I tried playing this back in 2019, but bounced off of it pretty quickly. But since I'm a big fan of this developer's work on Streets of Rage 4 (and since @BMO loves this game), I thought it might be worth a second look.

Not only did I keep playing this time around, but I ended up completing the main game in two or three sittings.

So what changed?

I think it helped to know what I was getting into. The first time around, my brain perceived a conflict between the combination of lovingly illustrated modern visuals and classic 8-bit controls and gameplay. Diving back in with that understanding, this "weakness" became a strength. I loved momentarily switching back to the "retro" presentation from time to time to fully appreciate how much life Lizardcube breathed into those original pixels.

I also did a little bit of research beforehand into what a "Game Over" truly meant. Unlike a lot of remakes, Dragon's Trap doesn't advertise its quality-of-life improvements very loudly. Once I learned that "Game Over" didn't mean a loss of all progress, I was able to relax and take the hits. This gave me space to discover a really satisfying gameplay loop, where death became an opportunity to explore somewhere else and improve my gear.

And finally, my previous attempt was seated at a desk at my PC, whereas this time I played in a comfy chair on my Steam Deck. This is more of a cozy weekend morning game, and I think it benefits from a relaxed posture. That may sound silly, but it genuinely helped me approach challenges with a lot more patience.

That's not to say the experience is flawless. All the cheap hits, frustrating stun locks and inscrutably-hidden elements you'd find in 1989 are present and accounted for. But should every remake/remaster be concerned with smoothing every rough edge? I think Lizardcube's approach of dramatically elevating the presentation while keeping the bones of the original game intact is valid... and very easy on the eyes! 😍

I am so glad I decided to play this game - I initially thought the graphics looked a little bit cheap in the screenshots and trailers, and I can't believe how wrong I was. They are absolutely beautiful, I was constantly just stopping, staring at the backgrounds in awe, and the character and enemy sprites are just delightful.

When it comes to gameplay, this is the exact type of gameplay I like in a game. It is super simple. You run, you jump, you have a basic sword swing, and that's it. No fancy combos or special abilities for me, please! Enemies follow basic patterns as well.

There are special abilities in this game though, and that's unfortunately an area that isn't super well designed imo. There are 5 subweapons/magic spells, essentially, but they drop as items, so you need to, like, kill enough enemies to have a fireball drop, then when you use it once, it is gone. You don't really get a ton of these, which means you're very limited, and the kicker is that the spells aren't even very strong. I'd expect a spell to at least take out an enemy in one hit, but they take two or three sometimes. And most of them just aren't particularly useful either way, except using the upward-attacking-arrow spell to hit things above you, and the tornado which hits things below you. These are useful against a small variety of enemies, depending on the terrain.

But the other issue is you lose all of your items when you die. Dying otherwise has no penalty, you just return to town and keep your money. That's fine, but you lose all the spells you've accumulated, so you kind of are always in two states: a) you have more spells than you know what to do with, because you're barely using them, or b) you have 0 at the time you actually do need one. It's just strange design decisions all around here. It sort of reminded me of Chasm, another game where the subweapons were not designed very well.

Anyway, level design is simple but nice. A lot of areas just sort of running forward through horizontal screens, sometimes mazes, often a gimmick where you need to take the correct path off the screen without knowing which path is correct, and then a few areas where the horizontal path also has an underwater area under it, which is really the only time areas feel expansive.

The game is sort of Metroidvania-ish, sort of not. You do get abilities, and I found it so interesting how you get locked in to them - each of your monster forms has its own unique advantage for getting around the map, but once you change monster form via plot progression, you can't keep changing! (Until later when you start to find rooms or items that let you change) It's sort of like if you were playing a Metroid game and you got the morph ball, but then you got the double jump and could no longer morph ball, and then you get ice missiles but can no longer morph or double jump. It's a new dynamic, and even though it's sort of restrictive and not necessary, it was cool. Unfortunately, once you do need to start switching, it's very annoying to have to do so in specific rooms, and it takes a long time even within that room.

