The first Lecarde Chronicles (2013), all flaws noted, was the best Castlevania fan game I’d seen, no question. Nicely iterated level design, interesting usage of space for its own sake, memorable settings, imaginatively themed grotesque bosses, very atmospheric – in certain ways, stylistically, a follow-up to Castlevania 4.
The sequel may or may not be better – however you feel may come down to how much you want the RPG elements to be involved – but it does look good and confident. What’s sorta surprising is that these’re the works of the same person, Mig Perez, responsible for Haunted Castle 2 and 3 – really just a couple of awful, plain ugly knockoffs. Then again, they precede the Lecarde Chronicles series by over a decade. It’s clear that Perez, as a programmer, level/boss designer, and graphical artist, has been improving since then.
VERY IMPORTANT THING: In a world where most Castlevania fan game soundtracks are percussive-heavy and stress the rock/metal/etc. angle that somehow got attached to majority interpretations of what the series’ music was (in spirit??? I don’t even know), Lecarde Chronicles 2 has a ton of themes with no percussion whatsoever or pure ambient noise. It’s great and makes it stand out even more.
Here’re some screens I took of the first Lecarde Chronicles.
I saw a writeup about this second game on maybe Indie Games or Metroidvanias.com a week or two ago and it looked promising and the work of great skill and dedication, though with a whiff of kusoge seeping under the door.
Have you played it yet? I guess I must have glossed over the fact that it was $free.99 and already available, will have to try to get it up and running on the CRT soon.
Not sure what OS revision you’re running or if it makes a difference, or if helpful in general: but I just quickly created a Wineskin wrapper with the default settings and it seems to run and function ok (for the 30 seconds I moved around for) on my 2013 Air running 10.11.1.
I guess I’m Another Only Other Person Who Cares about this because it’s super pertinent to my tastes, honestly. Def gonna play this when I have more time + energy
Played this for a few hours last night and today. I like it it is not a bad game. I think the main character sprite is the weakest visual aspect, and everything else looks pretty cool. I think the higher 640x480 res helps lend it a unique feel, very PC. In general feels decent, well built - movement, jumping, slashing all fine enough.
I like that a large chunk of it takes place outdoors. At a point where I’m not sure where to get any of the required lock+key abilities to progress (this swamp is poisonous!, this door is too windy to walk past! these vines are too spiky to climb without GAUNTLETS! this mountain is too cold to survive!). Seems like it kinda maintains a higher level of lethality so far.
