The Cuphead RIP-OFF That Gets EVERYTHING Wrong

I think the developers need to understand that, spamming enemies doesnt make your game challenging, it just makes it unfair

As terrible as the game is, none of it feels malicious. The game was a product of two people, who were filled with inspiration from Cuphead, not having enough coding skills, funds, or support to make their dreams come true. I hope they can learn from the game's mistakes and make a new and great game.

The really sad thing is that, while watching the video, most of the bosses had me going, "Oh, that's such a fun idea!" The cowboy birds riding a bison that then swaps to the inverse, the fountain of youth, the cow alien. Such fun and creative concepts bogged down by horrible execution.

Man, I feel like the swapping art style thing could have been a really cool effect, especially if it was saved as a twist for the final boss and possibly mixed in with the whole time travel aspect. Feels like the pieces were there but they just didn't come together

Fun fact: The reason as to the trailer showing the game being much smoother is actually because it was supposed to originally be made in Adobe Flash, but the timebomb forced them to start from scratch with HTML.

The Beethoven boss turning into a rock band in it's final phase would've been the coolest thing ever.

I think if they had shifted art styles all the time throughout the game, it would have been more interesting and at least been less obvious with how they were cutting corners

I actually feel bad, because clearly the developers just wanted to make something like a game that they loved, and it's actually pretty well done for only two people...
But there are so many minor things that could have been done to make this so much better. Hopefully they will be addressed later on.

The dog fight actually could've incorporated the color system by letting you choose which dog head you wanted to keep out of the fight
Small things like that make me sad

Something Enchanted Portals really fails at in comparison to Cuphead is how each new phase of a boss fight wows you. One of my favorite aspects of Cuphead was seeing what crazy new thing the boss would do in the next phase.
Goopy Le Grande grows giant in phase 2 and in phase 3 he's crushed by a tombstone and you fight his grave. Ribby and Croaks turn into a fan in phase 2 and combine into a slot machine in phase 3. Esther Winchester uses a vacuum machine in phase 2, then gets sucked into it and turns into sausage, and finally is canned as hot dogs where you fight the can.
It's this kind of wackiness and unpredictably I loved and Enchanted Portals just can't match the creativity at all.

Could you imagine how fun and creative some of these bosses would’ve been if they were actually made by the people who made cuphead? That would’ve been great

I wonder if the guns in the bison boss fight being completely silent could have been a result of them previously being bows and arrows, and the devs not bothering to get new sound effects

I, personally, think that they could have gotten away with the art style change thing if most bosses had at least ONE style change. Like, cow had an 8-bit phase, Princess looked like medieval tapestry, so on so forth.

The funniest part to me is how people thought the game looked bad based off the trailer, however the stuff shown off in the trailers ended up being the best parts of the game visual wise, with just about everything else new added in the final product being considerably worse.

Only one correction -
From a programming standpoint it is much, much harder to teach a computer how to randomly generate levels for your game than it is to just tell it once and be done, which makes the choice to dump man-hours into such a blandly fruited endeavor all the more baffling

I was actually really excited for this one. "Clone" gets a bad reputation but older gamers know clones can be a lot of fun and are usually the sign of a new genre. It's frustrating because gamers are missing out on a lot of great games with this label. And the clones gamers do play, they will bend over backwards to say how original these games that are very much clones are. The example of the latter would be the string of mostly good Hollow Knight clones that are more than just your standard metroidvania and have a lot of the same mechanics and move sets as Hollow Knight. Mention one of those is a clone and someone in a fedora will pop out and say "well actually metroidvania is a genre" like these clones have nothing else in common. I still remember all the great Doom clones which over time grew into what we'd call the FPS genre.
There's nothing wrong with something being a clone. Not everything has to be high art and you can't copyright game mechanics. Over time these games will grow more distinct. Being opposed to them is a good way to kill a budding genre.
With that said, there's so many baffling game design choices in this. It's like they understood very little about why Cuphead worked. Being a clone isn't the same thing as being bad.

This game actually got an update that fixes a few issues. Most noticeable, you can now change weapons anytime with a single button. No more d-pad, no more standing still. It doesn't fix any other issues, but at least they're listening.

