Runic Curse Remastered

A cursed island, ten locations, and a weapon-and-rune build system

Runic Curse Remastered casts you as an explorer of a cursed island split into ten distinct, interconnected locations, fighting through hordes of enemies and eleven named bosses while levelling up through a standard Metroidvania progression of selective stat upgrades, new equipment and traversal abilities that open previously inaccessible areas. Its core build system centres on combining a roster of weapons with magical runes, layering over 55 spells and craftable consumable runes on top of that base kit, alongside an unlimited New Game+ and a dedicated Boss Rush mode for players who want to revisit its toughest fights directly. For a solo-developed release at NZ$13.25, that's a substantial feature list, and its early review base's reception suggests the execution largely lives up to that scope.

Four languages, one consistent verdict

What stands out most about Runic Curse Remastered's small early review sample isn't its size, just four reviews at time of writing, but its spread: German, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese reviewers all arrive at broadly the same positive verdict independently. One German-language reviewer writes bluntly that the game is "very fun and very stylish," specifically praising its atmosphere and soundtrack and comparing the overall feel to "Shadow of the Beast" on the Amiga, a specific and evocative reference point for the kind of moody, old-school platforming-adventure tone the game is going for. A second, more detailed German review, from a player who logged over 13 hours, calls it a "delightfully old-school" Metroidvania offering "plenty of variety and a real drive to explore" thanks to its range of abilities, weapons and numerous hidden areas, concluding it's "recommendable across the board" for fans of classic Metroidvania design.

A responsive, soulslike-adjacent combat feel

A Brazilian-Portuguese reviewer who put in nearly four hours in a single sitting frames the appeal in similar but distinct terms, describing the game as "a very enjoyable Metroidvania/'Soulslike'" that isn't especially difficult for most of its length but feels "responsive and dynamic" to actually play, and specifically praising the game's art direction and the charm of its comparative simplicity. That reviewer is also the sample's most balanced voice, explicitly naming two soft criticisms alongside their overall recommendation: the game can feel "a little repetitive in some aspects," and its weapon roster is not especially large, though they felt the layered rune-and-spell system compensated well enough that neither issue meaningfully hurt their overall experience. Notably, they add that praise unprompted rather than in response to any specific question about weapon count, which suggests it's a genuine, considered observation about the build variety on offer rather than a stock complaint reached for out of review-writing habit.

Where the difficulty curve reportedly bites

Against that largely positive picture, a Simplified Chinese-language reviewer offers the sample's most pointed specific complaint: while calling the game "quite fun to play" overall, they report the difficulty escalating sharply from around the game's third visited area, describing being "chased around in a panic" by a pack of unusually tanky enemies while being unable to locate a nearby save point, calling the resulting stretch genuinely painful to get through. That's a specific, credible account of a mid-game pacing or balance issue rather than a vague complaint, and it's worth weighing seriously precisely because it comes from an otherwise positive review rather than a purely negative one.

What the achievement data confirms about that curve

Global achievement data lends real weight to that difficulty complaint. Defeating the game's first boss sits at a comfortable 84.7% of the tracked player base, but that figure drops steadily and steeply with each subsequent boss, falling to 51.7% for the second, the mid-30s for the third and fourth, and eventually down to just 11.7% for the eleventh and final boss, with full game completion sitting at 25.8%. Achievements for defeating individual bosses without taking damage, a natural marker of mastery-level play, sit uniformly in the single digits throughout, and collecting every weapon or every rune each sit below 13%, while fully levelling every rune to its cap, arguably the deepest expression of the build-crafting system reviewers praise most, sits at just 2.3%. Read alongside the Chinese-language reviewer's specific account of a mid-game spike, that steadily falling curve is consistent with a game whose early hours are broadly accessible exactly as most reviewers describe, but whose later stretch asks considerably more of the player than its opening impression suggests, and whose most experimental, fully-optimised builds remain something only a small fraction of its current audience has actually reached.

Final verdict

Runic Curse Remastered is a well-crafted, atmosphere-driven Metroidvania whose small early review base, notably spread across four different language communities rather than clustered in just one, agrees on its core strengths: stylish presentation, a fitting soundtrack, and a satisfying weapon-and-rune build system layered over solid old-school exploration. That linguistic spread is a small but genuinely reassuring signal for a solo-developed release this early in its life, since it suggests the game's appeal isn't an artifact of a single regional community's enthusiasm but something closer to a broadly shared reaction to what the game actually does well. Its most detailed critical account, backed up directly by a steadily falling boss-completion curve in the game's own achievement data, makes a credible case that the difficulty ramps up meaningfully partway through, and that its weapon variety, while compensated for by rune combinations, is comparatively modest. At NZ$13.25, this remains a confident recommendation for Metroidvania fans drawn to old-school atmosphere and rune-based build customisation, with a fair warning that its later hours are a real step up from its accessible opening stretch.