Prometheus - The Fire Thief

Summary: A good quality retro metroidvania with only a few minor technical issues. Prometheus - The Fire Thief is a retro action adventure game that plays like a sequel to the 1988 NES game Battle of Olympus. It has enough polish and modern convenience to minimize frustration while still maintaining its retro feel. There are still a few rough edges, but they're minor enough to not detract too severely from an otherwise fun experience. Boss fights are the most impressive part of the game. Each fight is unique and well designed, providing a good challenge without going overboard. It requires practice and pattern recognition to succeed but never feels unfair. The lack of a death penalty makes trying each boss over and over a relatively painless experience, adding to the fun of of the challenge instead of punishing you like most retro titles. The other parts of the game are well done, though lack the same level of polish as the excellent boss fights. Exploration is fulfilling, with a good variety of areas to explore. However, while the size of the world gives a lot to explore, it also makes backtracking a bit tedious. Similarly, items are well designed, but the lack of good descriptions can make them hard to use. Many items are clarified through hints from NPCs, though others remain unfortunately obtuse unless you look them up in the manual. While the gameplay is solid, there are a few technical issues worth noting. The lack of native gamepad support is a major concern. Joytokey works fine, and I recommend giving it a try, but it's unfortunate to have to rely on a third party program for such an important feature. More options would be another good addition, particularly volume and resolution adjustments. Lastly, it would be nice to be able to adjust options during play instead of having to quit the entire game and re-launch it to get at the options screen. A quit to menu option would be a fair workaround. Overall, Prometheus - The Fire Thief is easily worth the $5 price tag and I'd highly recommend it to fans of the genre or retro gamers in general. Even if you're not into retro, it's a fun game with enough modern conveniences to stand on its own.

Rating: 6/10 Now that I have finished this game (100% completion), I feel that I can give a good solid review of its quality. First, you have to approach this game as if you were going to be playing an old NES title. From the graphics to the music, this game, for all intents and purposes feels like it should be played on the console. That being said, let me get one major issue that I hope is addressed by the developers in a future patch soon; This game has no controller support. This is unfortunate, and I know some people will be miffed about it. What the developers did do, is provide comprehensive key mapping. I typically play emulators of my games when I am away from home, so I am no stranger to playing these games on a keyboard. While the keymapping feature is a big plus, I will admit this game would have been more enjoyable with a controller in hand. While I would like to call this game a spiritual successor to "The Battle of Olympus", I feel that it would be a disservice to the game itself. I am personally a big fan of Battle of Olympus, and after watching the trailer for the game I immediately saw all the aspects of fun I had from that game in it (even the sound effects) The game is not precisely what the trailer shows which was a little jarring at first. I am not sure what part of the design process changed this, but in the end I felt that it didn't hurt or hinder the gameplay. What you get in this package is a quasi metroidvania experience that, for the price tag, ends up simplifying alot of the complexities that made Battle of Olympus unaccessable to some players. The game is simple, the quests are obvious, and the world itself requires little attention to really keep tabs on where all the unlockables are. Replay-value of the game is a short comming, but if you are like me and enjoy retreading ground to try and finish the game in faster times, there is a very small amount of RNG to worry about. Outside of that I can see the game suffering. On a positive note, the asking price is completely reasonable for the investment. Five American dollars for a NES Erra style 8-bit game is not a bad gig in my book. I managed to finish this game in around 3 hours on my first playthrough (got lost a couple times, and had some extra back tracking and grinding that I discovered was completely unnessesary). It is not a difficult game, and the most frustrating part of it is the simple technical issues that crop up every now and again. There are occasional situations where your attack does not work, and jumps stop half way in their height. I am not sure how to replicate the probelms, they seemed to be intermitent at best, but I did manage to eat a few enemy attacks and fall into one or two pits as a result. They are annoying, I would love to see them fixed, but since I can't readily replicate the issues, I am not sure if they ever will be patched. So until I see a patc; consider it a price of admission much the same as you would an NES title of the past. This game also has some bizzare hit detection issues, but I have never had them NOT work in my favor (which was odd.) It is rare that you can complain about a game giving the player the advantage, so I figured i would go ahead and mention it anyway, in the spirit of potential fixes that may come down the pipe-line (if the devs do patch the system) The only other real technical problem that I encountered in the game, was in the final stage (olympus) and the second to last (forgive the lack of spelling for the name, but the waterfall area) the music decided to jump to overwhelming volumes. It overrode all the sound in the game, and I had to reduce my head set to accomodate it. Two areas of the game had this problem so I didn't find it a deal breaker or anything. All and all I recommend this game to the audience that will give it a look over. I had fun despite running into a couple of snaggs provided due to the "non-linear" options the game allows. You can fight bosses before you are ready, and the challenge goes from significant to impossible when you do so. So as a final warning, when playing, if you do hit a snag, don't jump to complaints like I did, just go back around the world and find the items that will make the game a cake walk. There are no dead ends in the game, and it is a pretty solid experience, and definitely worth the price of admission. I will hold the options to adjust the rating for the game if some of the issues with the game are addressed in future releases. I do enjoy the game, and will probably be keeping tabs on it. But until then, hope this helps. If you want a further look into the game, I have a full series from start to finish that will be available on youtube starting 4/25/15.

An NES inspired game that plays similar to Battle of Olympus which sounds fun on paper but this game is nearly unplayble from one major flaw: the horrible controller support. I use both a SNES usb controller and an Xbox 360 controller(which uses the analog sticks instead of the d pad to move which makes platforming awkward) and they feel jittery and sometimes ducking and jumping doesn't work properly(I even calibrated both controllers just in case which still doesn't help much). Even if you use just a keyboard, the game gets random slowdowns for no reason. Its really unfortunate because I love NES inspired retro games but the keyboard & extremely poor controller support just does't do it for me. Until the controller support is fix I really don't recommend this game.

FFF Most Infuriating game on Steam. The number of bugs in this game is ridiculous. Some areas automatically kill you when you enter them, and heaven forbid you go to hades without the town portal because there is no way back. Guess you got to start over from the beginning right? Finally recovered all my progress and had the game freeze on me and had to hard restart my whole computer because it kept taking over from task manager endlessly. After restart found that the game had uninstalled itself! Thank goodness for small miracles. Keep this malware off your system.

This game doesn't have many reviews so I figure it can use another recommendation. This game is much like the old NES game Battle of Olympus that I played as a kid. If you played that at any point and enjoyed it you may wanna pick this one up too. Just be prepared to be as frustrated lol.

un bel gioco che non è mia riuscito ad ottenere quella attenzione da parte del pubblico...il gioco ricordo molto un vecchio gioco nes che si chiama the battle of olympus

Fun for a play through