Castle of Heart originally launched as a Nintendo Switch exclusive way back in 2018. Seven years later it is releasing on Switch again as Castle of Heart: Retold. I reviewed Castle of Heart for NWR in 2018, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to return it in 2025 to stack it up against this new version.

If you are unfamiliar with the original game, the basic premise was that you are a knight who has been cursed and turned to stone. As you work your way through levels you will constantly lose health as your body reverts to its stone form. Killing enemies and picking up health are the only way to keep the curse at bay. Gameplay is similar to classic 2D action games like the good Castlevanias or even Super Ghouls and Ghosts.

In my 2018 review, I gave Castle of Heart a 7/10 concluding that, “If you can overcome the controller lag, Castle of Heart can quench the thirst for classic action platforming among diehard genre fans.” That reference to controller lag was my biggest issue with the game at the time. Going back to it now with fresh eyes I’d characterize the problem less as controller lag and more a general issue with character animation, combat, and platforming. So, I was excited to see that Castle of Heart: Retold was specifically set to address these exact issues.

Now obviously there are some huge visual changes, and we will get to those, but I don’t want them to overshadow the actual gameplay updates. From the moment I started playing Castle of Heart: Retold I was shocked by just how much more I was enjoying it, as compared to my memory of the original. Platforming felt more responsive, combat was more engaging, and the whole thing just felt good to play. I wound up redownloading the original just to check to make sure that my memory wasn’t flawed. There are a lot of small changes to how the game works, and I won’t go deep into all of them, but I do want to highlight one big one. In the original game when you attacked an enemy, they wouldn’t suffer any knockback or interruption. This meant that fights often devolved into both of you wailing on each other waiting for the other one to die. In Retold, hitting an enemy can interrupt their action making timing your attacks and blocks feel more meaningful. As a result, combat feels more intentional and thus more engaging. I also noticed that your knight no longer does an awkward little shuffle if you attack while moving forward which constantly moved me out of position while playing the original version.

If we do hop over to the visual side of things, it is hard to know where to start. This isn’t just an update, but rather a complete rebuild of most levels. The actual layouts are generally the same. However, the environments and even some enemy placement are wildly different. In 2018 I thought the game looked fine. It looked like a lower budget Xbox 360 game, but it ran well and was pretty sharp compared to what else we were seeing on the system. Retold brings the game up to modern standards with high-end materials and beautiful post-process effects. You will spot some low-resolution textures on some characters when they manage to get a little too close to the camera in cutscenes, but during regular gameplay it generally looks very good.

Naturally then the question is, how does Castle of Heart: Retold run as compared to the original. This is especially interesting given that we aren’t running this on different hardware. This is still a game built for the original Switch. The original game ran at 1080p docked and 720p handheld. As I mentioned in my original review, it was a sharp looking game. This was then paired with a 30 frames-per-second target that the game generally hit without issue. As for Retold the story is, surprisingly, exactly the same. 1080p docked, 720p handheld, at 30 frames-per-second. It does make me curious if a lower resolution mode could be implemented to open up the game to a higher frame-rate. But regardless, it speaks to the advancements that can come on a single piece of hardware simply through greater developer understanding.

I’ve never disliked the original game, but with a score of 7/10 it's clear that in 2018 I felt there was plenty for Castle of Heart to improve on. While it still isn’t perfect, Retold allows us to play this game likely as its developers always hoped it would be. While this is releasing as an entirely separate game from the original, anyone who purchased that 2018 Switch release can get a hefty discount on the Retold version, making it a very worthwhile upgrade. If you didn’t play the original, then I finally feel like I can very earnestly recommend this game. I wouldn’t have expected back then that Castle of Heart would loosely bookend my experience with the Nintendo Switch, but it has been a very pleasant surprise.