Cave Story – Game Review | Super Geek Bros.

Merry Christmas!
I’m Johnny…
What the hell are you talking about?
Christmas is over.
What? Already?!
It went by so fast…
and we didn’t even make
a Christmas episode…
Anyway, I’m Gabe
and today we’ll be talking about
the indie classic, Cave Story.
You might have heard
about this game
thanks to its popularity,
but in case you haven’t,
let’s talk a bit about
the story behind it.
Cave Story is a freeware
indie game from 2004
developed solely by Japanese
developer Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya
in his free time
for over five years.
The game is very
metroidvania-like,
with visuals and mechanics that
remind games from the late 80’s.
It has grown more and
more popular over time,
being praised by many as one of
the best indie games of all time
and was later ported to
many other platforms.
You play as an
amnesiac robot
who stumbled across
the plot of an evil Doctor
who wants to kidnap
the bunny-looking Mimiga
and weaponize their
fluffy faces to wage war
against the human race
on the surface.
Being a good
clueless protagonist,
you set out to
help the little guys
and stop the mad megalomaniac
without further questions.
I gotta admit the story

sounds
mostly simplistic and flat
but as you meet a few
characters along the way
who are in serious danger
and in need of your help,
you start to care about their
well beings and your mission.
Despite the cute looks,
their dialogues are
as serious as they get
and as you move forward
through the game
and the bad guy’s
plans advance
it feels that more and more
is at stake if you fail.
It reminded me a lot of
Undertale actually,
with the whole cutesy but
serious tone of the game,
even the visuals, honestly.
I wouldn’t be surprised
if Toby Fox
had used Cave Story as
an inspiration for his own game.
The game is separated
in a few short areas
usually linked to the
Mimiga village by a teleport.
In each you often have to
help a couple of characters,
discover new types
of enemies,
maybe get a new ability
and platform a bit
till you reach the area boss
and be sent back to the village.
While you can return to previous
areas at almost any time,
most upgrades and
secrets are quite visible
so you won’t likely be returning
to re-explore them later.
Your movements
feel quite floaty,
but the platforming
is rarely unforgiving
and, even when
it may cause death,
there was usually
a save point nearby
to quickly continue
from where you stopped.
It just becomes a little
annoying around bosses
as they tend to talk
a bit before battling
and you can’t skip
their conversation,
so when you are having
trouble in a specific fight
it can break
the pace a little.
And talking about
save points,
there are no checkpoints
in this game.
So remember to save
every chance you get
otherwise you will find yourself
redoing a bunch of stuff over and over.
But, overall,
the game is not all that hard,
that is, up to the final area,
but we won’t spoil why.
A very creative mechanic was introduced
in the weapons upgrades:
as you defeat enemies,
it is fairly common for them
to drop energy crystals
that enhance your
currently equipped weapon
by making it deal
more damage,
have longer range
and bigger projectiles,
some weapons even
change almost completely
once you reach the max level.
The energy bar drops along with
your health whenever you get hit,
this way the game constantly
rewards you when you’re doing better
and makes you find a balance
between going more offensive
with a stronger weapon while risking
getting hit and downgrading it.
Like we said before,
the game takes a lot of inspiration
from NES and SNES games.
But it’s not just made entirely
with pixels and stuff,
the original art
and sounds are so retro
that it actually
has a fan-made port
that runs on an
actual Sega Genesis,
or Mega Drive,
depending on where you’re from.
We played Cave Story+,
which was given for free
at the Epic Store a few days back
and is an updated
version of the original
containing all the extra content
released in previous versions
with remastered
visuals and sounds
plus the nice option
to switch to the originals.
Also, there was a version released
for the 3DS a few years back
that had 3D graphics
made from scratch
that gave a completely
different look to the game,
but honestly, they don’t look as good
as the original or the remastered.
The soundtrack is one of the aspects
of the game that really shines.
Although it does have
some controversies behind it
since the most recent
versions of the game
have different options
for you to choose from,
so some people only like
the original and hate the others,
while some people like all of them,
which was my case,
but I will admit that
some are better than others.
While being
reasonably short,
Cave Story makes up for it
by having multiple endings.
During your adventure,
there are a few choices and actions
you can make that impact
which of the 3 endings you will get.
You can also
unlock the option
to play through the game
with another character,
which gives even
more replay value.
And if you are
not following a guide
you’ll probably
miss your chance
to get all of the game’s
endings on your first run,
but to play
through it all again
wouldn’t necessarily
be a bad thing,
since the game
is pretty fun,
there are other
difficulty levels choose
and you can listen to
one of the other soundtracks,
making your newer
playthrough sounds fresh.
Cave Story has already been
released for many platforms
and the original one
is still free
so if you have
never played it,
now you have no excuse
not to download it
and check for yourself.
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more content like this.
And you may also
wanna check our last video
about The Messenger,
another awesome retro indie game.
See you next time.
And Happy New Year!

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