Buy Cave Story+

One of the best games ever made imo

gud game 10/10

I'm not even kidding.

• Fluent Controls
  
• Great Story
  
• Great Gameplay
  
• Godlike Soundtrack

Quit reading this review However, nobody really reads my reviews to begin with and just BUY THIS GAME!

a cool fact about caves is that they are underground

It’s not easy to even start talking about Cave Story without starting to throw out such adjectives like “modern classic” or “cult underground hit”. But there, you have it, I just wrote it and I won’t take it back. This game preceded the current state of indie scene by a few years, back when it was released as freeware title in 2004. In a few years it was improved and expanded to various platforms with more content and refined graphics. It even was remade in 3D and published for 3DS, though that particular version lacks to provide definitive Cave Story experience. But in the beginning it was made by a single developer on his free time. His name was Daisuke Amaya. The fact that this guy is japanese (not that you couldn’t tell it by his name) explains a lot. Like, for starters, game’s setting and plot.
Taking place inside giant floating island inhabited by giant sentient rabbit-like creatures called Mimigas this story is both absurd and complex. Starting out very light-hearted game is filled with tremendous amount of jokes. While the story develops, it tends to grow deeper and more brutal than you might think it’ll turn out. Like many metroidvanias do, game prefers not to present you with the world details and backstory, but rather let you explore it by yourself. A vague prologue, which will leave player clueless transits to waking up in a cave. A silent protagonist suffering from memory loss, as cliché as it is, works as perfect instrument here. You wake up, you find a gun, you begin your journey. Your mission, your ultimate goal is covered with the mystery. And discovering it can’t be done separately with finding an answer to an even more important question “What the hell is going on here?” But searching it won’t be similar to aimless wandering around. Cave Story keeps a very good pace, presenting you with new goals and providing directions to them on the go. It isn’t large glowing marker on the map though, but rather clevel organization of levels and progression of the story. Exploring and finding hidden secrets is present in the game, but size of the areas isn’t overwhelming and new levels are introduced one by one. There is though few very unobvious decisions that change the outcome of the game drastically. So if you want to achieve the best ending prepare to keep a keen eye for details or rather even look for some guides.
From the perspective of game mechanics it’s the usual run-jump-shoot trio, but with a few twists. One of them is leveling system. Killed enemies drop yellow triangles, which fill the progression bar of currently equipped weapon. Fully filled bar increases weapon level, up to maximum third, but taking damage drops the bar back down, so prepare for some micromanagement. Weapons have different shooting patterns. There is Polar Star which fires plain bullets, then there’s Fireball which produces bouncing deadly balls of fire. Then there’s Spur which has chargeable beam; the longer you charge it, the more powerful the resulting shot will be. Plenty of choices results in very different strategies player can use. Though you’ll tend to have favourites among your arsenal, keeping them all leveled up and ready will be invaluable. To make things even more complex some of the weapons can be traded off in exchange providing you with other guns which have different qualities. This changes are sometimes mutually exclusive and not always reversible, so don’t answer yes every time some friendly NPC offers you something, that’s my advice here. Unlike your main interaction tools your character doesn’t really level up, with the exception of few valuable health upgrades. Not very hard if you keep the default path game is horribly ruthless when it comes to that last levels of the “best ending” branch. How does it sound for you: beating a few sequential levels swarming with enemies and two bosses? If you fail, you start again from the very beginning. That’s very different from the main path, where you’ll find save points after every major event. But then again, it’s for those who want to fully beat the game. For those who are trained and prepared there are even special timer for that last sequence, beating last boss before time runs out will unlock one of the few special music tracks in main menu. The themes depend on how fast you complete it, a new one for each minute saved. And that happens only if you found special secret item, but I guess that won’t be a problem for those who are that deep in the game.
Cave Story stands on the shoulders of giants, combining elements from both Metroid and Mega Man. But it goes further than just simple copying of old classics. It is polished and compelling and its influence knows no merits; nearly every modern 2D-metroidvania has taken some lessons from here. A must-have experience if you call yourself a lover of modern indie-games.

Everything about this game is perfect.

So; a game released initially for free years ago is now avaliable for almost 20 dollars.
Is it worth it...?

...depends!

Cave Story+ is the most definitive version of the game ever released in my own opinion, trumping other releases on consoles, and the original in terms of raw content. Cave Story+ boasts extra gameplay modes, stages, the ability to switch between the original and new graphics and music (And the WiiWare exclusive music too!), difficulty modes, little easter eggs, and a few things I probably don't have memorized sprinkled on top of an already amazing game.

