Is this the time for Guardian of Gotta? The franchise has long been underappreciated, as launching on the little-used Xbox Live Indies service and followed by a 3DS sequel made West a bit late to find an audience on the platform. New game, Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness? It’s on the still-popular Nintendo Switch platform, and a real marketing push means more people will actually know about it. Does the gameplay of the latest entry support this promise?
inside Guardian of Gotta In the franchise, you play as one of a collection of classes and protect Princess Lola from waves of goblins and other baddies. You have a variety of different attacks, as well as the ability to build and upgrade obstacles to stop the enemy. Shadow Basket mostly follow this formula, but build levels around the train line. You put Lola on a train in the castle, and she can go down the tracks and ram the enemy castle until it crumbles.
The train element seeks to unify the ideas of the first two parts. first game, Protect me knight, the featured single screens. The 3DS sequel featured much larger maps, controlled by the 3DS’ individual player screens. To keep the environment larger but revert to playing locally on the shared screen, Shadow Basket move you around the map with routes. You can just push Lola alone, if you want! (And you’ll need to do that to find the secret, aside from the occasional tactical opportunity.)
Play sessions are conducted along four-stage paths. Instead of continuous leveling, Shadow Basket allows you to invest resources in upgrading the tree in a single chapter at interval screens. This does several things! First: it puts all players on an even playing field. People with different playing time can join together without big balance problem. Second: it takes back the magic of the original game! In general, each chapter of Shadow Basket works like the entire campaign of that short but engaging Xbox 360 game. That makes each chapter a satisfying passage.
Each class in the game offers different moves and powers. Once you’ve unlocked all the abilities, there’s plenty of room to experiment! And it’s even possible to shape a class you like into a style of play that’s better for you. If there’s one acquired hobby in the group, it’s definitely the Old Man, with some complicated skillset and obvious drawbacks. (The online stats agree, as he uses half as often as the others.) We’ve been huge fans of the igniting Mage setup map since the first game, but they are. I would love to try other schematics. And that flexibility? It can also be good for those who are less interested in the design of characters like Amazon and Ninja. Other characters can manage similar builds.
Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness is best with the full complement of friends. The game fully supports online and local play options. In our testing, we had no issues with online play, which is impressive for a small development team like this! However you play, it’s fun to split the tasks and focus on the majors. Are you running a better build for crowd control? Or maximum damage to a boss? Hey, maybe you’re the barrier expert. A lot is always going on on screen, so dividing these responsibilities is a huge help.
If you need to play solo (and we did a lot for this review), you can take advantage of a few things. First: difficult! The game doesn’t really scale according to the number of players, instead offering different difficulties and allowing you to move up or down according to your preference. There’s no shame in playing solo on Easy when you need to get through a tough period.
In addition, in all configurations, you choose a party of three characters and load, and you can swap at any time. This can also be useful in multiplayer! But that’s especially important for yourself, as you can swap out your defensive character or build up DPS depending on the situation. The break time upgrade also applies to your whole party, so don’t worry there. Through spending in-game gold, you can unlock new refills for each class. While they’re great suggestions for gameplay strategies, what’s most helpful is that all abilities in each game are unlocked as options for “custom” loading.
Aesthetically, Guardian of Gotta builds on Famicom/NES nostalgia. Main Developer Makoto”Karu_gamo“Wada, who has also been involved in actual NES work, understands the interface well. And keeping it simple can make it easier to develop! Time in Shadow Basket clearly spent on expanding the sheer amount of content in the game, offering dozens upon dozens of levels.
And we couldn’t get through this review without talking about Yuzo Koshiro’s compositions. The ancient master used Guardian of Gotta franchise as a kind of playground, creating new tracks in the same nostalgic style as the ones that made his name. In many ways, Guardian of Gotta The game is worth it for the soundtrack alone! And this makes no difference.
The game’s appeal is underscored by some truly top notch localization work. Shadow Basket is a funny comedy and it adapts the script to suit Western nostalgia. All the cartridges are made for a huge undertaking, to be sure, but we appreciate the random text and the interlaced display. There’s still a place in our hearts for the first game’s captivating raw approach, but Shadow Basket is one of those releases that screams the value of good localization from the rooftops.
But about those cartridges, though! You can equip them for a little boost, which is fun, but you can find some useful bonuses without having to spend hours searching. They won’t dominate your experience if you don’t want to be bothered. However, the presence of an exotic collection gives players a lot of opportunities to experiment. You’ll get some hints on how to find them, but for the most part we’ve found it easiest to just scour the map and look for suspicious locations. And hey, your reward? A nostalgic chuckle. Not too bad.
Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness refines an already great game system and offers lots of challenges to keep you busy! And hey, maybe this time, more lucky players will discover it.
Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness Released April 14, 2022 on Nintendo Switch eShop. One physical version of games are also on the way from Limited Run Games. To know more about Shadow Basketour test Interview with game creators.
Disclosure: A member of the Siliconera staff contributed to the production of the physical version of the game. That employee was not at all involved in writing or publishing this review.
