Cuphead’s 1930s/40’s “Rubberhose” animation style and character designs were a breath of fresh air when the game came out. The game featured lush 2D animation and design for everything from the characters to the backgrounds, creating a wonderful homage to classic cartoons. Since then only a handful of games inspired by that design have emerged and Enchanted Portals is one of them.
Developed by a two-person team, Enchanted Portals throws you into the shoes of two apprentice magicians, Bobby and Penny. After knocking a magic book off a shelf while doing chores, the two decide to perform a spell from one of its pages, foolishly opening up a portal to other dimensions. The two are sucked in, with their only hope of returning home being to find the magic book by hopping through a multitude of dimensions.
Enchanted Portals wears its inspiration on its sleeve, most notably in its visual design by using the same “Rubberhose” animation style and character design. As such, the game’s visuals are its most outstanding and eye-catching element with fantastic 2D character designs, animations and backgrounds, though the backgrounds, at times, do feel less detailed than everything else.
Boss designs and animations are a particular highlight for Enchanted Portals and are, essentially, the meat of the game. They’re both fantastic to look at and challenging to boot, requiring you to have fast reflexes while making the most of your skillset.
The game’s characters have access to three spells; fire wind and water, with each spell throwing out a different type of ranged attack. Wind, for instance, works as a spread shot which is probably the most useful attack in the game. Enemies have different weaknesses, highlighted by a coloured glow around them indicating which spell to use. There’s no specific weakness per enemy though as it feels randomly designated by the game spawning system.
You’ve also got a block and a dash to help you deal with enemy attacks.
The game Worlds are split into three levels apiece. Two for a run-and-gun session and one for the boss. Bosses themselves come in three phases and while they were the best part about Enchanted Portals, the difficulty on them also seems all over the place.
Enchanted Portals has a good foundation beneath it but, unfortunately, it’s a foundation built on the wrong elements. In creating a game so focused on visual excellence, the developers have thoroughly misunderstood the gameplay that pulls the project together.
First, Enchanted Portals relies on randomly generated levels with randomised enemy placement. Instead of a curated experience, you’re left with a long series of repeating backdrops that only seem there to pad out the length of the level. The randomised elements destroy any sense of pacing and enemies are usually spawned in poorly thought-out locations. Add to that the constant spawn of enemies that you can’t outrun because they rush you from both ends of the screen and you’re usually left mobbed against attacks and enemies you can’t avoid, even with a dash.
Enemy difficulty also seems to be randomly generated, regardless of what attack type you’re using. Some go down easily while others can withstand a barrage of shots, and that’s in the same enemy-type category.
Character control and movement are incredibly slow and not as responsive as you need it to be. Our heroes rush across the levels with all the haste of an afternoon Sunday picnic drive. This makes outrunning enemies, which you will want to do, something that you can’t. Which usually leads to the mobbed moments that suck away your health. Even with Turbo mode engaged, which increases the game’s speed slightly, it’s still far too slow and cumbersome.
Magic slinging is also bizarrely handled. The direction you’re pushing the analogue stick in will be the one you’re shooting in so if you want to shoot above you then you have to point the left analogue stick up, which slows you down.
You can also manually aim for precision shots but this requires you to hold down another button and stand completely still while you do so. This is fine when you have one or two enemies to deal with but doesn’t work for dealing with multiples. Other than that, it also completely breaks the flow of movement, which is a pain when you consider how long the levels can repeat for.
Your attacks, along with their sound effects, also lack oomph, for want of a better word. There’s almost no indication that they’re even having any effect on the enemies and often I felt underwhelmed, like I was waving a wet, rolled-up newspaper at anything that came my way. Outside of the boss fights, normal encounters simply lack any kind of excitement and with how slow you move, are just an exercise in tedium.
The randomised level generation might not be so bad if it weren’t for the slow movement and one of Enchanted Portals biggest faux pars: the save system. Or perhaps I should say lack of one. You see Enchanted Portals only saves at the end of each world.
There are no end-of-level or even mid-level saves. About halfway through each level, a checkpoint notification is displayed, but it wasn’t long before I realised it was only there to indicate that I was halfway through a level and not that my progress had been captured. If you die or quit at any time during a level or boss fight, then, guess what, you have to do the whole world again.
This would be fine if this was a rogue-like, but it isn’t. And with how slow, randomised and just poorly designed the general gameplay is, it’s a tiresome and tedious thought, let alone exercise. At least health drops are quite common.
While Enchanted Portals has some gorgeous art and animation to look at, it simply fails at the bits that really matter: gameplay and design. The shooting is tiresome, the randomised levels go on for too long and the lack of a more efficient saving system is just criminal. While the game is relatively short if you persevere, whether or not you’d want to is another matter entirely.
Enchanted Portals Launch Trailer
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