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What unfortunately overshadows all of the positives in the game are the muddy controls and some serious inconsistencies in behavior. There’s either a bit of control lag or at least some clumsiness in the movement animations in the game. Everything feels kind of accurate but not really tight, and given all of the sequences where you need to be precise this can be grating. While checkpoints are meant to help break things up, and they do to a degree, there are stretches that play out almost cruelly, making you slog through combat and then try to go through a sequence of jumps or traps. While the constant loss of your life force is an interesting mechanic it also actively discourages you from wanting to explore as the rewards for getting sidetracked are generally not worth the risk. Similarly the pretty clunky combat wastes time and I found I was often more successful only fighting when I needed to and avoiding it whenever possible. Possibly the thing that irritated me the most, though, was the major inconsistencies with dropped secondary weapons. A ranged weapon can be crucial and yet they were inconsistently dropped by enemies from run to run. Throw in the fact that on most deaths you wouldn’t then have the secondary weapon you’d had when you got to the checkpoint and this really makes some runs feel doomed before they start. Put it all together and though there are a lot of ideas and interesting sequences in Castle of Heart, the execution is lacking in polish in key areas and that often makes the game more aggravating than fun unfortunately. It’s not outright broken, but it falls into the trap of getting in its own way with ideas that are actively fighting with the mechanics. Throw in control that’s not very tight and while the game does have a lot of heart, trying to do its best, it’s difficult to recommend heartily.
Justin Nation, Score:Fair [6.0]