One of the things about Enchanted Portals that immediately leapt out to me upon release was, of all things, its press release. Namely, the fact that it started out describing the game by saying “Enchanted Portals, which has been favourably compared to Cuphead…” You’ll notice that it felt the need to specify “favourably.” which comes across as a bit eye-raising. This may be because since its reveal, the game has been slammed as a shameless, lazy rip-off of Cuphead. There were indeed more than a few people who were willing to still give the game a chance, however, some even stating that it didn’t even come across as lazy, as it felt like a lot of work was going into the game.
It is, of course, completely fair to give a game such as this a chance, even if it feels derivative of a more popular and successful game. Besides, a huge chunk of gaming history is made out of copying what was successful before. In the end, all that matters is if that Enchanted Portals is a quality game. So I started it up, began a new game, and watched the opening cinematic as apprentice wizard Bobby and Penny found themselves attempting to track down a magic book that they used to open up portals to new dimensions that they’re now trapped in…or I assume that was the story, anyway, as the cinematic cut off before it could finish. Yes, unfortunately, the actual quality didn’t start off with a great first impression. Even more unfortunately, the quality level just continued to take a nosedive.
Let’s get to the main draw of Enchanted Portals, and arguably why the game received any attention in the first place, that being its old-school rubberhose cartoon art style. While it doesn’t match Studio MDHR’s masterpiece, the graphics are still attractive and colorful, the character designs are nice, and it has several moments where it captures the cartoon spirit, especially with its bosses. The only downside is that while Cuphead has an entire world built around various unique settings that felt straight out of a Fleischer cartoon, Enchanted Portals has a more generic feel with its stages, with a token jungle level, a token cave level, a token sci-fi level, etc.
Tragically, Enchanted Portals poured all of its stat points into charisma with its visuals, and left none behind for the actual gameplay. In contrast to Cuphead mainly being a boss rush game broken up with a few traditional run-and-gun platforming levels, here we have a traditional level-based approach where you go through a couple of stages before reaching that world’s boss (save for the final world, which is a boss rush). And unfortunately, these levels are filled with some of the most tedious, asinine and aggravating obstacles and level design that I’ve seen in a long time. Even calling what’s offered here “level design” feels generous.
To get straight to the point, levels in Enchanted Portals are random. Not “procedurally generated” or “randomly generated,” just random. Enemy placement, enemy spawns, pit sections, obstacles placement, all random. Cohesion is completely out the window here, even if it means that enemies can spawn into you with you dash ahead, even if it means that multiple projectiles from off-screen enemies can become impossible to avoid, even it means that there are huge sections of certain obstacles like bottomless pits that drag on too long, and many, many more similar scenarios. It’s just sloppy design all across the board.
Right alongside all of the randomness is a load of fake difficulty, either via the sloppy level design or other issues. The dash move keeps your momentum going no matter what, ensuring that being able to accurately land is a chore. There’s no brief invincibility upon getting hit, so you’re able to get hit about half a dozen times in a couple of seconds. There are levels with ceilings you can hit that make some jumps near-impossible. Timing between enemy attacks can wildly differ. Loads of enemies and attacks can fill the screen too easily. You have to stop moving and firing to switch weapons, which requires the directional pad. And despite what your little cat sidekick may suggest when reaching a level’s halfway mark, there are no checkpoints. All they do is remind you that you’re only partially done with the current slog of a level.
Even worse is that in order to account for all of the random elements, the levels in Enchanted Portals are just plain boring. They’re all just a standard left-to-right path (minus the occasional shoot-‘em-up boss), all recycling the same three or four obstacles over and over. The only thing that mixes things up is a mechanics where certain enemies have color-coded shields, meaning you can only damage them with certain weapons. And even then, they still feel like an attempt to just pad out the game by introducing another layer of difficulty, and yet the game even fails at that, since these enemies only appear in about a quarter of the stages
And yet it’s not like you can just dash through these stages, because enemies don’t despawn, meaning whole swarms of them can catch up with you. Did I mention that Enchanted Portals is actually broken in certain areas as well? There are a few graphical glitches, like enemies popping in and out, and once again, the sheer randomness can make things nearly-impossible. The breaking point for me was the jungle stage, which featured the standard platforming section where you cross a river while jumping on crocodile/alligator heads, making sure to move before they lead out of the water. But because every one of them that appeared had random behavior compared to the others, there was no logical pattern to work with. There was no way to judge when the best time to jump was. And even I jumped and dashed ahead, there was a good chance that it would be into a giant mosquito enemy that suddenly appeared, in additional to the swarm that built up behind. Oh, and as a bonus, the level had no health pickups whatsoever.
You would think that the bosses are at least a high point, and they are…in terms of concepts. Each one of them has unique sets of phases, some creative attacks and obstacles (like leaping over lily pads while frog princesses are launched overhead and the boss attacks from below), and a couple even switch up the art style to those of other cartoons, which is a gimmick that should have been used much more often. But whatever intriguing ideas they may have are killed by – you guessed it – the randomness. Attacks come at random, with multiple types of attacks at once at times, and all of them are a pain. To make things worse, several attacks from the bosses don’t even appear to have visual cues, and even the flashes that indicate damage dealt are random in how prominent they are.
As an example, at one point there’s a Western boss that fires cacti at you with a huge gun as you fly around, which shoot out needles in different directions. But the cacti don’t animate differently when firing needles, and there’s no pattern to when they shoot out needles. You just have to take your chances and pray you may dodge in time, assuming you can avoid the other bullets on the screen as well. And just to twist the knife even further, you can’t even rely on audio cues as well, since the vast majority of the bosses – and enemies, for that matter – have zero sound effects for their attacks. A baffling decision as it’s not like the generic music is in fear of being drowned out. It’s shocking that a game today, especially with a genre such as this, would omit something as basic and necessary as sound effects.
The gameplay is extremely basic run-and-gun stuff, with a brief tutorial buried in the control options for no real reason other to provide one final bit of bad design. Enchanted Portals is just sloppy overall. Everything is random, with no thought seemingly put into how the enemy behavior and placements affect gameplay, and the lack of things such as enemy sound effects are baffling. Even dropping down to Easy difficulty doesn’t improve things, since all that does is increase your health. It’s almost astonishing in how unpolished the whole experience is beneath its cartoon surface. And in that lies the irony that despite initial reaction, Enchanted Portals wasn’t lazy when it came to mimicking Cuphead’s style…instead, it ended up being lazy in every other area.
Closing Comments:
Enchanted Portals is an absolute mess, plain and simple. Every part of its gameplay is either way too random, broken, or broken in how random it is. It’s an insult to Cuphead and the other run-and-gun platformers it takes inspiration from, with awkward controls and unbelievably cheap difficulty. And it’s not like even a few patches down the line could help things much, since the level design would still be as dull as dishwater. Even the graphics and a couple of neat bosses can’t even begin to help salvage this wreck. Brief as it is, it’s still a travesty that doesn’t even deserve a clever closing line for its review.
