IParadise Gaiden : The Castle of Remembrance

IParadise Gaiden: The Castle of Remembrance is a very short game about a guy named Carl who has to go to a castle to kill a demon at the end. It is very engrish ridden and slightly buggy, but overall it is a slightly enjoyable experience. Let's get into the meat of things, shall we?

*HEAVY NOTE!* THERE BE SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THIS REVIEW, YOU HAST BEEN WARNED!

First of: Characters: 2/5

There are 3 or 4 characters in this game.
Carl: The guy you play as. He is...a wookie, apparently. The few times he speaks, he has wookie sound effects.
Evil Bad: This guy taunts you, and sends minions after you to try to kill you. You defeat him at the end.
Ghost Girl: She sells you food items that you need. (More explanation on items in Gameplay section)
Ghost Guy: I did not see him until the end cutscene, and I have no idea if you can see him elsewhere. So any explanation for that is surely necessary.
These characters are two dimensional, and are only catalysts to serve for your gameplay.

Story: 2/5
You are the hero, you go into a castle to fight the big bad. Thus going through the big scary castle. Catalyst for gameplay, and it is very poorly told at that... Just look at some of the dialogue in the beginning cutscene.



Yeah, quite the Engrish, I would say. This seems like it was directly translated through google translate. And if you look at the name of the game in the window box, you can see it's not the real title of the game. Using said method of Google, I checked. That translates to 'Untitled'. So he never put anything there as a real title. Good to know.

Gameplay: 3.5/5.
So how does this game work? Well, as the picture above so engrishry explains, you touch the enemies. It hurts you, but they die too. You gain EXP and money based on the health you lost. Everytime you level up, you gain more health. To heal, you eat food you find in chests or buy from ghost girl, but you can also find these herbs that increase your health total. You need 256 health to beat the game. So train hard and fast, unlike what I did which was skip around the battles until near the end.
Now then, the gameplay is fine, but it's not the best. It gets repetitive fast. Once I got to the end bridge, I just farmed those minions until I got enough health for the boss.
Now, there are some puzzles in the game, but they don't do a whole lot to add to the gameplay. They do mix things up, but they don't make it THAT incredible.
What doesn't help matters is that the guy moves SLOOOOW! Fortunately, the rooms are small enough that you don't notice it then. However, the bridge and the beginning area feels like a slow trek, and it may turn you off.

Graphics and map design: 4/5
This is another excellent point to the game. Things felt nice and used here. Sprites were spritey, the RM2k3, while an aged system, still looks decent, and the guy placed things in a neat, proper position. And you never felt lost, because the areas were small enough that you could figure out where to go and what to do. This was a strong point in the game.

Music and Sound: 3.5/5
Now, the music selection was good. And the sound effects all fit to some extent. But well...As I said before, few times Carl talks, he sounds like a wookie. Why? No idea! And the music has a tendency to loop a bit funny. They fade out, only to come back in almost immediately. But the music is nice. And when you level up, it plays the Dragon Quest level up sound effect from the later (possibly earlier?) games, like the IXth one.

Replay Value: 1/5
Once you beat it, that's it. No real reason to keep playing. Well, there are some hidden items that I had no idea what they did, but I don't feel a compelling reason to go back just for those. If you do, that's fine, all yours. But for me...meh.
It's also around an hour in length.

Overall: 3.5/5
The game is a nice distraction. I think you will have fun with it. Gameplay is fairly Ys inspired in terms of 'touch for kills and pain', but it could've been so much more. Maybe the later games have something, I don't know, but this one is still kind of fun in its own right. You just aren't getting GOTY material out of this one.