Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Review

I never played the first Daymare game and I mainly played this first because it was a prequel, I normally don't do this but this game looked and sounded intriguing enough for me to want to play it, I might play the first game down the line due to the varying degrees of enjoyment I got from this game. I'm not holding out my breath for that game to be good since it sounds like something I might not enjoy.

Anyways with that out of the way, what did I think of Daymare 1994 Sandcastle? It's an okay-good game, however it is an okay game that I find to be endearing which is fine by me.

I'll start with the good, the weapon feel and damage animations all feel great and have the gratifying feedback you want. Blasting enemies with a shotgun especially while frozen just has that "oomph" to it that I want out of any game that has a high amount of shooting in.

The fact that you only get two weapons throughout the whole game did sound offputting when I looked up more info regarding Sandcastle, but it's fine. I did switch between shotgun and smg enough to the point where neither weapon felt too dominant over the other, I did mainly use the shotgun since the game's combat is primarily at close range and shotguns in video games are more effective at that distance but the smg did at the very least get more use whenever the insta kill attack flying monsters showed up. The smg's ammo ran out faster than the shotgun too, but I was fine with it. At the very least the game never made me wish I wanted to have more weapons which is a quite the achievement.

The frost grip is encouraged and is required to be used by the player, the thing is definately not a pointless gimmick, you will most certainly need to use it throughout the game to effectively get by combat encounters, you need to pretty much freeze enemies in order for you to effective kill them. Regular enemies can be taken out with a shotgun blast while other enemies who are bullet proof need to be frozen in order for you to get the kill.

The final thing I like about combat is that enemies won't die after you blasted them with a shotgun or headshotting them with the smg, their "soul" will transfer to another another corpse of sorts and then they will attack you again, this encourages use of the frost grip even more since you need to forst bullet them in order to avoid them from "resurrecting" think of the Infector from Dead Space except they can be taken out as easily with one shot but you need to deal with multiple enemies. My only gripe with this is that it's hard to tell which enemies will have their "soul" come out of a corpse and which ones don't. There is also the aforementioned instakill flying enemy but his attacks are telegraphed well enough when he is close by with a sound cue to know when to avoid him.

The level design is pretty decent too. Nothing too standout but it gets the job done, the game's levels are ultimately linear but the general direction is pretty easy to figure out without the game needessly being patronizing. There is also some decent use of the "inspect" option in the inventory.

Story is also kind of engaging with Reyes being noticeably more vunerable and interesting than a lot of Resident Evil protagonists. It's not amazing but it is more engaging than something like the aforementioned RE even with it's stifly animated cutscenes. The voice acting isn't as bad as some make out, I found it to be decent enough. Reyes does show character when her sister Helen is involved and she's shown to be introvert with how she is a scientist and how she lives in a closed off apartment. The rest of the story can be pretty hard to follow and somewhat convoluted but Reyes did make me more engaged than I thought I was going to. 

However after all this praise, there is some major issues one being the lack of enemy variety but I didn't mind that so much since the lack of weapons and the lack of enemies sort of balance each other out. Add the frost grip and encounters are generally engaging enough.

Two bigger issues I have is the lack of defense items and a dodge button.

The RE remakes have the former and the lack of them in Sandcastle is noticeable. There is no way of defending yourself when you get grabbed, sure you can activate freeze attack after getting hit but can't you say, have Reyes do a counterattack before the enemy bites her and then it depletes the frost grip guage and then you need to replenish it using an canister items? It would give these items more use and add more decision making. Should I use a canister to restore my grip or should I take the hit and use a healing item? Plus it starts to get tiring and frustrating mashing x all the time to break out. This would add more to combat and cut down on the tedium.

The lack of a dodge button can be super frustrating at times. There are enemies who throw projectile attacks at you and the only way to evade them is hope you press the sprint button fast enough before the projectile lands. This can kill you in 2-4 times and add the enemy grabs to that and the combat can get really frustrating at times, so many times I died in this game was because of the lack of defensive options and evading. I did try to save health kits when I can but the game spawned them on occasion so it felt like I had to use them sparingly. The final boss in particular can be infuriating due to this since she can grab you and then you have to repeat to redo a section to get back you were on and her patterns and when she grabs you can be very unpredictable and the lack of being able to move out of the way last minute can add some major frustration despite being health kits spawning every time Helen teleports you. 

Overall, Daymare:1994 Sandcastle is a decent at time good game but expect rough edges with some omissions being questionable, still worth checking out if you want an over the shoulder action horror game that is not a remake like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space.