I just wanna say I really love it that this story starts hopeful in tone as if the narrator is excited for the game and then devolves into frustration and inevitably rage to the point where he's like "these giant fucking lasers". it's beautiful

Imagine how cool it would've been if with each world, the artstyle would change to match the "story" they're in. It'd fit thematically with the game's lore and story as if they're jumping from book to book

42:41 It’s also kind of odd if you notice that the rooster fight in the trailer has him actually sidestepping across the stage but in the final game he just slides around while playing the mismatched animation.

if this game had a bigger budget i would've absolutely loved if they incorporated the artstyle change into every boss

I think the final world ending with random art style changes and shoved in unfinished bosses could be fixed with a few story tweaks
Something like the kids being on cleaning duty as punishment for messing up in one of their mahic classes. While they clean, they accidentally knock over/awaken some sort of sentient, evil spellbook, which wreaks havoc on the library by going into the stories and messing them up. Wanting to fix their mistake and prove themselves as capable wizards, the main characters go into the stories to fix the trouble they/the book caused. I think this would give better motivation than "we do spell and fight monsters in book because this is a video game and we need to progress the plot". This story could excuse the style changes and inconsistencies by having the evil spellbook mash different pages of different books together, causing the plot to become convoluted because of the random stories mashed in.
For example, the pianist level could be from a libretto, the anime style from a manga, etc etc etc
Hopefully this makes sense. I am very sleep deprived so the grammar and stuff might be off

Another thing about the bullet color requirements is that they'll have the same enemies be any of the three colors, rather than assigning specific enemies specific bullet damage types. This means that you could be faced with having to intentionally nerf your own potential damage output against certain enemies where a certain method of fire could be more effective.
Honestly, the whole "bullet color matchup" mechanic should've been scrapped wholesale. I get what they were going for, but it was implemented so poorly that it really just shouldn't have made the final cut.

I genuinely really like some of the animations here. The opening cutscene, the Witch's first phase, the coconut tree, the Cow's first phase, and Rocky's laugh while he checks himself in the mirror are all quite good. Hell, even the character's death animation is good, it just looks off because you're usually not on the ground during gameplay. If it was an animation unique to when you died while on the ground/a platform, it'd probably be fine. The final phase of the last boss is a well done idle animation imo, particularly the sleeve's movement and the hat's angle changing with the head, but it's weird that it has NO other animations.
I think it's a crying shame to see so obviously where things had to get rushed, because there are parts that feel like they had real care put into them. No amount of good animations can fix busted gameplay though.

The thing is, the idea of going to different worlds and changing art styles to each world is an interesting concept. If they leaned more into that concept it would have helped distance themselves from Cuphead more.

The cerberus fight is part of why I believe this game wasn't originally themed after rubberhose animation, and possibly just animations in general. Those three dog breeds are all MODERN joke breeds: the pug, chihuahua, and shiba inu. They're not something "traditionally" 1920's like Cuphead's more on-the-nose dice-headed gambling boss or living booze bottles.
This game would have been so much cooler if it "jumped" through different animation styles every level, and only one stage was rubberhose. The cow boss could be a 90s animation style, the frog princess could be a Disney animation, the witch could be entirely Tim Burton (and actually stop-motion, not just a drawing of it), and the Cerberus fight could have been themed after those late 2000's/early 2010's flash meme cartoons.
It would be asking a lot of a game with such a shoestring budget, obviously, but there are lots of little hints in this game that at one point they wanted to "stop" being Cuphead by being a bunch of things, and then the budget just didn't let them.

I was among those who was rooting for the devs and hoping the final product was going to be good; if nothing else, it would've at least prompted some of the detractors to soften their stance and accept the game rather than feel validated for shitting on it. So it's really sad to see that it not only failed to deliver, but also bear a lot of serious design flaws.
That said, I can still see passion in this product and I do want the people who worked on it to succeed and prove the naysayers wrong. It might be too late for this game (patches can only do so much), but hope they'll keep trying despite everything that's happened.

Honestly, the "Tim Burton style" phase of the witch fight has me want a 2D Tim Burton cartoon and I'm baffled as to why we haven't gotten that yet. Or heck, I'd love an entire game in that 2D Tim Burton art style.

Man, I _really_ wish this game got the positive attention and funding it deserved. IMAGINE HOW GOOD IT WOULD BE!

