love it

Some games you play for the fun. Some games you play for the challenge. Others you play for the story, the personality, and sometimes the beauty, or maybe the music. Cave Story is a game where every one of these things keeps me going, and I don't think I can say that about any other.

This game is beautiful, fun, challenging, and one of those true works of art that make me really happy. This famous indie game is definitely worth it no matter what kind of gamer you are.

Perfection / 10

I mean really
It's Cave Story :D

It’s not easy to even start talking about Cave Story without starting to throw out such adjectives like “modern classic” or “cult underground hit”. But there, you have it, I just wrote it and I won’t take it back. This game preceded the current state of indie scene by a few years, back when it was released as freeware title in 2004. In a few years it was improved and expanded to various platforms with more content and refined graphics. It even was remade in 3D and published for 3DS, though that particular version lacks to provide definitive Cave Story experience. But in the beginning it was made by a single developer on his free time. His name was Daisuke Amaya. The fact that this guy is japanese (not that you couldn’t tell it by his name) explains a lot. Like, for starters, game’s setting and plot.
Taking place inside giant floating island inhabited by giant sentient rabbit-like creatures called Mimigas this story is both absurd and complex. Starting out very light-hearted game is filled with tremendous amount of jokes. While the story develops, it tends to grow deeper and more brutal than you might think it’ll turn out. Like many metroidvanias do, game prefers not to present you with the world details and backstory, but rather let you explore it by yourself. A vague prologue, which will leave player clueless transits to waking up in a cave. A silent protagonist suffering from memory loss, as cliché as it is, works as perfect instrument here. You wake up, you find a gun, you begin your journey. Your mission, your ultimate goal is covered with the mystery. And discovering it can’t be done separately with finding an answer to an even more important question “What the hell is going on here?” But searching it won’t be similar to aimless wandering around. Cave Story keeps a very good pace, presenting you with new goals and providing directions to them on the go. It isn’t large glowing marker on the map though, but rather clevel organization of levels and progression of the story. Exploring and finding hidden secrets is present in the game, but size of the areas isn’t overwhelming and new levels are introduced one by one. There is though few very unobvious decisions that change the outcome of the game drastically. So if you want to achieve the best ending prepare to keep a keen eye for details or rather even look for some guides.
From the perspective of game mechanics it’s the usual run-jump-shoot trio, but with a few twists. One of them is leveling system. Killed enemies drop yellow triangles, which fill the progression bar of currently equipped weapon. Fully filled bar increases weapon level, up to maximum third, but taking damage drops the bar back down, so prepare for some micromanagement. Weapons have different shooting patterns. There is Polar Star which fires plain bullets, then there’s Fireball which produces bouncing deadly balls of fire. Then there’s Spur which has chargeable beam; the longer you charge it, the more powerful the resulting shot will be. Plenty of choices results in very different strategies player can use. Though you’ll tend to have favourites among your arsenal, keeping them all leveled up and ready will be invaluable. To make things even more complex some of the weapons can be traded off in exchange providing you with other guns which have different qualities. This changes are sometimes mutually exclusive and not always reversible, so don’t answer yes every time some friendly NPC offers you something, that’s my advice here. Unlike your main interaction tools your character doesn’t really level up, with the exception of few valuable health upgrades. Not very hard if you keep the default path game is horribly ruthless when it comes to that last levels of the “best ending” branch. How does it sound for you: beating a few sequential levels swarming with enemies and two bosses? If you fail, you start again from the very beginning. That’s very different from the main path, where you’ll find save points after every major event. But then again, it’s for those who want to fully beat the game. For those who are trained and prepared there are even special timer for that last sequence, beating last boss before time runs out will unlock one of the few special music tracks in main menu. The themes depend on how fast you complete it, a new one for each minute saved. And that happens only if you found special secret item, but I guess that won’t be a problem for those who are that deep in the game.
Cave Story stands on the shoulders of giants, combining elements from both Metroid and Mega Man. But it goes further than just simple copying of old classics. It is polished and compelling and its influence knows no merits; nearly every modern 2D-metroidvania has taken some lessons from here. A must-have experience if you call yourself a lover of modern indie-games.

Got a dog by opening a chest.

