The Haunted Hoard: Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (Genesis/Mega Drive)

It’s easy to say a game series gets better later on, but after my harsh coverage of the original Ghosts ‘n Goblins I figured it would be prudent to show it as well. Ghouls ‘n Ghosts continues on from its brutally hard predecessor with a focus on high difficulty and cartoon horror, but this action platformer improves on so many aspects the first game struggled with that it’s staggering. Far less unpredictable randomness and level timers that will likely never even be felt because the compelling action keeps you moving forward on its own, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts plays fair while still demanding the player develop their skills if they wish to conquer its challenging stages.

 

The story behind Ghouls ‘n Ghosts is a bit hard to definitively identify, the manual spinning a yarn about the Prince of Darkness capturing a princess you need to save, but in-game text prefers to call the satanic figure Loki and it seems more like the knight Sir Arthur is attempting to rescue the stolen soul of Princess Prin-Prin instead. The way the story is told varies between regions and which system you play the game on, but it’s not a particularly important setup since it’s mostly just another princess rescue mission for the brave knight to follow the one found in Ghosts ‘n Goblins. Whatever exactly might be happening in the barely present plot, you’re still fighting your way through groups of relentless creatures to reach the castle where the main villain resides, but the path there is a bit more creative in its setting choices than one might expect for a game going for a horror aesthetic.

While the first stage of this side-scrolling action platformer opens with some appropriately spooky imagery like skeletons wielding scythes and guillotines you need to walk through when the blade isn’t slamming down, pushing in deeper already leads to an interesting pull with the scythe-wielding Kamaitachi weasels of Japanese myth swirling towards you in a wind storm. You can never quite anticipate what a future stage might hold even when you get a look at the map of your path forward before starting each stage, because while you might see a windmill village on it, that doesn’t tell you about the bouncing metal shells that turn out to be malicious turtles you’ll need to dodge. Even within one of the game’s six stages you can’t quite be sure how things will shape up. Many levels almost feel more like a few different settings stringed together not so much in size but in theming. You might begin the stage riding an elevator avoiding slime knights and flying goblins only for the next area to shift focus to an entirely horizontal segment where you’re hopping across the wiggling tongues of statues. Checkpoints usually appear between these major shake-ups in level design and make finally clearing that section send a surge of satisfaction into the player after they’ve likely tussled with the dangers of it quite a few times. The player can begin to focus on the trials ahead and learning the ins and outs of the enemies or platforming concepts that now stand in their way, because even if you lose all your lives and get a Game Over, you can pop right back in at that checkpoint with no worry about finite continues or being forced to redo an area you worked so hard to conquer.

 

There is at least one time you will have to repeat most every part of the game though, and that’s right after you beat level 5. To get to the finale and face whatever the devil in this game might be called, you will need a special weapon that you were unable to grab during your first run through. This is, much like in the original Ghosts ‘n Goblins, mostly just a way to make the small amount of stages last longer, but while the difficulty of the dangers you faced the first time through likely made that initial journey rather tough, your knowledge should make the return trip through the stages easier to overcome. There are some changes on the second go through, not just a general increase in difficulty but little touches like certain enemy types appearing in places they didn’t before, but it is mostly a second lap. The weapon you need to pick up and still be holding onto by level 5’s end is a fairly strong tool as well so it’s not a tall order to be told to carry it there, and even if you aren’t able to grab it by then or lose it somehow, level 5 will repeat and give you opportunities to grab it rather than condemning you to yet another full adventure repeat.

 

Sir Arthur begins the game with a set of steel armor and an infinite set of throwing lances, the knight able to take two hits before he croaks. The projectile weapon means you can often deal with danger from a good distance though and Sir Arthur’s movement is responsive so you can pull away from danger in midair, and with some areas in the game having very tight spaces with lethal spiked walls to look out for, you definitely learn to appreciate how well he controls. This responsive movement is further helped by the enemy design in the game, almost all of them giving you a moment to see what they’re up to so you can respond. If some monster is about to spit a fireball, the projectile has a little warm up before it launches. If it’s a creature that can move through floors, it gives you time to see it appear before it moves out and can now damage you. Even the Red Arremer King, the successor to the flying red demons whose swoops in the first game often relied on luck to predict and avoid, now have consistent behaviors you can learn. These flying foes back up and away if you try to jump towards them, and when they do sweep, you can have the time needed to duck under them. They’re difficult to hit and if you’re sloppy you can jump at a bad time and get hurt, but it is an enemy you can learn and adapt to, most foes being consistent in the important ways and unpredictable more in when they might choose to appear or attack but not to the degree that you’re left unable to counter them.

Overcoming an area ends up being a mix of working within whatever platforming danger is at play while avoiding the enemies that try to harass you, but since the foes and level design are balanced to be tough but reasonable matches for each other, successes feel hard fought but well earned. The level timer might as well not be a factor since it renews to a good degree at checkpoints and there are no artificial obstructions that slow you down, Arthur able to aim upward and even leap and throw attacks below in case anyone is trying to block any necessary vertical climbs. If you find yourself in a pinch, you either threw yourself into it because you panicked or you’re paying for an ill-advised action. Ghouls ‘n Ghosts is not without a few devious tricks, but even with things like a bridge that breaks over antlion traps, you are likely first to see it break when you won’t suffer for it doing so and the continue system means anything that tricks you once can be tackled properly next time. Checkpoints are even placed right before boss fights so you can focus on trying to overcome their deadly attacks while still having two layers of armor to learn how they react to your positioning and aggression.