There are some really neat ideas here, that seem to just have never been brought to fruition. The multi color bullets being used to kill specific enemies for example. They could have made it so that each enemy type is weak to a specific bullet color, ie ghost maids are weak to blue, frogs are weak to green, birds are weak to red, instead of having this weird glow around enemies making it completely unintuitive to know how you're supposed to react. Secondly, either saving the art shift gimmick for the end of the final boss, or have each boss art shift you in a different way (Witch gets Tim Burton, Space Cow gets retro futuristic 80s pixels, Princess gets Disney, etc). There are so many sparks of potential that just never came to anything satisfactory.

this game feels like what cuphead would’ve been if MDHR didn’t quit their jobs and remortgage their house and put everything on the line for the game

One cool thing I did like was in the Princess and the Frog boss. Notice how the frog actually kisses the Princess and not the other way around (it's on the cheek) hence why she turns into a frog and not the frog turning (back) into a human. Thought that was a nice detail!

I really want the developers to try again and redo it and honestly I really do want to see this come back because it does have potential. We just need to give them a chance.

This game makes me appreciate Cuphead and all of the love and effort that went into every aspect of the game because of just how badly the project could have gone. The devs for this game were clearly way in over their heads creating a game like Cuphead (a game that took 7 years, the Moldenhauer brothers re-mortgaging their homes, and Microsoft backing the game to release). This game’s devs (who are also two brothers) were clearly nowhere near talented enough to handle a project like this.

The idea of the change in visual style is the one thing I like the most about the game.
Imagine that each world of the game was a different style: cartoons from the 30s, another world is cartoons from the 80s, another is 2000s, etc.
It could have been a tribute to the different eras of animation.

Even if they were just ripping off Cuphead, I think the game could've been amazing. There's plenty of instances in history where game studios try to profit off the success of another game. It really comes down to if the developers actually try to make the game good and not a shameless rip off. I feel like this game was judged way too quickly and it caused the game to become what people judged it as, a shameless rip-off of Cuphead.

As someone who actually supported the original kickstarter way back when it was first announced, it's a real shame that see that the game ended up in the state that it is now. It really seems like, at least to me, that the devs saw cuphead, really enjoyed it and decided they wanted to make something like it, but didn't realize the amount of work that it would end up needing to make a game like that, especially for their first ever project. I really hope the negative reception doesn't discourage them from giving game development another chance in the future.

I believe that the bullet color system would be interesting if the enemies matched the color type. Green enemies being more numerous but with less health, blue enemies being larger and slower but tankier and very little in number, and red enemies being an in-between of size, number, and health. Also, the projectiles should have a better feel to them. As it is you can just spam them.

Then again, the final boss having only one facial expression & animation cycle is pretty anime accurate.

The final boss gives me vibes of when you have an essay due in an hour but you’re not even halfway through, so you just start throwing a bunch of unfinished ideas together and hope it makes some kind of sense.

what's sad is that procedural generation isn't even the easy way out. you have to spend a lot of time playtesting and making sure it's generating something good, even in extremes. with a static level, obviously what you make is exactly what it'd be like every time. which is why so many procedural generations use things like tiles or rooms to avoid these issues. evidently, the procedural levels aren't even good, and considering all the enemies already there to work with, it's strange they didn't just make a simple but sweet handcrafted level instead... in a linear story game??

If they wanted procedurally generated levels, they should've had level *chunks* that can be strung together that offer curated platforming challenges within them, as well as fixed enemy spawns, so you can memorize the chunks, but can't predict their order.

I really hate what happened with the game, the art looked really well done, and I did like the ideas. But the game turned out to be terrible.

Maybe if the pianist conveyed his attack pattern through the book as if he was playing a song from the book, it'd easily be the coolest thing ever

Something I think would've been cool with the whole art style swapping is if they changed the art style for each world.
For example, the intro cutscene has the old timey cartoon style, but all of world 1 has that Tim Burton style that the witch boss fight had, then all the levels for world 2 had like, I dunno, a pixelated style or something, only to go back to the cartoon style at the end as seen at the beginning to signify a return home and adventure done.
Something to match the world's theming and give the impression that the main character is going through different portals into different worlds. It'd give the game a sort of Super Paper Mario kind of vibe where each world has its own consistent theme.
Dunno, just a little thought though.
(Edited bc this massive thing had typos, whoops-)

To chime in with the list of good ideas gone bad here, I think that changing art styles could make for an interesting game, if you leaned into that. It could be neat to use art styles to sell different worlds and times. And then the final boss could shift through previously seen art styles throughout.
Shame it got limited to the first and last fights as an apparent cost-cutting measure, really.

