan, The Tokugawa shogunate was formed and peace was coming to japan. A Onmyoja master named Kigata Doman plotted to overthrow the shogunate using forbidden magic. Kigata was stopped by the shogunate and was exiled to a island in the middle of the sea. 10 years later a package containing 3 heads arrived and a castle on the island he was exiled to appeared. The current shogun sends in group specializing in the supernatural in to defeat Kigata. Everyone but one character was captured after a storm hit while traveling to the island. That character must free his party and they all must defeat Kigata.
Starting the game you customise your group of 4 characters to climb Hyakki Castle. With a few options like name, sex, race and class, and character portraits there is not much you can customise. The four races of the game include Humans, Oni, Tengu and Nekomata. While the classes are Samurai a fighter class with middle of the road stats, Ninja who specialises in quick damage and thrown weapons, Sohei a monk style tank and Shinkan a mage style class with healing abilities.
Each class and race combination modifies stats. Each class has its own abilities trees that have to unlock abilities as well as gaining passive abilities at specific levels. Disappointingly there is not much more you can customise in the game which hinders it at limits its replay value. While It is possible to run through the game using odd combinations of classes such as 3 ninjas and a Shinkan, there is not much in the way to expand on the characters you have. Even the skill trees themselves do not have much of a selection which harms the replay value even more.
The graphics to the game are nothing special but do get the job done. They are simplistic and the designs to enemies are interesting but I did not have a moment where anything specifically impressed me. In some cases it somewhat felt like a mobile game in quality of graphics.. The lack of in depth detail made some of the enemies feel out of place.
A couple of times while fighting a enemy I could not help but to laugh at how a enemy was portrayed when really it should of been more engaging because of the lack of graphical quality. Even worse changing out of full screen to a higher resolution than the standard one the game wants to use makes aspects of the environments and the UI to become blurry.
However, a big gripe that I have with the game is there is a mechanic to split your party into two different groups for them to maneuver and fight independently. While you would expect some type of graphical representation of your allies off in the distance through some type of character models the party members are. Instead they opted to use red and blue statues which reminded me more of board game pieces. While not a huge issue it just broke immersion every time I saw it.
The audio voice work is thankfully spoken in Japanese which adds to the setting. Music is done in traditional Japanese fashion using instruments such as a Shaminen and bamboo flutes. This adds a bit more interest to the game.
During game play the atmospheric sounds of the areas around you are done decently. Which is a shame as most combat uses repetitive sounds for enemies which hurts the immersion of combat. Quite often during the game I found myself during off the sound only to play my own music.
While adventuring within the game there are traps and puzzles to solve in order to progress. Some of them are creative, having traps in a room and having to maneuver around to pull switches or step on pads in a specific order. Some of them requires you to use a mechanic that allows your group to split into two different parties.
None of the puzzles were overly difficult. There was a few times I died during them due to my own mistakes and not looking before I progressed. However after awhile they do get repetitive. The payoff for most of them were also just to open a door or get a key in order to progress into the level more, and most of the times did not feel very rewarding.
Interestingly the combat does do a good job for what it needs to do. Each character has up to 4 abilities hotkeyed each with its own cooldown to use. As enemies attack you, it is encouraged to move in a direction where you wont get hit in order to not take damage.
Smarter players will also use the traps scattered throughout the levels in order to defeat the enemies quicker. Utilising the mechanic to split your party in two also helps as having another character attack a enemy from the side or behind does slightly more damage.
Boss fights within the game attempts to test the players skills utilizing all the mechanics tied together. Most bosses can and will one shot a less armored and lower hitpoint total character, but after learning their mechanics and adapting to the situations I did not have to many issues with clearing the game whatsoever on Hard mode.
The major problem with Hyakki Castle is that it does not feel like its complete. The vast majority of the time the game felt shallow or incomplete. I couldn’t help but to feel bored half of the time and just say to myself “I wish they did more with this” during many points of the game.
It’s not really bad, just average. Which is disappointing for myself as I was looking forward to playing this. The game is being added on by the developers with new dungeon maps but here is to hoping they add more and flush it out.
Hyakki Castle was reviewed on Windows PC using a review copy provided by Happinet. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here.