 

Sir Arthur is able to get a few different weapons over the course of the adventure, the starting lance (known as a sword by the game’s manual despite appearances) a simple and reliable tool but others do have their advantages. The daggers can be fired so quickly they can deal heavy damage in a short span, but if you are willing to get up close and personal with the deadly monsters, the actual sword deals much higher damage to reward you for taking the tougher tool. It’s not like every weapon is part of some perfect counterbalance system, the big axe able to fly through foes but since you need to wait for it to pass off-screen before tossing another you can be left unable to attack while simple enemies come in close. The torch though has seen an improvement from the first game, it now taking the form of fire water that spreads forward in a wave of flames if it hits the ground so even a miss has a good chance of harming the foe you were aiming for. Along with the discus and the special weapon you get for the second run, most weapons will do their work fine, but each weapon also has a secondary aspect. When Sir Arthur comes across a treasure chest, he can break it and sometimes find either a standard armor to replace it if he’s taken a hit or possibly a set of golden magic armor. Magic armor allows most weapons to be charged up to release a weapon-specific spell like the dagger having a clone of Arthur appear to throw daggers while the discus will form a shield in front of him if you desire a bit of extra protection. Charging up a spell in the often enemy filled screens isn’t always tenable, but pulling one off usually gives you an interesting attack or effect to make that gold armor feel special for as long as it lasts.

 

Admittedly, those treasure chests will probably instead contain a malicious magician, but since you’re already breaking them open with your weapons, you can often deal with him before he turns you into a feeble old man or helpless duck. A similar little trap can exist in the fact that sometimes a weapon might drop in your path that you don’t want but can’t really get around, and swapping out that necessary power for the end to grab the rather bad axe would be quite aggravating if you couldn’t just sacrifice yourself to a nearby monster with the knowledge that you’ll come back at least relatively close to where you died. It would be nice not to have to do so, but it’s a small bother you do have some control over and it certainly doesn’t diminish the efficacy of the stages that are most often enjoyable but tough tests of your mastery of Sir Arthur’s small but useful skillset. Victory is never so far out of your grip that it feels like it’s best to stop trying, the difficulty the kind you could possibly overcome with quick reflexes or by coming to know your opposition well enough that the next push through might just go your way so long as you never forget to approach the monsters with the proper level of caution.

THE VERDICT: A marked improvement over Ghosts ‘n Goblins in most every way, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts presents that coveted “tough but fair” level of difficulty where overcoming its monsters and level concepts requires skill and reactive play most of all. The continue system lets you have the small satisfying victories of clearing a distinct section of a level and focus your attention on the next compelling but challenging trial, and while making you go through the adventure twice is a bit of a cheap trick to lengthen the journey, if you reach the point you need to go through that second run then even its increased difficulty won’t impede you too much. Instead you can enjoy a game with responsive controls and enemies built around your abilities so they can be hard but reasonably surmountable. Ghouls ‘n Ghosts gives you the space to push through its brutal challenges and come out the other end knowing you earned that win.

 

And so, I give Ghouls ‘n Ghosts for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive…

A GREAT rating. It is impressive how much of an inversion in quality Ghouls ‘n Ghosts is compared to the arcade version of Ghosts ‘n Goblins.  Only a few years had passed, but almost every improvement that needed to be made was implemented beyond some lingering ideas like needing to replay the five stages. Ghouls ‘n Ghosts on Sega Genesis is a port of an arcade game but it doesn’t show any signs of the kind of tricks used to ply quarters out of players save that second go round, the level timers really only being an issue if you are puttering around and the randomness that does crop up gives you some indication its occurring so you can get away from an appearing enemy or be ready to avoid the attack the monster selects to use. That level of consistency makes things predictable but not overly so, the player able to start to hone their abilities and not forced back to earlier areas just to slow down that process of learning what needs to be done to overcome the dangers ahead. That second run can even be seen as a sort of test to prove you didn’t just bumble your way to a victory without forcing too much repetition when you die and need to continue. The weapons are mostly a solid set that feels a good fit for the dangers the monster pose and the variety found within the level’s aesthetics and even just the way you navigate them is impressively diverse. It feels less like a horror grab bag and more like an experimental space where unusual creatures can both look interesting and attack in brand new ways. The game could probably do with less magicians in chests more because of how common they are rather than them being truly dangerous and a way to clear away an item you don’t want that’s lying in your path forward could be helpful, but Ghouls n’ Ghosts has a strong sense in most places on how hard to push so that you won’t be fatigued by what you must face and you will enjoy finally getting past it because it was a product of your work learning it and responding to it properly.

 

While I left off in the Ghosts ‘n Goblins review with a note that the series got better later on, it was not because I knew how excellent Ghouls ‘n Ghosts would be. I had dipped my toes instead in Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, a different game in the series but still one that showed that Capcom was learning on how to balance things better. This is not merely a case of a game seeming better just by comparison though. Ghouls ‘n Ghost on Sega Genesis shows an understanding of how to make an action platformer incredibly hard without compromising what can make that appealing with unfair tricks. It might not entertain you if you prefer a slower or less difficult game of course, but if you’re ready for a challenge, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts is built to provide you with the kind of well-earned wins that make completing a truly challenging game so appealing