some ways I could improve on this game, at least narrative wise and such:
-remove the run and gun levels. if you're not gonna do them well, don't do them at all. Or at least make them shorter and more cohesively themed
-Instead having the book gain sapience and run away from you, have it so each boss stole the book, thus prompting the fight, rather than the boss figth jsut kinda...happening without any reason.
-Naturally making the bosses more active and anamted would be way better rather than spawning random enemis with the actual boss only throwing out like one actual attack on occassion
-naturally, let down by the fnal boss designsXP I feel soemthing more interestign could be done. Maybe have the first phase have the book form like some sort of monstrous form due to the corruption of the otheer bosses' greed and negative persnality traits or somethig? Iunno. Or maybe make the Portal itself the big bad? Iunno .

This game honestly lacks the “secret sauce” that makes Cuphead so good. The smooth and fluid animations, bombastic sound effects, how snappy and satisfying the physics and movement is and how each boss feels meticulously detailed to be as unique and memorable as possible. It feels like the devs for this game either understood none of that or didn’t have anywhere near as much as the time or budget as the Moldenhauer brothers did when working on Cuphead. And so while I don’t think it’s this shameless rip-off or anything, it nonetheless a way worse take at the formula in every way, and I’m largely surprised that this game didn’t get cancelled after hearing nothing about it for years since its initial trailer.

This is actually really sad cause you can see bits and pieces of the potential all throughout the game. I think had they devs had more experience, more resources, and more support they could have made a really good game. I really do hope they keep making games in the future because they absolutely can make something fantastic if they learn from this and keep at it.

The idea of the artstyle changing when fighting a boss's latter forms, or just the boss in total, is actually really interesting imo...

I agree with everything said here. But I would have to add that the idea of the style changes is pretty good, if that was done for every level (one style for each), it would have been a bit better and something they could take advantage of. About saving this game... I don't know, a lot of works has to be put in it so it doesn't feel so clumsy, the martian police officers were too way off. If Cuphead were to make another DLC or make a Cuphead 2, this game is going to be mocked (maybe) there and the chapter will be named with "Bootleg!" or "RIP-off!", or who knows? Maybe the right are bought and all the ideas used and redone.

Gotta love how the bullets in the cowboy boss fight still move slowly through the air like arrows lol.

This whole game reminds me of the music video for DA Games's 'Brothers In Arms.' The thing is, though, that was just a video for a music video dedicated to the Cuphead game where Cuphead fights other indie games. And it had all of the issues you mentioned with Enchanted Portal's gameplay: Spacious levels with not a lot happening. When I watched that video, I actually thought 'man, it would be so boring to play this.'
Also, when writing this comment, I almost had the game's title as Magic Mirror or Magic Portal. Even this thing's _title_ is generic and forgettable.

I'm curious if part of the reasons for the trouble was having to change engines mid development due to the epic grant. If they had to change over to unreal from whatever else it would explain a lot. Shifting engines mid project is a pain in the butt for huge teams let alone a two person team, especially if they have to learn the new engine in the process. I do hope they get a chance to make a finished project like their original ideas as they do show talent and potential.

Tiny credit where it is due: I really enjoy the implied backstory of the alien cow hybrid. It was a surprisingly sweet if weird take on "aliens abduct cattle" trope.
And hey, you did invade her ship, too.

To be honest, the concept of jumping dimensions reminds me of Dragon's Lair 2, and I really like it! And the changing of themes also reminds me of how classic Mickey Mouse or other old toon shorts had random themes at times. I also really like the animations and the character designs! It genuinely looks like concepts you would see in those old toon shorts! Like the ghost hotel? That could work! But I think where the game really falls flat (aside from the enemy spamming) is the color-coded bullet mechanics. You want to make it so there's a challenge you can't cheese? Fair. But it feels really forced, and the way you change bullets is poorly done. I also don't like how certain enemies just obnoxiously glow the color of the bullet that harms them. I think it would be a lot cooler if they made it more subtle, and stuck to the colors in their design. Like the ghost maid? Her red hair should be an indicator that all versions of her can be harmed by the red bullet, or if you want to add variety to it, red AND blue due to the ghostly blue hue she has! It feels so lazy that they just slap a glowing color onto enemies with a set color pallete just to force you to switch bullets. The thing that made the challenge in Cuphead bearable and satisfying to beat, was learning the SET PATTERNS. So having an enemy having a set bullet color(s) that works on them would create a pattern, making it satisfying to learn how to beat them! (Writing this only 12 minutes into watching)
(20-ish minutes in edit) Holy shit okay. The randomly generated levels immediately ruin the game. My previous statement on how patterns made Cuphead satisfying? THE ENEMIES WERE JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG.
(Another Edit) Regarding Cuphead's ost, I was surprised to hear the music wasnt composed for certain bosses, as Goopy Le Grande's themr literally has a reference to Punch Out, briefly using the motif/melody that plays when the player is knocked out and mashing buttons to get back up.

