Schlocktober '23: The Medievil Remake is pretty and stylish but doesn't fix the original game's flaws.

SCHLOCKTOBER ’23: This month I am playing some games with horror elements and blogging about them to determine whether they’re nasty tricks or delectable treats.

Medievil is a weird remake of a second tier PS1 game from 1998. I remember when that original Medievil came out, it was lauded for its graphics, soundtrack, and humor but got middling marks on gameplay because of loose and sloppy control and a frustrating camera. I played the demo and came away with the same impression. Its lovable protagonist, Sir Daniel Fortesque, became something of a second tier Sony mascot for awhile, making cameo appearances in various games, and there was a sequel on PS1 and a semi remake on PSP but as a whole the Medievil franchise remained part of the PS1 era of fondly remembered but dead franchises.

Then, in 2019, during a wave of PS1 remakes including the Crash and Spyro trilogies, Sony released a full remake of the first Medievil with detailed PS4 graphics and lots of gorgeous cinematics and other modern bells and whistles. Unlike many of the remakes Medievil was released as a single game, though for a budget price of $30. It seemed likely that if the game did well they would also remake the second, the way they did with Loco Roco, and maybe even continue the series. Those games never happened, which gives you a hint about how successful this remake was.

I was excited about this release and actually pre-ordered it. As I said I’d only ever played the demo of the original but it had style for days and I loved the idea of a modern remake that cleaned up the controls a little bit and cranked up the graphics and animations to modern standards while retaining the charm that made the original memorable. It took me 4 years to actually finish it, despite a number of attempts over the years. That gives you a hint as to how I felt about it.

Medievil tells the story of Daniel Fortesque, a long dead knight who is revered as the hero who saved the kingdom of Gallowmere from the evil sorcerer Zarok. The only problem is that Fortesque was not a hero at all, he was a loser, and only contributed to the kingdom’s salvation by accident. Now Zaroz is back and Sir Dan’s skeleton has been re-animated to save Gallowmere once more.

The remake of Medievil is an aesthetic triumph. A lot of the sounds and dialog have been recycled from the original game (CD audio has held up astonishingly well for the last 25 years) but there have been some changes in certain places. The graphics are totally redone and manage to capture the otherworldly sensibility that PS1 games did so well while bringing the level of detail up to modern standards, though the game is not pushing the power of the PS4 in any meaningful way. Gallowmere is both spooky and humorously cartoony at the same time, full of crumbling crypts and haunted asylums but also goofy enemies and sassy gargoyles. It’s a fun horror comedy vibe, expertly updated from the original.

Unfortunately what wasn’t updated nearly as much is the gameplay. This is not a case where the new graphics are running over the old game (like with the Halo remakes) and there are some substantial changes, including certain bosses having new attacks and a tweak to how things work. However there was a clear attempt to make the game as faithful to the original as they could, and that means that it has all the issues of a mediocre PlayStation game from over two decades ago. Control is loose and unsatisfying, with none of Sir Dan’s actions having any real weight and his main form of attack being running around flailing with a weapon, hopefully maintaining enough space between you and the enemy that they take damage and you don’t. It works okay, but it’s profoundly unsatisfying, with zero impact, and if you’re not careful you can find your health drained quickly. There are also projectile weapons, but ammo is rare to find and expensive to buy with the game’s stingily handed out gold so they’re bet used situationally. The one exception is the axe, which can be used to both slash and throw (the weapons have an alternate attack mode), and though it doesn’t do a lot of damage I found the best approach to many enemies was to run around in circles spamming the axe throw button. It kind of fits for Sir Dan’s cowardly nature but it’s not exactly fun.

So if the combat isn’t great how about the traversal? Medievil is sometimes referred to as a platformer but it’s more of an action adventure game with platforming elements. It’s broken up into about 20 levels, and these all adhere quite closely to the original game. As such they are PS1 era levels, which is to say that they tend to be relatively small, with a lot of annoying design decisions baked in. They’re not bad, and for PS1 levels they’re quite clever, with most of them based around finding rune keys that you use to open up new areas and lots of neat little gimmicks like a gondola type contraption that takes you up a tree to break open the eggs of a giant bird and find a rune key in one of them so you can progress, but they’re certainly not up to modern standards.

