When comparing The Journey Down vs Cave Story+, the Slant community recommends Cave Story+ for most people. In the question“What are the best games on Steam with a rich story?” Cave Story+ is ranked 34th while The Journey Down is ranked 67th. The most important reason people chose Cave Story+ is:
In cave story you have access to tons of upgradable weapons with unique properties for different situations.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Unique Style
Self described as an "afro-caribbean" vibe. With character faces that resemble tribal masks as well as the main characters sporting Caribbean accents there is no doubt the game was designed with black culture in mind.
Pro Quality presentation
The characters are 3D rendered on top of beautiful hand painted backgrounds with it all blending nicely to a very neatly finished look.
Pro Satisfying puzzles
The Journey Down offers challenging puzzles that give the user quite a bit of satisfaction when solved. Not that they are too difficult but just not that the game hands the answers to the player on a platter either.
Pro Tons of fun and unique weapons
In cave story you have access to tons of upgradable weapons with unique properties for different situations.
Pro Great soundtrack
Great soundtrack, superb.
Pro Great storyline
Cave Story offers a pretty deep storyline, more than one would think by just taking a quick glance at the game. There is a reason this game is still so popular after being around for so many years and it's story is it.
Pro Incredibly challenging, with hard mode for veterans
Cave Story is hard and the hard mode even harder, which makes this game great for players looking for a new challenge.
Pro Multiple versions available
After the initial release in 2004, the game has been ported to other platforms and updated along the way by various fans and indie devs.
Cons
Con Chapters are extremely short
Even though the game is broken up into separately purchasable chapters, each chapter is pretty short, even when considering all chapters combined the game in full will still be short.
Con Getting the best ending is almost impossible without a guide
Getting the best ending requires a few highly counter-intuitive if not nonsensical actions to be taken.
Con Disturbing story
With how cute the game looks, the story is surprisingly dark.
Con No complete version
The exclusive content based in platform means that there is no single edition that has every available option. The Switch release seems to come closest, but even it is missing some options available in other releases.