Review #235: Maximo - Ghosts to Glory

 Not a single Red Arremer in sight!

 Remember Ghouls and Ghosts? What about Ghosts and Goblins? Quite the games they were! While most would assume that the franchise died after the SNES-era, they'd be wrong. Maximo is the spiritual successor to the franchise. And that's just fine, it's a game that doesn't ride on the coattails  of the franchise in order to carve its mark.

 Maximo, hardened warrior king, returns to his Kingdom, only to find Achille in charge, as well as having stolen his Queen. Maximo tries to attack, but is killed in action... not before Grim AKA Death, strikes a deal with Maximo, since both want Achille's head, Maximo wants his bride and Grim isn't too happy about Achille taking souls from the underworld. A simple premise, and not too different from the 'Ghosts' series.

 This is a 3D action-adventure game, with pretty obvious roots in 2D platformers. Maximo is armed with his armor, sword and shield and double jumps, as well as other skills he may acquire. Maximo's health bar is split in up to four segments, each segment standing for a piece of armor, more or less, 1 segment has him on his underwear, two with his armor, three adds a helmet and there's an optional fourth if you've the skill. The thing is, if you lose an entire segment, you can't restore it unless you find a new piece of armor, which means that grabbing health potions doesn't restore segments. The Shield has a separate endurance gauge, which decreases every time you block a hit, or if you have the skill, throw it against an enemy. Then there's the sword, which can slash, dice and thrust(If you've the skill).

 Maximo has a very interesting Skill system. You can find 'skills' by defeating enemies or buying them from altars, and these greatly enhance Maximo's repertoire of moves, from a two hit combo, allowing Maximo to throw his shield, turning his shield into a Magnet for power ups or even one that allows him to have up to four armor segments in his health bar. Thing is, if you die, you lose some of them. At the start of the game, you are given 3 'lock slots', skills placed in these will stay with you even if you die, and every time you defeat a boss, you are given an extra lock slot, for up to seven. I thought the skill system was excellent, it forces you to play carefully, but also gives you some leeway so that you can keep your favorites if you screw up. Plus, these skills offer a real advantage to Maximo, expanding his moveset, you want to keep these powers.

 Spread throughout each level there are two form of currency that you'll want to gather: Coins and Fairies. Coins are of utmost importance, not only do they let you buy items from altars, you also need 100 of them to save, yep, it's one of those games, your game or travel to previous worlds. Then there's the Fairies, on their own they do nothing, but collect 50 of them and you get a Grim Coin. Grim Coins are basically continues, kinda, the first time you lose all your lives, it'll take one Grim Coin to come back, but every time you 'continue', the price goes up. And it's worth mentioning that most people consider this game kinda hard. Personally, I died about 20 times and only used a continue once, which means... I thought the game was pretty much standard, not easy, not hard, just right... but not for the right reasons.

 The things that make the game 'hard' isn't the design itself, but rather it's flaws. The camera is terrible, no right-analog support and the only way to 'control' it is to press L1 and hope that the camera can position itself behind you, which isn't always possible. Most of the hits I took were because I couldn't see what was ahead of me. Then there's the overall movement, which feels rather slow, as if Maximo was weighed down by... something(Probably his armor? heh!), which means that it's easy to underestimate or overestimate his jumping prowess until you get used to it. Mind you, the platforming isn't too bad, it's just decent, it could've used some more polishing. As a matter of fact, there's this jump in one of the latter stages, in which you must jump from a huge siege tower towards a cliff, which is just plain evil. Must've died about 5 times, I even considered that, despite the trail of coins, it just wasn't the way to proceed. But it was. Honestly, both of these issues can be attributed to its age, and none were dealbreakers as far as I'm concerned.

 For an early PS2 game, it looks fine. Environments are simple, but varied, and characters are based on horror themes, but done in a charming, goofy manner. There're Skeletons frozen in ice cubes that slide through the ground trying to poke you with their harpoons, and wizards that turn Maximo into a little baby or an old man. The soundtrack I found lacking, there's about... 3-4 different tunes? And a ton of remixes of the game's main theme(Which might be mighty familiar if you are a 'Ghosts' fan!). I don't see it needed to talk about sound effects, but something about the sound your sword makes when it hits the skeletons is very, very satisfying. Heck, everything sounds really good, it's almost another reason to collect coins!

 What can I say? I enjoyed my time with Maximo - Ghosts to Glory. It is a bit dated, but nothing that can't be overcame. With that in mind, I thought the difficulty was just right, but I've read that some people thought it was a bit too tough, so, y'know, be ware.
 8.0 out of 10