Castle Crashers Member Review for the Xbox360

The Good: Charming visuals, great humor, fun for up to four players, leveling up is fun

The Bad: Lining up shots can be hard, very difficult, playing at different levels can make the game feel broken, restarting each level after you die is highly frustrating, magic is useless early on

I missed out and passed up this game so many times on both the Xbox and PS3, but now that I have played it on PC, I'm a bit disappointed. The game has charming visuals and great humor, like all Behemoth games, but this is only fun in co-op and pretty hard and boring in single player. If you buy this game make sure you have at least one friend to play with and you are both around the same level.

There are several characters available to choose, each with their own magic powers. The magic is pretty weak until later on in the game, but once you get there it is pretty useful. The whole idea is just to whack away at enemies until you reach each boss. The boss fights are pretty unique, some with environmental obstacles in the way like staying on floating debris in a river. Every so often enemies will drop weapons or pets that enhance your stats or give you abilities. I was really disappointed in the weapons because they never felt powerful enough. I would advance several levels and be stuck with the same weapon. Once you get through a few levels you will realize how hard this game is. If you die you start all the way back at the beginning of the level which is brutal and frustrating. This is why you need a friend or three along.

Co-op is much better because friends can watch your back. Just make sure you are on equal levels because one friend will find the game too easy or it will be really tough for the other guy at a lower level. When it comes to actually fighting enemies there's not much to it but to mash buttons. Enemies take forever to die, and there's constant knockback from projectiles which makes the combat even more frustrating. On top of this there are annoying things like the weapon smith. Having to run down a long hallway to see each weapon you have picked up is just annoying. Some levels also carry on far too long so if you die near the end you will probably not want to play this game anymore.

The visual style is excellent with the classic Behemoth style, and even the humor is great. One level in a forest has animals literally spewing liquid feces because they are scared of the boss slowly approaching behind you. The humor is what makes you want to keep playing, but there's not much of a story here which is fine for this kind of a game. The controls are responsive, but it is everything else wrapped around the combat that makes this frustrating.

Those are just some things that make this game really frustrating to play. Playing with a friend eases that a bit, but it seems the game could use more polish. Even lining up shots are hard because the characters are 2D and you can some times just walk right behind them or in front of them because you weren't lined up right. I, for one, gave up on this game early on because it was just too damn frustrating. That doesn't mean it's bad though. I feel some people like this kind of thing, but being a Behemoth game, that is highly expected. For the low price you are getting a fun and challenging co-op game, but if you don't have any friends, the game will be tough and boring.

(Based on PC version)