10/10

Cave Story is an independent game by Daisuke ''Pixel'' Amaya. He created everything in the game. Over a five year time period. That includes everything from artwork to the music. Originally a free download in 2004, Cave Story has grown a large following, that spawned various ports across many platforms. This version however, is probably the best of them all. The publisher Nicalis gave the game a complete graphical overhaul. Sprites are a lot more detailed. There's even three different soundtracks to choose from. The original and two remixed ones. But enough about that, let me explain why I love this game.

The game is a 2D action platformer, borrowing a lot of elements from the Metroid series. You start off with your first weapon, the Polar Star. A gun which has infinite ammunition, and you can fire in four directions. What's interesting is that there's a unique weapon leveling system. Defeated enemies drop these yellow triangles. When you collect enough, your weapon can level up. Getting more powerful each time. You can only go to level 3 maximum. But it doesn't last forever either. When you take damage you lose some of your weapon's experience, so it can drop to lower levels again. It's not only the Polar Star, you will eventually find a Missile launcher too. This one has a limited ammunition supply. You will need to collect spare missiles from fallen enemies. You can find missile upgrades to be able to carry more. Speaking of upgrades, there's also health upgrades you can find, so you can take more damage.

It's no lie. The game has a story too. At first, I thought it was rather simple. But as the game progressed, I started running into more and more new characters. I wanted to know more about them, and I wanted to understand the story behind the cave we're in, and about the main character, which the game doesn't tell you about until much later. It really develops into something bigger later on. I enjoy the sense of scale. A cool thing about it is that there's three different endings. There's the bad ending, the normal ending, and the best ending. Ranging from easy to obtain, to more difficult. One thing I don't like is that the best ending will be near impossible for a new player to obtain without the help of a walkthrough of some kind. It can be done, but it's hard. There are a few key moments in the game where the choices you make will affect whether or not you'll be able to get it.

The music is fantastic. There's not one track I dislike. During my first playthrough, when I ran into a new music track, I thought to myself that this would be as good as it would get. But it would never be the case. A new better music track would always appear. I liked it that much. The melodies are so memorable. I love how it perfectly finds balance between awesome upbeat songs, and relaxing ambient themes. As mentioned before, the game has three different soundtracks. There's the classic original soundtrack, from the 2004 release. The ''New'' remixed soundtrack from the Wii Ware version. And then there's the Remastered soundtrack from Cave Story 3D. Even though I enjoy them all, if I had to rank them I'd say that the Remastered soundtrack is my favorite, and the ''New'' soundtrack is my least favorite. Again, they're all really good and distinct. But the Remastered one takes the cake for me.

In terms of difficulty, I think the game nailed it. I don't feel like I was ever really frustrated. Well, maybe on the final boss... but that's usually to be expected anyway. The game starts off in a small cave area with death spikes that will kill you instantly. You have no power. Until you find your first health upgrade, and then your first weapon, the Polar Star. And then from there, you just feel like you're getting stronger and stronger. It's really cool how getting one small upgrade can boost your confidence by a lot. To mix things up, this version has three difficulties. Easy, Normal, and Hard. Easy is well... easy. Only difference from Normal is that the damage you take is cut in half. I reccomend it for new players, trying it for the first time. Normal isn't that bad either, it's really well balanced. Hard mode on the other hand... you only have a maximum health of 3. You can't obtain the missile launcher, and there's no upgrades whatsoever.

What's unfortunate about the game is that it's a little bit short. The game can be finished in around 4-5 hours on your first playthrough. But I can't take away points for length, because the game is still fantastic, and I'm evaluating the experience that's there. This version of the game also has quite a bit of bonus content. This adds a lot of extra replay value. You can unlock a different version of the main game fairly early. There's also a few challenge modes. Some of which are very difficult. They force you to master some of the items you've obtained over the course of the main game, and will test your patience. You can't just go in shoothing everything, you need to carefully time your every jump and plan the targets to fire at.

Even with all I've said, I don't think I've covered everything. The great gameplay, the engaging story, the fantastic music, the perfect difficulty, and the awesome pixel art create not only one of the greatest indie games ever, but one of my favorite games of all-time. Everybody who enjoys 2D platformers should definitely play this game. If you're still not convinced about the game, but you're still curious, you can always download and play the original version from 2004 for free. Even though it doesn't have a lot of features from the newer versions, the gameplay and story remains intact. If you enjoy it, I hope you will buy this version to support the developer, and this amazing game.