Rosenkreuzstilette (PC) Review

There is a plot here, but it's easy to lose interest pretty soon due to the text and exposition-heavy intro. The basic concept? Oh, something about a school of magic or whatever that is hidden from the rest of the world, and then blah, blah, blah… don't know, too long; didn't read. Anyway, the game begins, with the heroine having to blast her way through several stages full of traps and monsters; stages that have a strong Castlevania vibe, although the visual quality is generally subpar, with muddy and "realistic" textures that just don't mix with the cartoony sprites.

The goth setting won't be able to hide the truth about this title, which is the fact that this is freaking Mega Man! No, really. It's as if this is just a reskin of the original 8-bit series. The controls are the same, the enemies are the same, the mechanics are the same, the corridor that leads to the bosses is the same, and while the levels aren't exactly the same, they are actually a cocktail of various areas from the Mega Man games… In other words, they are the same!

For those living under a rock, Mega Man means: choose any of the available stages in any order, run, jump, shoot, fight the boss in the end, and steal its power - magic spells here, instead of cybernetic abilities, like the… err, leaves from Mega Man 2. Like its source of inspiration, Rosenkreuzstilette is very challenging, and the basic strategy required is learning which levels to complete first in order to use the stolen powers to exploit the weakness of the next boss.

Some may think that a clone that doesn't add anything of its own is just a shameless rip-off, even if it's an enjoyable, fully and flawlessly functional one… and, in many ways, that's correct. One good reason is that, while great and all, those old NES Mega Mans are exactly that - old! Therefore, it would be better if the developer had actually tried to add some original mechanics to the basic formula, instead of just replacing robots with anime girls.

Of course, some won't really find this to be a flaw… and those are correct too. Rosenkreuzstilette, however, has another problem, and that's its inferior level design. As mentioned before, old-school Mega Man games were tough, with a small percentage of the experience being more annoying than challenging. This, though, leans more towards the irritating side of the scale, by being far more into trial-and-error and memorisation than it needs to.