Enchanted Portals
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 If you thought Mighty No. 9, a Mega Man clone that failed, was bad enough, this failed Cuphead clone makes that game look like a masterpiece.
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Enchanted Portals is a platform video game developed and published by Xixo Games Studio. It was released on September 5, 2023, for Microsoft Windows, September 8, 2023, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and November 1 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The game drew comparisons to the 2017 platformer Cuphead, with whom it shares its gameplay and visual style, and received largely negative reviews.
Development
In October 2019, Xixo Games Studio, a Spanish two-person development team, announced that they were planning to fund Enchanted Portals via a Kickstarter campaign. After a delay due to negotiations with a prospective publisher, the campaign was launched in 2020. The Kickstarter failed to meet its €120,000 goal.
Why It's Not Enchanted
- For Starters, all the content is cut due to rushing the development. Because the Kickstarter is so low the developer had to release it anyway due to lack of interest and funding.
- Poor graphics: This game is trying too hard to be like Cuphead, but compared to that game, there many unpolished animations, and others are good. The worst example is the death animation, which is bad, even if you get hit in the air, the character's death just lies flat down (instead of falling) regardless of any absence of solid ground.
- Not to mention, several animations of the characters have been hugely downgraded due to low budget.
- Another flaw with the art style is that it’s inconsistent and will change randomly without proper transition. Some assets are out of place with the theme of a cartoony and a magical world with rubber hose styling.
- As for the backgrounds, they are mostly empty and devoid of activity or interest around the areas, it's clear that more work could’ve been done to feel attractive enough. Mostly consists of static scenery and reuses the same assets. Also these backgrounds appear very artificially made and out of place for the intended style as if they were used for a flash cartoon series.
- In a visual perspective, the physics are also slow and stiff as if it were set on the moon or slow-motion. Almost everything moves and animates at a slow velocity and lacking any other exaggerated effects to further amplify the movement.
- The level design is poor, flat, and repetitive and attempts to compensate for 'difficulty' through swarms of enemies and padded length, but what is most shocking is that the levels themselves are randomly generated which leads to sections of the level abruptly ending and being replaced by an entirely different area without a proper transition. Because of this, the difficulty can be unintentionally harder than it needs to be.
- Frustratingly, there are no checkpoints in the levels. While there is a halfway mark in the stages, they don't function as true respawn points.
- Weak enemy designs, especially in comparison to Cuphead. The enemies have a horrible placement that can be hard to complete due to poor-level design and having bigger hitboxes and extortionate amounts of health.
- Also many of the enemy types are functionally too similar to each other with most of them just categorized as ones that fly across the screen in swarms or some that just stand and attack. The enemies don’t despawn and spawn in numbers so you are forced to clear them and you’ll be punished if you attempt to ignore them, which results in a constant stop and shoot.
- The game has so many bugs and glitches at release due to rushing the development.
- Just like Redfall, The cutscenes are just the static image of this story, there's only 1 intro animated in the entire game. Originally, the developer promised that would be fully animated, but due to budget cuts, this fully animated cutscene has been replaced.
- The bosses range from boring to utterly frustrating. In general, the bosses are poorly designed with the majority of them relying on projectile spam for difficulty, invincible enemies and projectiles, and their attacking patterns are wildly relentless, unfairly sudden, or too subtle to be warned. Even if you ease the difficulty, they are still weakly designed as they only have a singular attack and nothing else interesting to spice up the fight.
- The first phase of the Witch boss of level 1 is underwhelming, you're just shooting the bosses in the corner just to not get hit by tombstones while also avoiding cats that run across the screen which you cannot kill by the way, after that, the transition is changing the art style and pattern, this pattern is a massive difficulty spike because of the indestructible bubbles that are hard to avoid because of the constrained jumping mechanics and constantly spawning unkillable snakes. And finally, this final phase is absolutely garbage to look at due to poor animation, random attack patterns and the large hitbox of the boss and her projectiles. Also when a transition happens, the boss still attacks and you can take damage.
- The cow boss is extremely easy in both the first and second phases, and when you get to the third phase, there are so many attack patterns that can't be dodged and yes, this phase is a rip-off to the Dr. Kahl Boss from Cuphead and her design is a rip-off of Esther Winchester from The Delicious Last Course DLC from said game.
- World 5's first boss is a buffalo that is extremely tanky in health and spams projectiles and enemies that cannot be destroyed. The main issue is that there is an enemy walking along the bull that is unkillable shooting a bullet going upwards then falling down toward you. It is also boring boss to get through as they have excessive amounts of health within each phase prolonging the fight than necessary.
- The final boss is just a boss rush combined into one, and it reveals that the book is responsible for this. This boss is hard and yes, it changing the art that does not fit in this game. If you die in the last level, you have to start all over again.
- Abysmal controls, the controls are unresponsive and clunky, and to change the weapon, you need to hit the D-pad to change the weapon and be on ground, this isn't right for controls, as the D-pad is supposedly for movement, instead of the changing weapon.
- The shield spell does not have the best implementation, it cannot be used while on the move or midair and that the spell has a long period to use again.
- Restrictive and slippery physics that are difficult to control. Your jump height cannot be controlled, dashes are unable to be cancelled and carry you further. The platforming and dodging projectiles becomes tediously precise because of these factors.
- No invincibility frames, enemies, hazards and projectiles will shred through chunks of your health quickly if you try to get past them making mistakes or stage skips or dodges more punishing than it needs to be.
- Not much in a variety of weapons, the main weapons are bland with barely any distinctive upsides or downsides to make them especially good in certain situations. The entire arsenal can be really can be summed up to simple projectiles that shoot in your direction. The general gameplay becomes stale as there is a lack of upgrades to enhance your survivability or attacks.
- The game includes a melee attack option but it rarely comes into play and forced only twice in the entire game. The limited range and pitiful damage your strikes do is not worth trading over the ranged spells.
- The game introduces a mechanic where certain enemies have a different glowing color to them and your weapon types can only kill them. The problem is that there is little reward for switching weapon types and it's underutilized, not to mention these are put on the same enemy types.
- Critically, there's no auto-save feature the developer forgot how to save the game, unlike Cuphead.
- Bland soundtrack, in general, lacks a distinct tone that barely matches the stage or boss battles, the music isn’t very energetic and sounds too relaxed. This also extends to the sound design as well in which most other assets (excluding the player) don’t emit any audio and their quality is comparable to stock or generic rather than the cartoony vibes it should have been.
- False advertising: In the trailer, There's a third jungle level where you can swing around and there are some bosses that will be included in the game, but when in the final game, the third jungle level has been cut and some bosses are moved to the last level.
- Overpriced: The game costs about 18 USD and it barely justifies the game's shallow amount of content and quality overall.
- Extremely short length, the game can be finished in only 1 hour or even less, even Cuphead lasts a bit longer than this excluding the DLC!
- No replay value. The only form of replay challenge would be changing difficulty settings but it's underwhelming as they don't actually modify the levels in accordance to the selected value, they just change the maximum health of the players. No collectibles or other unlockables in the stages to encourage replay are present.
Redeeming Qualities
- The character designs are really good.
- Some animations are pretty good despite being downgraded.
- At least, the demo is better than the actual full game.
- The concept of Witch Mixing with 30s cartoons is interesting, but the execution is terrible due to budget problems.
Reception
The game received negative reviews from critics for its poor gameplay, story, and difficulty.
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