Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril review

Battle Kid tells the story of a nameless hero who has accidentally discovered a devious plot to build a super-secret Supermech on their island. In order to stop the madness, our protagonist heads to an ancient high-tech fortress in an effort to prevent this weapon from being completed. Our hero will need to dodge traps and eliminate treacherous enemies but also new abilities to help you on your journey.

Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril is an 8-bit 2D action platformer that attempts to recapture the magic of the NES era. As our nameless hero, you run, jump and shoot your way through this Metroidvania lite game. As you explore each area, you’ll find special upgrades such as a high jump for example (which should’ve been a default skill), and also fight enemies and unique bosses.

While most of this experience feels generic, I have a special mention to say to the boss battles; while not overly complex and frustrating, they offer a decent challenge and actually feel fun to battle against. Most non-boss enemies are pretty generic and not really noteworthy. They did take one cue from Mega Man and that’s the always fun disappearing blocks. Make sure to time your jumps properly, otherwise, it’s death for you.

Completionists and those looking for a challenge will be happy to hear that Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril offers six difficulty level settings from Very Easy to Unfair all of which offer varying levels of health for example. Playing on Very Easy, the game will be a bit more forgiving by giving players more health than Normal difficulty. Additionally, when accessing checkpoints, your health will be refilled. And you’ll be given a password (more on that below).

Unfortunately, it’s hard to pinpoint, but nothing really clicks here as a whole. When you jump, it feels like the protagonist has cement boots. Jumping and attacking feels a bit laggy at times, especially during sequences where you need to jump quickly across vanishing blocks and ice blocks that break under the hero’s weight. Additionally, given that the level are intertwined akin to a Metroidvania and your only help are the checkpoint areas which is the worst I’ve seen since Control. Unlike other games such as Mega Man games where levels are reasonable length with a mid-level checkpoint, here if you die you go back to the last point you saved meaning if you don’t explore it all and miss one, it can easily lead to a 20-30 minute time loss and having to repeat boring, monotonous sequences over and over again.

Another issue is when moving from screen to screen, more precisely when you have to go up. When you jump up to the next screen, you don’t see a platform to reach until the new area is briefly displayed, meaning you’ll fall back down, and given that enemies respawn, if you’re low on health, it could lead to an unwarranted death, but just having to jump and “guess” where to land is also annoying. Additionally, the game uses a password system; meaning if you quit the game without taking note of your last password, bye-bye progress and you have to start over. Also, existing passwords from the PC version which was released years ago do not work. Trust me. I’ve tried.

The game does look great and colorful in its wonderful 2D 8bit pixelated wonder. Each area of the map is uniquely designed with enemies and various color palettes to show a distinct change in areas. It’s clearly a visual love letter to the NES era. The chiptune soundtrack is surprisingly good; one of the best 8-bit soundtrack that worth listening to without playing the game.

While I appreciate the love the developers are showing for the golden era of gaming, it’s really hard to recommend Battle Kid given how many better Metroidvanias or 8-bit platformers are out there (the recently released Infernax comes to mind… or the quite affordable Mega Man collection games), it’s impossible to recommend Battle Kid unless you’ve played all 2D platformer/Metroidvania. Aside from fun, albeit very simplistic, boss battles, the game doesn’t have many redeeming qualities. While the password is a great callback to classic games, no one in this day and age wants to note a password down; they want to save and pick up where they left. Take the plunge at your own risk. You’ve been warned.