People (both programmers and players) often don't realize that good level and game design are a fundamental part of the enjoyment you get from playing. But don't worry, it will get worse! Since good design is difficult and expensive, it will be replaced by the product of an AI. So, in the future, we'll get a lot more games like Enchanted Portals. Hooray!

Honestly, I feel like this game could’ve been something great. But in the process of making it, everything that could go wrong went wrong. Hopefully the devs take it as a learning experience and don’t get discouraged from working towards creating something unique and fun.

I would like to mention how weird it is that in the flight sections you go to the left. Typically in games or film you want the characters to go to the right. It conveys a sense of progress because thats how we read.

When i first heard about this game all those years ago i had no faith in it because i thought it was going to be a rushed together game to try and ride off Cupheads success.
But seeing this, im actually really sad now. There was some amazing potential here and clearly some passion put into it eveb if that passion eventually wore thin.
Id love if they were able to take the time to fix this up but i have no idea how difficult of a task that would be for them. Especially since I'm sure they're burnt out from all this.

The chicken boss could of been really funny if it started as an old man, imagine it takes very little damage before it has a heart attack and falls into the fountain, then you get a second phase with the greaser, and finally, thinking if he was just a little younger he could beat the player he jumps in again and ends up turning into a baby and throwing a massive tantrum till he is defeated.

I cant bring myself to hate this game. It seems very much like a team the cared that was too small and underfunded to really bring their idea fully to life. Theres fun ideas and good art. I hope they can find some sort of success in the future, be it their own project or on a new team.

That human book design... is adorable. I really hope these devs keep working on new projects, they really do have the potential to make a brilliant game.

I like the idea of the art style change. Imagine a Cuphead style game but every world/boss represents a different animation style with different mechanics. That would be cool

There are a few instances where I loved concepts like the boss of the UFO is a cow, or the princess boss reverses the trope of kissing a prince to revert him back to a human from a frog, but that's about all I can say about the game that's good.
There are a lot of cases where the art just ends up looking like a Flash animation or Klik n Play library asset they used 800 times like we all did as kids back then because there weren't any other assets like it in the library. I could recreate practically all the enemies and bosses in Construct 3 by just using the "on animation finished" condition. The color coded enemies were also used very inconsistently as its only notable mechnic, and yet that's still a good thing because this game would be a nightmare for people with color blindness.

Funny thing is I like the idea where the art-style changes throughout the game. A world of 1930s rubber-hose designs, a world that looks like Tim Burton/Disney, etc.
At least then the animation shortcuts would be more bearable since more time was given to each style.

I always say that the soundtrack and art style make or break a game for me.
Enchanted Portal isn't a "Ew, disgusting, get it off", this is more a "Dear god, what the hell happened here?"

I think that in the 2nd Witch phase, it would be cool if the player pushed the witch into the cauldron to actually explain how did the 3rd phase start. And maybe even make so that the witch accidently uses a spell on herself to explain the artstyle change

the artstyle changes arent a budget thing since it would defiantly cost more to redo most sprites of the main characters and would require the animators to learn the other art styles so it was definitely something they had planned for the rest of the game which probably would of been like a spiderverse game with bunch of different art styles all mashed up together

Honestly, the concept of the art style changing could’ve been really interesting if it was done right. Heck, leaving it out of the first boss could’ve made it feel a lot more cool and special

A lot of people have to realize with a game like this that they are in the game probably being made by first time creators. A lot of the poor qualities are probably from a set budget

The tim burton style was when the game looked the best from an artistic standpoint. This game could've been moderately improved if they had just done this style for the whole game. They might've had time to make the levels better

Something I noticed is that in the initial Kickstarter trailer, during the octopus boss segment, the players' movement patterns seem extremely unnatural, looking more like they've been tweened instead of being properly controlled. Because of this, I believe all the footage shown in the original trailer wasn't actually real gameplay but instead being 100% animation straight from in the creators' software - similar to something like Killzone 2's trailer and the controversy that surrounded it. This fake gameplay would explain why the Cerberus boss' intro animation is seamless in the trailer but has a loading screen in-game and also explains why almost all animations are noticeably choppier than before as it suggests everything was made for the "trailer" first without any consideration for how it would work running in real-time.