That extends to the camera and platforming elements. The game’s camera is semi on rails (though can also, at times, be controlled by the right stick) and while it’s not terrible it’s not great either. This is most an issue when you’re trying to get past an obstacle (often with questionable collision detection) or o some platforming, which isn’t a huge element of the game but does exist. Combined with the loose feeling controls it just gives that sensation of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole that you get when trying to force a character who doesn’t control great to do precise things. None of it is incredibly hard, and falling into a pit doesn’t kill you (instead it takes away one of your life bottles, which function as spare lifebars), but it just feels bad and unfair. Even platforming parts where you’re not actually at risk of damage can be annoying, especially trying to time jumps on trampoline type objects to try to get higher. None of it feels great.

The game has a pretty robust upgrade system for 1998. If you kill a certain number of enemies on a level you unlock a chalice, which has to be collected. If you collect the chalice you go to the Hall of Heroes where you can trade it in with one of the statues for an upgrade like a new weapon or life bottle. The chalices aren’t particularly hard to get, mostly requiring doubling back through already cleared potions of a level to go pick it up, but the upgrades create a decent progression system where you feel stronger as you advance. One little kick in the teeth is that you run out of new weapons to get before you collect all the chalices and so the last few rewards are things like a few vials of health (not a fresh life bottle but just…health) and a small amount of gold. Great reward for collecting the chalice on every level.

If it seems like I’m getting into the weeds here it’s because it’s in small detail where Medievil really loses a lot of its luster. For example your health does not refill between levels. Because levels have no checkpoints and you have no lives (though you save after every level and can continue from your last save) this means that if you barely finish a level you’re basically screwed unless you go back to an old level and collect some life there, but to save your progress you need to finish the level. That means that, at least if you’re like me, you’re going to be going back to Dan’s enemy free crypt to run it over and over, refilling your life and picking up gold between levels. This is incredibly boring and even annoying to get to because the overworld map is slow to navigate.

A lot of this just should have been changed for modern sensibilities. This isn’t a completely faithful remake so why be faithful to outdated design decisions like that? Why not have Dan control more like a modern protagonist? Why not improve the camera? Why not add in a new superweapon for collecting all the chalices? They added things like “lost souls” to collect and put to rest, so they weren’t adverse to adding stuff, they just added the wrong things, or at least didn’t add some very necessary things like checkpoints (not that I died more than 5-6 times, to be fair) and health recovery between levels. They left in all the frustrations and dead end design decisions from the original and it really serves to blunt the game’s considerable atmospheric charms. It’s not a terrible experience and there are certainly plenty of highlights, mostly revolving around fun character moments or a few genuinely enjoyable boss fights, but there’s a reason this took me 4 years to finish. Every time I died or couldn’t figure out where to go I set the game down for awhile and that while turned out to be months or even years. It’s just kind of annoying to play, the way that you’d expect from a sort of mediocre (at least gameplay wise) PS1 game. The flailing combat, the clunky platforming, the sometimes obtuse level design with forced backtracking at times…again none of it is awful but it’s not compelling either. When you’re exploring new areas, enjoying fresh funny cut scenes and atmosphere and unlocking new weapons it’s an okay time, but as soon as you repeat stuff it becomes a chore.

The Medievil remake feels like a game that’s hamstrung in an attempt to stay authentic to the original, without being totally authentic to the original. It’s a somewhat reasonable approach that worked very well for the Spyro and Crash games, among others. The problem is that Medievil itself was never as good as Crash or Spyro. There’s a reason that it only really had 2 games, while those other franchises have released over a dozen. The idea of remaking that original cult classic game made sense but replicating all its flaws assured that it would be a one off. It’s now 4 years later and we haven’t even seen a remake of the second game, let alone something new.

Medievil’s story is about resurrecting a flawed, dead, hero and giving him a second chance to get things right. He learns and grows and improves until he is able to stand up as a true hero and avoid repeating the mistakes of his past. Unfortunately the remake takes the opposite approach, slavishly repeating all the flaws of the original, and ultimately being unable to accomplish what that game could not. And so Sir Dan has returned to his eternal slumber, possibly to pop back up as a cameo in Sony projects in the future. The skeletal knight deserved a better fate.

Schlocktober Rating: Novelty Rerelease Schlock

Sometimes companies rerelease an old product that was discontinued years ago just for nostalgia's sake. Crystal Pepsi, New Coke, various candies and cereals. There's generally a reason these were canceled in the first place, and they never stick around too long on reissue, but the hope is to get some sales from the cult following they had, or just people who may not have liked the product but are willing to try it to remember the time in their lives when they used to drink Crystal Pepsi because that's what their mom brought home from the grocery store. Medievil is kind of like that. It's not a great taste, but it's one that isn't around anymore and so has some novelty to it. I just wish they went a step further and reimagined the whole thing, or at least ironed out some of the flaws. Instead they gave us just what we remembered, in new packaging, and gamers quickly got their fill.