It's quite a shame that Cave Story now seems to be shrouded in obscurity and forgotten for the most part, despite arguably being the most important indie game ever made. It wasn't the first, but a majority of indie games follow in Cave Story's wake, it proved that even one developer, with enough passion and love for their creation could stand up to the gaming giants, and mind you this game was released FOR FREE about 20 years ago, because Pixel didn't have a budget for marketing so the only choice he had really was the word of mouth, people began to see that Cave Story was the real deal and inspired tons of other smaller developers to try their hand at gamedev, and thus, began the indie game boom we now enjoy today. Cave Story's impact didn't just stop at games, but it also went on to influence anime and manga series such as Made in Abyss. I could have just gone back to the freeware version whenever I wanted to play this, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I just wanna support Pixel, I dunno what he is doing right now, but I hope he knows just how much impact Cave Story has had over the years. I like the new additions the + version adds, though I am a bit bitter how the nintendo version has way more features. Anyway I guess I should talk about the game itself too, the game is still great, and I'd say it's the responsibility of everyone who loves games to play this game too, it it was an instant classic after all, though the game is showing it's age a bit, and that's okay. I've seen many people brand CS as a metroidvania, but I couldn't disagree more, there are really few metroidvania mechanics present here, CS at it's core is more of a run and gun platformer game even though you can return to previous areas in metroidvania fashion, the backtracking is not really required and there is hardly any ability gating or exploration (most of the levels are linear shoot em up corridors) despite there being a map system which is only good for the two rooms where you can't see ♥♥♥♥) The most memorable aspect of the whole game, is it's soundtrack, it's genuinely impressive how Pixel made such a good soundtrack with basically no knowledge about music past "whatever sounds good" and what makes it even more impressive is that he also made the tools which he would in turn make the music with. The game is actually surprisingly hard, even on normal mode, I think the game tries to compensate for the simple enemy and boss attacks with increased damage (The insta kill pits I think are also quite punishing). The shooting is nice, there is a lot of enemy and weapon variety and I really like the leveling system for the weapons and it's not really something I've seen in other games. The movement is pretty floaty and took me some getting used to until the endgame where you get your movement upgrade which makes just moving around so much fun (or midgame but you'll get a worse upgrade depending on your actions). I also really like the different locations you visit. For all the positives that is the core gameplay loop I truly think it's hindered by the games short lenght, I used to remember this game being far longer, but I can go from start to finish in about 5 hours. It's really silly to complain about the game's lenght considering the game was made by one dude who was also starting a family and had a full time job and worked on the game in his free time, but I really believe that the only thing hindering Cave Story is it's playtime. There is this one weapon upgrade you can get but it's rendered pretty much useless because of how quickly after you can get a much stronger upgrade. I touched on this earlier, but there is a surprising amount of enemy variety and some of them go most of them fade from my mind, because how quickly the areas go by (Seriously the Outer wall and the balcony should have been the size of the previous levels and the previous levels should have been twice as long) Despite the characters and story being so full of charm, the lenght of the game doesn't really allow you to get attached or invested save for maybe 1-3 characters (Curly being the obvious one), but even still the lenght doesn't stop me from enjoying its cast and story. There is a funny contrast between how cute the game looks and sounds when the story is about genocide and human experimentation. I suppose the game's short lenght makes it easier for replays to get the best ending for example, but even then I don't like how the route to the best ending is attained, it's ridiculously convoluted, this part contains spoilers. So to get the best ending you have to go through quite a trek of weird decisions during the game, the first one is to NOT DROP DOWN TO HELP PROFESSOR BOOSTER, who mind you, fell from a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cliff in front of you and he ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dies if you go help him, but if you don't he somehow survives? WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥?? The second is before the Core battle you have to find this tiny missable tow rope item before going to talk with Curly which triggers the fight, after the fight you have to use the rope on the unconcious Curly and then in the waterways you have to make this very odd and precise jump to this random house, and the worst part is that you have one shot at this, if you mess up the jump Curly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dies and you're probably gonna wanna load your previous save to try again. Well anyway WHEN you do make it to the random house you gotta drain the water from Curly and then the game presents you with this weird choice of "Do you want to leave her here" while she's recovering, like its really clear that she needs time to rest- plus she doens't have an air tank so why would Quote bring her back underwater where the normal person would assume Curly would just die again, well anyway TAKING HER WITH YOU IS THE CORRECT CHOICE WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥?? Anyway when you get back to the plantation you'll find Curly with amnesia level 2 and you have to back to mimiga village to find some weird ass talking mushroom and kill him and then feed him to Curly and she recovers her memory and she will give you a key item that locks the true ending, but that's not entirely true, you can still get the normal ending because I think even with the Iron Bond item most people would miss the path to Hell. Anyway after defeating Undead Core the island starts to fall and Sue says "we gotta get the ♥♥♥♥ outta here" or something like that, well wouldn't ya know what if you wanna get the true ending you gotta go back to the prefab house where there is suddenly a hole which leads you straight to hell? WHAT? WHY? HOW? I cannot understand what sort of mentality created this questline but whatever, beat Hell and you get the best ending. Anyway it seems like I have more negatives than positives about the game, but thats not true, I feel strongly about this game and get disheartened at the thought of just how much better this game could still be even though it's still a gem behind all the grime, I really hope Pixel someday makes a true remake of this game to fulfill it's true potential. It's definitely a must play title, and one that should never be forgotten no matter what this industry becomes. TL;Dr: Play Cave story, it's a landmark title in the indie game space even though it has a few weird... ehh quirky design choices.