I have so much respect for how they decided to leave a cliffhanger after how demoralizing making this game must have been

It had the chance to be a great game because the portal idea is pretty cool. Imagine if the concept was each level being a different art-style. Too bad it’s clearly an unpolished mess from devs who got in above their heads

My theory is that the devs put a lot of care into the game as it was being funded. They added everything promised, but then the funding failed. They probably moved some code or deleted it because they couldn't finish it. But then, they got a ton of funding and a deadline, so they put together what they could and sent it out

You know the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20?" Because I think I just had a moment like that with the artstyle changes in the first and final bosses. Obviously these were done to finish the game with whatever low budget they had left, but if I'm to be honest, I'm thinking that changing the artstyle could have actually been one of the major appeals of this game from the very beginning.
Basically, what I'm thinking is, if this game CONTINUOUSLY changed the artstyle of the players, enemies, and environments (such as, say, having each world be in a completely different artstyle), that could have made the game more appealing to people during the Kickstarter Campaign. Sure, doing this is definitely a gimmick, but I do think part of the reason people labeled this game as a _Cuphead_ ripoff was the 1930s artstyle, while having the game use several different styles over its runtime could've helped make it more unique and better justify its existence.
Plus, it even fits with the NAME of the game, "Enchanted PORTALS!" As in, portals to _other worlds,_ where everything looks different! I kinda wish they thought of that from the beginning.

The style change thing could have been so much more if 2 things happened.
1. It happens for every boss
2. It happens at the start of the boss with some thematic reason, giving it the vibe that you're in a different story (Which is what I guess the devs wanted to do for the plot?)

You know, it really is too bad.
Honestly, some of these character designs and backgrounds are REALLY good. The forest has a nice 'spooky scary skeletons' Disney style to it and the setting for the Cerberus fight reminds me of the Brave Little Toaster.
Some of the animations, like the space cow making you do a disco dance or the ghost butler serving you death on a silver platter are clever too. Even the pngs can be cute with hundreds of ghost maids chasing you out or the wizard kids beating the book up. Maybe in the future if they don't have it in them to make a functional game, they should definitely be doing art or character designs for other game developers. There's SOMETHING special here under the surface.
I also agree with the other commenters that each level should have had a different art styles for the boss fights. It would have at least made it more visually interesting and helped the game have an identity separate from Cuphead.

I think they tried to pull a DMC4/5 for the spell switch mechanic which, for Dante's style switch mechanic was responsive, fluid and a blast. Only problem is, in DMC the style switch feature only changed the style you had and what the style button did, not your weapons themselves. If they had a spell switch button on RB/LB and you could switch it anytime, now it would work a whole lot better.

Thank you for making his video, uhyeah! I was actually planning on making my own game in the future if I ever had the resources to do so, and you making this video allowed me to take down notes of what I SHOULDN'T do. Luv your content!

I'm glad the game devs were up front with the fact that they were suoer inspired by cuphead. it makes it feel less like a souless cash grab and more like a tribute to the original.

this game is good to look at from a game design standpoint. not because it is competent, but because it is a masterclass in what NOT to do.

My guess for why some mechanics got "removed" since the trailer is that those mechanics were never actually in the game and they made animations to convey what they had in mind for the game before it was coded in. But when it came time to put in those ideas, they either couldn't, didn't have the time, or it broke something then they tried to do it.

Honestly, my biggest problem with this game (based on what I’m seeing in this video) is that almost every boss is extremely similar to one from Cuphead. The last three aren’t so much, but there are still obvious similarities.

ever since i saw the trailer i knew this would play horribly, but i wish they met their goal they have a few good ideas that would've been so cool to see

i think a cool way the game couldve implemented the change in style and even to hide that lack of budget and time for the animation was to simply add a whole overlay to the entire game that makes it feel more like a book, and use page turn transitions that chaneg the style, it woudlve been super easy to add and made WAYY more sense, while it wouldve still been cheap at least the effort couldve been there for it to make sense

when you think about it, its crazy that it ended up even this good considering the demoralizing stomping it had early on. srsly that cruelty towards them was unwarranted

That Dont starve esque art style doesn't even look that bad. I feel like the whole world should have been in that art style tbh. Having different art styles for each world is actually a really cool concept because youre presumably going to different stories in a storybook.

