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Level: Legendary Smitemaster
Rank Points: 8
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File: Castle Repton.drh (23 KB)
Downloaded 415 times.
License: Other
From: Unspecified

Features of this hold:

* Hot tiles do constant damage, not percentage damage.
* No weapon or shield slots. Weapons are discarded on gaining a better weapon, and you cannot return to a previous weapon or to being swordless. This does not apply to accessories; the later levels have accessory slots to help you move your accessories around.
* Custom equipment (thanks to Chaco for the graphics!)
* A mechanism in the final level plays the same role as the Machines in Tendry's Tale, allowing you to choose between purchasing HP, ATK or DEF.
* Seven different accessories are obtainable throughout the hold. There is no post-game level rewarding you for unused accessories, so go ahead and try to find the best place to use each one!

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

Brilliant hold! I am particularly impressed by how geckles are handled. All through the hold greckles are resources that have to be evaluated against all the other resources. How many greckles is a HP worth?

And all the way to the very final level there is a fine balance of keys. Usually at some point in a hold you reach a tipping point, where keys just start to accumulate on their own. Or HP. Or greckles. That point came very late for this hold.

I enjoyed playing it immensely. My only small nitpick would be the Aumtlich. It’s the only enemy preventing you from picking up HP as you go along. 10 for fun, 7 for difficulty.

Lucky Luc
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1215
Registered: 08-19-2012
IP: Logged

This is certainly a very interesting hold. Everything is well balanced, though I felt like the first two levels were quite a bit harder than the rest of the hold (then again, that's the way I feel about most RPG holds).

One particularly interesting feature of this hold is the use of accessories starting with the third level. For none of them it's really clear where's the best place to use them and there's no accessory swap chain, so there's certainly a lot of room for optimizers there. Also, there's apparently
So yes, another RPG hold that is definitely worth checking out!

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[Last edited by mrimer at 03-02-2016 02:39 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Castle Repton is one of my favourite holds. It's medium-length and has a central gimmick, its level layouts are based on another game, Repton 3. If you look up maps of the Repton 3 levels online you'll instantly see the connection.

This heavy restraint in its layout forces a unique design, with a heavier focus on enemies that deal damage via swords and swiping, especially as the level layouts become more open later on. This gives Castle Repton its own identity among all the published holds, which is cool. However if you aren't aware of this gimmick, some parts of the design can feel wierd and "unclean", with force arrows and othosquares in some strange places. There are certainly simpler ways to achieve some of the things it does were it not for this restraint. It also ends up with enemies occasionally standing on top of resources, especially on floor 7, which is an unpleasant suprise if you aren't looking carefully, a minor gripe I have is that I wish more was done to highlight these instances such as lighting effects.

There's a lot to praise about the gameplay. Castle Repton was one of the first, possibly the first, published hold to not restrict accessory use to an accessory chain that ends up getting you into a hidden room. Instead, it offers you accessories quite frequently and gives you complete freedom on how to utilise them. Architects take note: this is way more fun. The hold turns off score checkpoints if you progress to the next level without achieving them, bypassing issues with skippable scorepoints, for which I am eternally grateful.

The hold mostly uses the default enemies but fills in gaps in the roster with a selection of custom enemies. It keeps greckle gate costs sensible by using custom scaling for the costs, and has an altar at the end you can pump greckles into for stats. All throughout the hold, greckle usage is fun and interesting.

Difficulty is notably higher in the first 3 levels, where health is a serious constraint, but gets much easier as the layouts open up in later levels. Despite this minor quibble, the hold is well balanced throughout, and only blows open when you reach the altar which is very late. The bonus scorepoint for not collecting any accessories keeps the difficulty more consistent throughout if you prefer it that way.

There are only two other gripes I have. Later levels have too many keys as they become the default reward for taking damage from seep and waterskippers, as the layout restriction demanded lots of pickups in open locations but didn't provide enough uses for them. Fortunately, these pickups are generally awful until right at the end, so you mostly just ignore most of the key glut and balance remains intact. The second gripe is the single aumtlich beam on the last level, which given the specifics of where it is is a massive annoyance for optimisation, and one that was simply unnecessary.

Overall the hold is excellent fun with a unique style and demonstrates good consideration for balance and lots of ingenuity for dealing with its constraints. 8 years ago I originally rated this 9 for fun and 7.5 brains for difficulty, and after a recent replay, I still agree with these scores. I highly recommend this hold.