The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Review

My first impressions of seeing this game was pretty sour. I thought they were just taking an older title like A Link to the Past and trying to use it for profit and to be fair, they kind of did and I'll explain later. Every time I saw previews for the game, my opinion of it went worse and worse as the game's new puzzle mechanic, Graffiti Link, just looked absolutely stupid. However after the reviews finally came out, I was surprised to see it getting near perfect scores. I quickly put away my premature bias and picked it up just to see what was so special about the game. I was definitely not disappointed... This is something a little different as I will be using a number scoring system to elaborate the strengths and weaknesses of the game as this game does not come without it's flaw. This will also be spoiler free.... as best as I can.  Be warned though, minor stuff will be revealed.

 We start off the game in the same Hyrule we let off with in A Link to the Past and come to find out these mysterious graffiti paintings are all over town and as you venture further into the game, you eventually get the ability yourself to become these paintings inside the wall, where it allows you to roam off of cliffs without falling and add pretty much a new level of exploration and puzzling. And this is exactly where this games best feats lie: It's puzzles. You see the entire game is pretty much one giant puzzle for you to roam and collect these hidden out-of-reach objects with your new found power. This idea is absolutely brilliant in design and its something I've never seen before in a game and a lot of times I find myself completely confused on just how to obtain this item just barely out of reach and then "Oh god dammit!", I forgot I could use this new ability and just walk over to it and sometimes it's fun to just go into a wall, walk down the line and see if you can find something just on a whim. It's definitely really fun to experiment with. I'd honestly say this game does it's puzzles better than any game in the entire series. Though that might just be because it's fresh in my mind...

So the biggest thing I always head said negatively about this game was that you Rent your items. Yes that's right, every equipable item you obtain is rented through a merchant and if you die, you must pay for them again. Theoretically this also means you start off with every item as well... but there in lies the 2 problems with the game: The game also assumes you have every item and dungeons are only for story as they do not contain any equipable items anymore, which kind of cheapens the experience of exploring the dungeon. A lot of times you'll run through a dungeon and you'll see an obstacle that requires you to use bombs but oh wait, you didn't rent the bombs from the last time you died... Guess you gotta run out of the dungeon and rent them! Some dungeons are kind of obvious what item it wants you to have, but they will also contain a puzzle that isn't so obvious. But on the bright side you CAN buy the item later on and the game whores you with ruppees. So there's that...

The inventory in the game feels pretty lackluster... You got the very basic 9 items and that's it. Your inventory from Link to the Past is gone; Cane of Bryna, Cane of Somaria, Magic Cape, etc... Missing. There were a bit of puzzles later in the game that felt like the Cane of Somaria would have been welcomed, but I was disappointed to see it wasn't.  I was kind of hoping with the inventory space that's opened, there'd be items that I was missing... but I wasn't.

One more gripe I had, and it's a very minor gripe: The dungeon and overworld is SUPPOSE to share similarities with A Link to the Past, it's a sequel afterall. So why is it that some dungeons look RADICALLY different? Like the Tower of Hera for example no longer has stairways and requires you to bounce your way to the top and looks completely different. Did some architect come in and just drastically redo all the ancient temples and palaces around the world? I mean the game is 500 years later, not 500,000 years. There's just no reason... But I understand why it is... I mean if it looked exactly the same, it would literally just be a rip from the older game and that's pretty boring. But continuity just bothers me.

SPOILERS BELOW

And where it SHOULD be different, in the "Dark World"*, it looks almost exactly like they stole the sprites from the Dark World from a Link to the Past. The Trees, the enemies, the buildings, hell I was honestly assuming the game was going to say that this second world WAS the Sacred Realm just inhabited by people now. But it's not....

END SPOILERS


 But what this game does right, does it in spades. This games 3D looks amazing. Like a lot of the time I had my 3D on without even realizing it because it just looked so natural. It helps the game so much because of a lot of times the game has platforms on different levels and the levels can kind of be hard to see, the 3D makes it jump out. I would honestly say that the 3D is almost a requirement to the game... It adds so much and didn't really give me a headache. A lot of times the enemies and magic will jump out and kind of surprise you. I am honestly amazed to see myself call a gimmick like 3D an actual asset to the game.

The Gameplay is also the best you'll ever see in a top-down Zelda game. The gameplay is very fluid and rewarding. I kind of expected to see gameplay like this and it's kind of refreshing to come back to this type of Zelda after the 3D adventures of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword... so it's exciting to see it actually do very well. However, what cheapens the gameplay is the removal of ammo. All bombs and arrows share the same magic bar.... I'm not quite sure why they did this but I'm not sure if it's bad or good.

There are a lot more good things about this game and a few more bad.... None of them really come to mind at the moment, and it feels like I kind of did nothing but bash the game. But what the game does right does it SO well that it definitely makes up for its flaws. For a moment I was considering it better than A Link to the Past** but now that I've complete it, I wont.... but it's definitely a contender. With a little bit of polish, it could have done just that.