This is one of those games that definitely had potential, but the final result crashed. I really wanted this game to be really good, I wanted it to be good so badly. You could definitely tell the people who worked on it had lots of fun, but the game turned out to be awful.

I think that had they stuck to the Tim Burton art style for the whole game, it would have looked 10 times better and given the game more of a personality of it's own instead of it being seen as a Cuphead clone.

I really love the concept of the Beethoven bossfight. They also drew him with the horn thing because he was deaf. This game was a waste of potential, but as you said it can be a learning experience, or they could "fix" the game but given it's fame of cuphead ripoff, I doubt they will

The bosses are amazing, I really wish they remake it one day and make it more easier to play

I think the worst part is, not only all the framerates drop completely compared to the actual trailers, they literally remove some of the features in the game!! For example, previously in the witch boss fight, the tombstones in the back used to attack you with a hammer shrinking you down and making you lose the ability to shoot which realistically would be way better than just jumping cause at least it gives you a motive not to stay in one place the whole fight, but they straight up REMOVED it from the game. They literally made a enemy just for show and nothing else.
I really thought around 4 years ago that this game was gonna go majorly hard, but when I first saw bijuus gameplay I intentionally thought "hmm, thats weird. Shouldnt the animations look way more smooth?" And when he mentioned that the devs said that most of them was placeholders I thought "Oh, that makes sense. Maybe in the full game, it will consist of better animation" but to my surprise, everything was SO choppy, and anything that was smooth was just stock animations or something!!
Now the part that made me EXTREMELY angry was the bosses. Naturally, if you'd watch the trailer, you would think that most of the bosses would have their own, well bosses! It was all just very interesting concepts, and if you would look at the twitter, the concepts are also just as good! But, when you actually SEE the bosses, either one of two things
1: the bosses animations are very choppy and look very awkward
and 2 : any bosses that you actually SEE its most likely scrunched into another boss (another technique they used to either save money, or be lazy)
Now my final thoughts would be, this game couldve been WAY better than it is. The devs probably did have SOME of the intentions I listed in this comment, but just didnt take actual time to work on it (note that I am aware most of the things listed are already said the video, but Im just commenting my point of view on the topic thx for reading :) )

Since I became part of the Cuphead fandom and with a lot of ideas from the franchise, I won't might if this game was heavily inspired on Cuphead, bcuz Cuphead is heavily inspired on the vintage cartoons from 30s and Cuphead's design is basically Mickey Mouse's but with a cup for a head which I loved it!
I saw the problems on Enchanted Portals which I agreed. These devs could've shown more effort in their project and prove it's more than a ripoff but they failed. Yeah, this game could be better and oh boy! I already willing to make it better starting with the siblings (I think they're siblings) Bobby and Penny which I'll change their names cuz they sound kinda meh, NOTHING AGAINST THESE NAMES OK?!
Also I gonna make a fanart of them and post on D-Art (I can't said the full name cuz youtube gonna delete it. 😶).
P.S: Thinking better, I'm not going to retake it anymore.

I hate when devs look at games like Dark Souls, Cuphead, etc. and think that they are only popular because of thier difficulty. The main pull of those types of games is that they are difficult but not unfair, when you pump a game full of difficulty without really thinking it's just not fun to play. This game is a prime example of that.

The red-blue-green damage type system is so infuriating. Anyone who grew up with Halo should know that its a dance of weakness and RESISTANCE, not invulnerability.

I feel this game is a perfect show that practise makes perfect.
Cuphead had a dedicated team of artists, developers, writers, playtesters, and what have you. It took time and a lot of work to make that game as good as it is.

28:52 The biggest problem is that Cuphead had a reason to throw an enemy like that at you, it made sense for small enemies to be where they are. Even if you don't fix everything else they could have made it so no more than 2 of the same enemy are visible on screen.

A game with every world having different artstyles would actually be cool. Mickey mania kinda got it.