Boss fights are an issue. They are very strangely designed. The bosses are so simple, they follow basically the same pattern the whole fight and there's really nothing interesting happening in them. You can get hit a bunch and still win by just smacking them.

Equipment is weird as well. Stats scale really weirdly. Going into a new area, I found a shop selling a weapon that doubled my attack. I didn't have enough money for it, so I thought, that's fine, I'll kill things slower, no problem. I reach the end of the area, no problem, but then I face the boss. It has 100 HP, and each of my hits does 1 damage, and I can only hit the boss once per cycle. Against other bosses, I can do 10 damage! I died because it was unbeatable, I bought the weapon, I got to the boss again, did 14 damage per hit and won without trying. I understand that a new weapon should be a new deal, but it being the difference between unwinnable and cakewalk was really awkward.

Besides that, there's a sort of gimmick where each form gets different stat bonuses from different equipment, but it's sort of just an illusion of depth - In reality, it just means spending more time opening the menu and switching to whatever has the highest number. You also sometimes have to switch equipment to use certain abilities, which you switch to, use for a moment, and then switch back. Again, clever idea, but just a time waster.

The soundtrack is phenomenal, there are some really amazing themes that will for sure rank among my favourites for a long time, and the level themes are all super catchy.

There are some bonus levels which are designed to have more difficult platforming and enemy challenges, and they are sadly just awkward and sometimes frustrating. The game works best when it sticks to its simple level design, which isn't mindblowing, but is fun. It tries to do more unique things in these hidden bonus levels, and it sort of shows the weaknesses of the level design. (I think they are copied over exactly from the original non-remake, so this makes sense?) The bonus levels try to use enemies and obstacles in clever ways that make you have to think about how to proceed, but nothing deals enough damage to matter, so you can just blow through them. Either that or some of the areas have parts where getting hit once means you fall down and have to restart the whole area, which crosses to the other end of the spectrum and becomes super frustrating!

Anyway, it sounds like all I have are complaints, but that's because there's more words needed to describe what the game does wrong, and these are interesting flaws I wanted to note. But ultimately, the graphics, soundtrack, and simple gameplay are just super charming and fun and I very much enjoyed it.

I haven't played the original. I liked the graphics and the soundtracks in this game, but there's a lot of annoying things in the gameplay. If you die to a boss, you'll have to walk for miles to get back, and in a few dungeons you'll have to do that multiple times. I got no idea where to go at times. I looked for options to proceed for an hour before Googling what I had to do.

Enemies will bounce you away when you get hit, meaning you'll accidently fall in to chasms/lava and bounce back from your current room. It has that kind of annoying type of difficulty where you'll get overwhelmed with enemies at times and loose a third of your hearts instantly. Some enemies even fire projectiles just above the height of your shield. While I'm not against a challenging game, these things makes you have to walk really slow at these places. I'd like this game to be way more fast paced.

This game has some good elements in its design, graphics, music and exploration. But the gameplay is way too hard, grindy and punishing. I wouldn't recommend to anyone who doesn't have a nostalgic connection to it. I would've liked to see a remake instead of a remaster of the game.

A truly amazing game that was a pure joy to play.

This game is a remake of an old game of the same title for a long forgotten console. And an old game it is. What's really remarkable is that it's a extremely accurate almost one to one remake with just modern graphics added on and modern auto-save support but plays like a modern platformer.

The graphics and animations are gorgeous. Looks really well and the animations are so smooth. What makes it even more impressive that you can switch between retro and modern visuals on the fly with a press of a button. It makes a difference to the point when I would not believe that the retro movement and controls are same.

As the original game was third in the series the story is not super obvious but it's not that hard to follow either. After defeating a mecha-dragon you're cursed into being turned into a lizard. And you're on a mission to break that curse experiencing different transformations along the way. Each form you take controls quite differently and has different abilities.

The soundtrack is also super cool with ability to switch between retro and modern version of it.

The game is a metrodivania platformer meaning - new transformation and equipment will unlock new abilities which will allow you to access new areas. You get to backtrack just a little bit to get more keys, some potions etc. but generally I had no big problems with where to go next.

An awesome experience from start to end. Highly recommend.