The problem I have recommending it to most people is that the original Cave Story is still out for no money whatsoever and includes the entire length of the main game. If you're not comfortable whatsoever about paying money for Cave Story+, you can still get the original for exactly 0 dollars and decide whether or not the extra content will be worth your time based on how much you enjoyed it.

I'll be honest in saying that paying that amount of money for Cave Story+ feels like a bit of a rip once you've played the original and know its plot inside and out, but if you're like me and you really enjoy playing the game whenever you can, you won't really mind it. In reality, I own about six different copies of Cave Story between Nintendo systems and my computer, so you can tell I'm a bit of a nut about this game. There's something about the atmosphere, characters, and gameplay that just make it beyond awesome and a blast to play every single time.


In any case, I will always recommend you play the original first. It's free, and it's a timeless classic made by one man. You will enjoy it. If you come to love it just as much as I do and you need more, definitely grab Cave Story+ when you can (though maybe on a sale!)

Honestly have to say that this is probably the best action/platformer I've ever played!

The story leaves very little to be desired with a trio of different endings and quite a bit of dialogue.
Plenty of different weapons to choose from which gives you lots of room for developing your own playstyle.
Plenty of boss fights!

This is a "new, updated" version. While I really enjoyed the higher quality graphics and SFX I did prefer the original dialogue a bit better. The story is the same but disscussions seem to be oversimplified.

Bottom line: Get this game. It will give you hours of button mashing enjoyment and is worth several playthroughs to see all the endings. It also has a few easter eggs which is a nice bonus :D

(Edit: 3/19/14)

It's pretty good for a few hours.

About a year ago, I actually recommended Cave Story+ to my friends. It was probably the longest recommendation I ever made. What I basically said was that it was the best version of Cave Story that you can get, with everything being perfect aside from one issue, which I will get to later. The reason why I've deleted the recommendation and made a new review is because I really don't think I did the game justice. I would go as far as to say that Cave Story is in my top 3 favourite games of all time, and considering my other two favourite games are exclusive to consoles, and that I believe this is the best version of Cave Story there is, I might go as far as to say this is my favourite Steam game of all time.

If you want an explanation of what Cave Story is, I’ll tell you as much as I can without either spoiling your or me getting bored. You begin playing as a mute… “boy” that is suffering from amnesia, and just woken up in a cave. From there, you find a variety of different characters, amongst them is a race of rabbit-puppy creatures called Mimiga’s. They are suffering because there is a man known as “the doctor” who has come to their Mimiga Village to kidnap them individually. I won’t go into any more detail because, as the title implies, the “Story” in Cave Story, and finding out who this “Mysterious amnesia boy” actually is, is a huge strongpoint of the game.

This game isn’t just full with amazing storytelling either, the gameplay is amazingly fun too. It’s a Metroidvania that doesn’t focus on backtracking… most of the time (IM LOOKING AT YOU, GRASSTOWN!). Your main weapons are the guns you find along your journey, and how they work is actually really interesting and fun. The way that I would explain it is that it’s kinda like an RPG, as your guns can gain experience to make them more powerful. This may sound broken, but your guns can’t actually go any higher then level 3, and if you get hit while your gun has high experience, you will actually start to lose some of those points. It may sound annoying and tedious, but it’s actually extremely fun, and it’s a great punishment for getting hit a couple of times.

Now that we got how everything in Cave Story works, I want to go into comparing Cave Story+ to the original Cave Story. Most of Cave Story’s fame not only comes from that it’s an amazing game, but the whole of the original was made by one person, and he actually released the game for FREE (This may not sound like much now, but remember this game originally came out in 2004). Now you may be thinking “But if the original version is free, why should I bother with this one?” That’s an easy answer, BECAUSE IT’S BETTER IN EVERY WAY. The original game was very 8-bit inspired, something that’s usually looked down on indie developers nowadays, but back then people would say that it’s a great call-back to old NES games. Cave Story+ turns the original 8-bit game into more of a 16-bit feel, and it actually makes the game better for it. Of course, you can change the options so that it’s like the original, but the new version is so much better. That’s not the only thing they added either, there are new gameplay modes that add new levels that you can play, or a boss rush mode, and many, many more.

The only complaint I have for this game is its controls. Believe it or not, even though the game originally came out for PC, the CONSOLE CONTROLS are actually better! If you don’t like using the arrow keys to move, or pressing “up” to jump (which sickens me to think about), you’ll have to change the controls for a bit so that they match up with how you play.

So please, PLEASE buy Cave Story+. If you’re really not sure, you can download the free version on the Cave Story website (you will have to add the English attachment to play it in English though), but buying the one on steam is so much better. I’ve spent way too long making this review, but trust me, it’s worth it. This game is amazing.

(Also excuse me for my horrible grammar in this review)