Game Journal: Ghouls 'n Ghosts / Daimakaimura (1 Credit Clear)

Despite loving arcade platformers and run 'n guns, I'd somehow never played anything in the Ghosts 'n Goblins series until this year. I decided to start with Ghouls 'n Ghosts, the second game in the series, and I instantly fell in love. After trying out the other Ghosts 'n Goblins games it's still my favorite, although there's a chance that Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection will take the top spot in the future when I get good enough to clear it.

I cleared the game a few times: first on the World version, then on the slightly harder Japan version, and again on the Japan version on the highest difficulty setting. Here's my Japan version 1CC, but my other runs are linked in the video description:

Before I played this game, I'd repeatedly seen non-arcade players say two things about it. First, that it was basically just like Castlevania: an action platformer with slow, deliberate movement and no way of changing your jump arc in mid-air. Second, that it was an extremely difficult quarter muncher which even makes you play through all the levels twice in a row to complete the game!

So when I played it for myself, I was shocked at how accessible it was and how much I loved it. My tastes are always changing, but right now it might be my favorite arcade platformer / run 'n gun game of all time.

The movement is snappy just like any arcade game from the time period, but even with its fixed jump arc it still feels fast and fluid. You run pretty quickly, and your horizontal movement is even faster when you're in the air. This gives you plenty of tactical reasons to jump, as opposed to similar games where you almost never want to jump unless enemies force you into the air. If I ever make a similar game of my own, I'm absolutely borrowing that idea.

The other thing that makes this game's movement feel great is that the platforming sections are, for the most part, extremely easy. The lack of double jump helps here too as you don't need to spend any time earning a PhD in applied fixed-arc double jump usage, which I always found to be a frustrating process in games that had them.

Instead, pretty much all of the game's challenge comes from fighting against random dynamic enemies as you navigate its environments. My biggest surprise when I played the game was just how dynamic it really was; almost every single moment in the entire game is either spent reacting to enemies that randomly spawn in different locations, or dueling against enemies with dynamic unpredictable behaviors like the red arremers and most of the bosses. As far as I'm aware, the stage 2 boss and the very short walk up to the game's first red arremer fight are literally the only points in the game that don't have a layer of random dynamic layer combat spicing them up. Thankfully the game generously lets you take out enemies during their spawn animations, so the odds always feel stacked in your favor even if an enemy happens to spawn near to you.

The player's moveset restrictions and the game's environments really help to make these different random enemy spawns actually feel meaningfully different. As you can only aim in four directions, you can't move or turn while crouching and you have to commit to your jumps, you'll have to use different tactics to be able to hit airborne enemies depending on their height and position.

Slopes make these encounters even more interesting, even against grounded enemies. Instead of being able to simply fire a bunch of shots at ground height to take out any enemy who walks onto the screen, it's often tricky to decide on the best way to line up your shots with enemies on sloped ground. It's such an amazing addition to the genre that I can't imagine ever making an arcade-style action platformer without them.

Because almost all of the game's difficulty comes from these unpredictable dynamic elements, this makes every run of Ghouls 'n Ghosts feel completely different. So even though on paper this is a game where you have to play through the same set of levels twice in a row, it still doesn't feel repetitive in the slightest to me.

The plethora of underpowered weapons help make runs feel even more varied; you can see which enemies are carrying items so it's important to try not to spawn weapon pickups in unavoidable spots, and accidentally picking up the wrong weapon for the wrong situation can be devastatingly difficult and fun to deal with in its own way. This is, after all, a funny game about a silly knight in boxer shorts, and being stuck with a terrible weapon adds to the slapstick humor.

In short, I love this game. The pacing is breezy, the movement is fast and snappy, and the heavy emphasis on dynamic enemies and sloped terrain means that every single combat encounter really does have to be approached differently. It's the easiest game in the series too, and it's available on Capcom Arcade Stadium and on basically every other platform. Go try it out!