This is out and I finished it. The first loop, anyway! Difficulty was on Knight, or second-highest, for what I assume is the default option--the two notches below are easy ("easy") and beginner, from how the game communicates itself.
I don't know whether the impressions I have about Resurrection are applicable to the series as a whole, because Ghosts 'n Goblins has never been one in constant rotation for me; my experiences with it are there, but they're dim as of right now. I preface with this with the intent to assuage the vets, because it is likely my headspace isn't attuned to the demands of the series as a whole, but with that qualifier in mind: I think this game is good, but I hardly enjoyed any time I had with it. The difficulty defines the series but at least here it's not the kind I find interesting, because so much of it doesn't feel learnable; the progress that eventually occurred only happened after dozens of deaths per stage, simply because the chaotic conflagration decided to give way that time, and not any others, until the next checkpoint could be reached.
The checkpoints themselves define the rhythm of the game because I could not imagine finishing a single stage without relying on them, and so the act of play becomes this piecemeal, compartmentalized series of setpieces that are introduced, the player masters one until they get to proceed to the next one, and the skills acquired or tactics internalized from one to the next feel like they have very little to do with general aptitude at the game or its inner workings, because the challenges are so specialized and diverse (that's also a strength of the design, mind). I "finished" the first act of Resurrection, and saw the congratulatory credits roll, but I felt about as hapless that I'd done so as I did at the beginning.
It is sour grapes to some degree that this is a game I can't wrap my head around how to reliably approach or understand, and the expanded notion of it as a tough-as-old-shoe-leather authentic faux-arcade experience, yet something that has a literal skill tree, saves progress per stage and features out-of-the-way collectables in a way dilutes the design for me because while I could avoid and disable all of those features, the overall expectation and game balancing feels like it's conceived with making use of those advantages as a baseline, and as a result I could never really settle into a comfortable pattern of play with it. Exploration for permanent character upgrades gels well in games that aren't obscenely demanding just to survive in, but Resurrection is, and it makes you feel like you need those upgrades to continue doing so and then places the majority of them in extremely dangerous locations and veritable traps that more often than not result in yet another checkpoint reload. It's a very uneasy symbiosis of the contrasting heritage and the attempt to play nice and accommodate newer design trends.
The customary second loop only seems to exacerbate the woes I had with the base playthrough, as the same stages are heavily remixed with even meaner tricks like almost invisible enemies, literal lights-out sections or otherwise obscured player vision, and the game's reliance in simply overwhelming the player with oncoming numbers. I don't know whether I'm compelled to finish up the journey towards the true end, because the nature of the ordeal before me isn't daunting because it's difficult, but something far worse as far as I'm concerned: it's uninteresting.
At least the aesthetics are impeccable.
