what's in a genre anyway?
I don't really know what to make of cave story. it's been hovering around in the background of my awareness of indie gaming since it came out, but never really landed for me previously. I got a few minutes in, glanced off the egg corridor, and decided to put it off until I'd eventually decided it probably wasn't worth my time.
I still don't know if it was worth my time, even having cleared it.
this gets classified as a metroidvania for some reason, and I don't really understand it. there's not really much back and forth between locations, nor upgrades that present meaningful changes in how you interact with the world aside from the booster (which is mostly just used for future stages)
to me, this feels more like an older mega man game, which isn't a bad thing, just a weird result compared to the reputation (and its steam tags) of this game as an early indie metroidvania. the wikipedia page even starts with the sentence "cave story is a 2004 metroidvania game for microsoft windows." and I just... don't see that. that entire mode of play is about needing to go back to old spaces because you've got new tools or keys that will open new opportunities for progress, and this is just... entirely linear in its progression. you are sent to new places via teleporter and have to solve problems there in a little pocket of relevance, and then you go to a new place with nothing to really show for it aside from maybe a new gun which is only ever relevant for how you wanna fight the next batch of enemies and boss.
a genre conveys expectations for a work, and when those expectations are betrayed, we are likely to get into an argument about our interpretations of the genre label, to assign blame, at worst, or at best, to come to a mutual understanding about why the miscommunication occurred. building a genre off of adjacency to a specific title is always gonna have some weird gaps that occur in how we perceive and define the limits of that genre.
the influence I can kind of discern from castlevania, here, is actually from a pre-Igarashi castlevania perspective, where players could get powerups that would affect their main weapon, but were lost on death; this is also something you'd see in something like super ghouls & ghosts, or other run-n-gun games like contra, or like... other assorted shmups, though my familiarity with shmups is low. this is where the weapon level system for cave story feels like it comes from to me, and it's also probably the most annoying feature of the game, even as it's the most memorable. having a weapon function a specific way until you get hit and then it suddenly stops working as well as a punishment is not exactly my idea of a good time, and it's a small mercy that this wasn't picked up as a regular mechanic by any game that I can remember playing in a similar design space.
anyway this game is fine, I guess, I'm just not as impressed as people seem to be by it. very cool solo dev effort from 22 years ago. it's entirely likely I've been more impressed by people making more substantial metroidvanias inspired by cave story in the intervening years, but to be honest I kinda just wanna play some mega man now.