Beyond The Ice Palace 2 review – most delayed video game sequel ever

Beyond The Ice Palace 2 screenshot — Beyond The Ice Palace 2 – it wasn’t worth the wait (PQube)

After 37 years, a sequel to Commodore 64 title Beyond The Ice Palace finally arrives, but what is the game and why has the follow-up taken so long?

If you’re wondering what Beyond The Ice Palace 1 was then don’t worry, you’re not going to be the only one. We did a double take when we first heard about this sequel, because not only is the original nearly four decades old but even at the time it was not regarded as a particularly good game. It wasn’t a notable sales success either and seemed destined to be almost instantly forgotten. And yet here we are.

The name Beyond The Ice Palace is a meta reference to the 8-bit computer conversions of Ghosts ‘N Goblins, by British publisher Elite, which were heavily truncated and, on the Commodore 64 and other formats, ended abruptly with an ice level instead of including everything from the original arcade game.

At the time, Elite supposedly pitched a Ghosts ‘N Goblins sequel to Capcom but when they were told no, they released Beyond The Ice Palace as a blatant knock-off, with a generic barbarian character and none of the cartoonish charm of the original. Surprisingly, Elite is still around today, making mobile games of various 8-bit British games, but they don’t seem to be involved in this at all. Which makes the whole situation even stranger.

If we had to guess, we imagine what’s happened here is that French developer Storybird Studio completed the game and realised it didn’t really have much of a hook (or maybe they just couldn’t think of a name) and then found out that the Beyond The Ice Palace licence was available and that promoting this as the most belated sequel ever would help to get it noticed. Which we guess worked, because here we are reviewing it.

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It certainly has little in common with Beyond The Ice Palace (or Ghosts ‘N Goblins) in terms of gameplay and the only real connection, which would’ve been very easy to add late in the process, is that the McGuffin you’re after is shards of a sacred arrow. Storybird also got British composer Allister Brimble, who was active in the 8-bit era, to do the music – although it was actually David Whittaker who worked on the original game.

The game’s much more obvious inspiration is Castlevania, with some sections looking almost identical to iconic locations from Konami’s increasingly neglected franchise. Nevertheless, it is not a Metroidvania, as it’s linear, with no backtracking, and with only a small number of additional abilities to acquire. But not all Castlevania games are Metroidvanias and Beyond The Ice Palace 2 clearly venerates Super Castlevania 4 on the SNES above all others.

The original Beyond The Ice Palace had barely any plot but here you’re cast as the ‘Cursed King’, who’s been shackled up in captivity for (37?) years and now wields his chains like a whip and a short range grappling hook – like a cross between Simon Belmont and Kratos. You can also use the chains to block projectiles, pull the shields away from enemies (and doors from their hinges), and perform powered-up attacks.

Strangely, you don’t get any extra weapons, it’s just the chains. Both the original game and Castlevania have multiple different weapons for you to switch between and their absence is keenly felt here, not because anyone cares about authenticity to the original but because it’s sorely needed in terms of variety.

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You can upgrade your stats but that’s not terribly exciting and instead the most interesting use for the chains is using them to interact with the environment, swinging across gaps, pulling switches, and activating traps. Nothing that happens is genuinely new or unexpected, but the level design is generally competent.

Instead, the game’s major problems are its difficultly level and its clunky controls. The main character is painfully slow and the controls unresponsive and imprecise. In terms of the platforming this makes everything much more difficult than it should be, especially given the unsatisfyingly floaty jumping movement. Likewise, combat feels awkward and slow and while nothing is terrible, none of the action is very good either.

You increasingly get the impression that the developers ran out of time, as while the game starts off with an impressive array of giant-sized bosses and mini-bosses, their scale and complexity tails off noticeably by the halfway mark. The difficultly of the bosses is even less consistent, with major difficulty spikes that quickly drain your will to continue.

In its favour, Beyond The Ice Palace has decent pixel art graphics, somewhere north of what the SNES could comfortably achieve. But because everything is so derivative of Castlevania the visuals struggle to impress, even with some interestingly strange boss designs.

As peculiar as this is in terms of its name, viewed solely as a game there’s very little of interest here. There are dozens upon dozens of other similar titles, including all the games it so obviously cribs from, that are considerably more entertaining than this. Given that even at its best this is just a mediocre Castlevania clone, there really seems no reason that Beyond The Ice Palace should have been thawed out for a sequel.

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Beyond The Ice Palace 2 review summary

In Short: In terms of gameplay, it has little in common with the 37-year-old original but the fact that this is a generic and unremarkable copy of other, better games unfortunately makes this a very authentic sequel.

Pros: The pixel art graphics are often quite good, and the chains are a versatile weapon and movement system. Some of the boss battles are impressive.

Cons: Awkward, imprecise controls and dull combat and platforming. Everything it does has been done better many times before over the last several decades.

Score: 4/10

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £15.99
Publisher: PQube and Pixelheart
Developer: Storybird Studio
Release Date: 11th March 2024
Age Rating: 12