Have you played The Maze of Galious? I haven’t, but I did get interested in it after the original La-Mulana came out – a game that was directly influenced by the Konami classic. Not many other “metroidvania” titles in a similar vein exist even today and apart from Nigoro, only one other developer has consistently tried to replicate the magic of the game they clearly love a lot. Starting with UnEpic and now arriving at a logical conclusion of the journey with Pampas & Selene: The Maze of Demons. A game that serves as an unofficial sequel to The Maze of Galious.
So, what’s so special about being not a “simple metroidvania” (as if there’s one generic idea of that either), but being specifically “like The Maze of Galious”? Well, a lot, really. While just like any other exploration focused action adventure platformer Pampas & Selene feature a lot of unique items and abilities that allow you progress further and be better at combat, the overall gameplay is closer to a classic Japanese action RPG like Ys. You get coins and will buy a lot of the cool unique items that improve your life with it. You perform quests for the different gods you find across the central game world and as a reward get important and often progression blocking upgrades and items. You get experience that can increase your maximum amount of health or just fully heal you, depending on if the character can level up. And each of the main bosses of the game lives in their own dungeon, often featuring weird gimmicks and light puzzle solving.
Unlike La-Mulana (and like original The Maze of Galious), the game doesn’t have a lot of tricky and obtuse puzzles and most of the really bizarre things are kept to finding secrets. Though, the game does get some extremely frustrating gimmicks in some of the boss levels. And you are also constantly playing as both Pampas & Selene with the ability to switch on the fly. Characters have their own unique capabilities.
Oh and I suppose I should also stress that I’m writing about the PC version of the game, as this title was originally released for the MSX last year. From what I’m seeing, while most of the game is pretty close, even visually (in the best way), a lot of quality of life changes were made to make the experience of playing the game less retro in some of the more old-school elements, like the very limited saving ability. And some parts of the levels in the game were redesigned to be a bit nicer.
That said the bosses are still godawful. I don’t know what is it about these “Maze of Galious-likes” and their desire to make bosses as infuriating as possible, often reliant on either boring repetition or pure luck, but that was the main reason I’ve never finished UnEpic and that is the reason I’ve stopped playing this game during yet another attempt at the final boss fight. Of all these types of games I’ve tried, only 迷宮城ハイドラ (Hydra Castle Labyrinth) considered that maybe after fun and exciting exploration the last thing players want is to spend an hour trying to beat an unfun boss.
Yet, while the last paragraph reads like a frustrating experience that it is, exploring the world in Pampas & Selene is genuinely extremely fun. Plus, there’s not many other games quite like this, as I’ve mentioned, so your choice is limited. If nothing else, give the demo of this game a go and maybe you will also get interested in this little subgenre of a subgenre.