Crusader of Centy

Originally played in 2023, I’m porting over my thoughts, first from a variety of messages sent in Discord to rappy as we played in tandem, and second from a small thread on twitter.

I am currently playing through Crusader of Centy on the NSO! Firstly my first off the cuff description of “LoZ but Earthbound” was not entirely accurate. Its medieval, it’s a very weird world, it’s like if some of the more tame enemies from Treasures’ Gunstar Heroes were in the zelda world. It has a lot of quirks to it, as well. You aren’t granted items/tools, you get various abilities that things can teach you, like jumping and lifting big objects, and it happens in like… the most random places. The other part of this is you also collect animals/party members. You’re able to assign 2 animals at a time that follow you around like Pikachu in Pokemon Yellow. These things augment your abilities in really specific ways; your movement doubles, your sword is ice powered but only when you throw it - two examples. My big worry when i realized how this was going to work was that you’d be swapping these animals in and out all the time, constantly in menus, but its designed pretty well and this hasn’t been troublesome at all. Some of these animal abilities are also passive, you just need to have them in your inventory and they’ll add something or other.

The game doesn’t give you a full overworld map, like a Zelda, that corresponds 1-to-1 to each square or quadrant, it’s more like Super Mario World where it shows each area and that you are in that area, just not specifically where you are. When you first go to a new area there will be a handful of screens you need to get through, things to do or puzzles to solve - and at first you think “fuck i"m going to have to backtrack through all of this” but the game does a good job about letting you skip things once they are finished off. Since there is no map and the areas are pretty expansive I find myself getting lost a lot, the areas can kind of all look the same after a while (there are only so many ways for them to vary the look of this desert).

My biggest complaint? The combat is terrible! I don’t know if its a hitbox issue, or strikebox or something, but your sword has an incredibly tiny area to cause damage. You know how sometimes, in AlttP, you’ll be standing up against grass or something and you swing your sword and it doesn’t cut it so you swing again and then it reacts? Like it was 1 pixel off. This game does that ALL. THE. TIME. So you have to be in a very specific position in relation to what you are attacking in order to do damage. When you get hurt, you are impervious for like .0005 seconds, but when you hit an enemy, they are invincible for like at least one full second, and the feedback on when you are getting hurt or when you are doing the hurting is not telegraphed very well. During one boss fight i didn’t think I got hit at all until I up and died in the middle of it - I was standing on spikes and didn’t know it.

Outside of that and then a few other “of the times things that only ALttP managed to figure out”, its pretty playable and enjoyable! I have a walkthrough up but I’m only reaching for it when I’m lost and need to figure out where to go next. Its not as obtuse as some other games and anytime i’ve been like “fuck what do I do next” I go to the nearest village and talk to people and either they said it earlier or their dialogue has changed. It’s actually a pretty weird game, I’m enjoying it!

Jul 13, 2023

Crusader of Centy is finished and behind me! I really enjoyed it! It’s a different take on the 16 but action RPG. Imagine if instead of Zelda’s tools, you get party members but equipping them gave you the tools to progress! It’s interesting because you can combine them!

Jul 13, 2023

The combat suffers a little as the sword has a terribly small area of effect so you have to be aligned just right to do damage. The game also wants you to throw your sword at all times, which makes you wonder why it feels so slow to throw.

Jul 13, 2023

Combat issues aside, there is a really great world here full of weird little guys that want to hang out. There is also some philosophical questions raised that I loved. You ever feel bad for killing a couple of Bokoblins chilling by the fire in TOTK? We’ll this game’s for you!

Final Thoughts from 2025

I’ve thought about this game a few times since I’ve written these, and I’m glad I ported this over because it gave me time to properly reflect on a 16-bit game that did not shatter any earth for me. What it did do well, it did extremely well. Shaking up the tool-as-reward system and combining that with party members made this game feel surprisingly fresh. And using the monsters of this word to raise the question about who the real monster is - it’s a theme I think about all the time. Drakengard 3 does this exceptionally well as does Metal Gear Rising. It’s worth a shot if you’ve never played it before and possibly worth a second look since it’s very easily available on NSO.