Gameplay: 9/10
Puzzles: 10/10
Story: 6/10
Music: 10/10
3D: 10/10
Design: 6/10
Overall: 8.5




* Let's be fair, it might as well be the Dark World

** A Link to the Past is my favorite in the series.

Super Mario Brothers and why I hate this game.

Super Mario Brothers has always been so respected in the gaming community. People praise it for: It's memorable music, resurrecting the video game market after the '83 crash, and creating the platformer genre. People will tell you that SMB was the template for what people used to create their own games like Loony Tunes, Gimmick, and Kid Kool... I hate hearing things like this. I am not a fan of giving credit to someone for mediocrity. And I suppose this might as well be: A Nintendo hate rant, a Mario ( series ) hate rant, and a rant focused on the game itself.

Super Mario Brothers was a launch game by Nintendo on their premiere console, the NES. However this was not the first game they ever made as they had their own Pong Consoles, Donkey Kong 1-3, and a few others. But I want to focus on Mario... Mario was the main character of the Donkey Kong game, trying to rescue his damsel from the giant ape. Here we see him jumping over barrels, smashing barrels with a hammer, smacking birds with whips, and a few other things. All because ever really reaching the SMB game. Now with all this previous knowledge of Mario, I find it extremely amusing that the best method of taking out your enemies is by stepping on them. In fact, the best option to take out the enemy... is by completely avoiding them. And here is pretty much where my first gripes begin with this game: It's lazy on just about every way you can imagine.

SMB1 has bricks for the ground, clouds and bushes using the game sprite, music that lasts like 39 notes long before it starts repeating, the characters are literally guys in overalls, the enemies are everyday vegetables and animals just anthromorphed, and the way to beat the boss of the game is to grab an ax which somehow destroys a bridge... oh and when you Do grab it, it repeats the same message 7 times. The story isn't even great. I think the ONLY thing that truly makes the game stand out is the Fire flower.

I always hear the same retorts: Well, it's their first game for the NES, well they could only do so much, well games werent fleshed out yet! Okay, let's be fair here. There exists adventure games before the NES, like Jungle Hunt for the Arcades.. in fact the Arcades held a lot of great inspiration for games that the NES could have blown us away with... You see, Nintendo MADE the NES... AND had 3 years to make the game. You see the NES began development in 81, released in 83 and Mario came out in 85. Now considering they designed the console, you'd think Nintendo would have the advantage over everyone else on having a great looking game, in actuality though, we got the opposite. We got probably the ugliest and cheapest looking thing possible.

But why? Why does EVERYONE put Mario 1 on a pedestal? Well, I'd probably say the obvious nostalgia. I mean, the world 1-1 music is recognized by everyone. Just about everyone played it, including their grandma. We had 27 years of exposure of Mario and its evolution, we hear it every day online, we hear remixes of the music on Smash Brothers and other games, we have remixes of Stages like Mario Forever, Rom hacks, rereleases... we're BOMBARDED by Mario. And each time we're reminded of our childhood, we're reminded of that day when we first turned on that NES and played Mario with our friend and died on World 2-2... or found that Warp Pipe.

So the big question I ask you? Is Nostalgia really a reason? I recently saw a video online of the Top 5 Mario games ever. And I KNEW that Mario 1 would be no. 1 or close to it and my mind was blown when I saw that Mario 1 was put above 3 BECAUSE of its impact on the world. Not because it's a better game, but because of good timing. I just can't imagine sitting down, playing an objectively better game and saying to myself, "Well it's not as good as the less fun and poorer quality predecessor."

It makes me wonder if they purposely put as little effort into the game as possible since Nintendo is known for not doing anything with their games but doing the same thing: Mario and Zelda. Just start with the bare basics and very slowly make it better until you plateau on your ingredients of cookies and then just keep redecorating that same cookie with old ideas until it just dies.

Also, about the whole impact SMB had on the industry. This is another argument people make that I can't stand. To claim that BECAUSE one thing happened, the future is now made... Especially considering there exists platformers before SMB and there exists sidescrollers before SMB.  I mean come on, even then, it's a character who runs right and dodges obstacles... Yes, it's very innovative!

Why Star Ocean 2 is the Best RPG Ever

So I'm just going to do you all a favor. I'm going to post a link to Amazon where you can purchase this game. If at the end of this review you haven't already purchased the game, you are a disgrace to the RPG community and to the human race; yes it is that serious.


Star Ocean: The Second Story ( PS1 )

Star Ocean: Second Evolution ( PSP )

There you go, I did all the dirty work for you. I solved the "But Romalia! This game is out of print, how am I suppose to play this! Well, you have two options: PSP which is like 10 dollars and PS1 which is like 20. So expense, availability, and access are already out of the question as excuses for purchasing this game. Now, unless you're one of those people who like... get welfare and you get JUST enough money to feed your 6 kids, you can stop here ( but honestly, I'd just starve one of those kids because this is a fun game ).


Anyways! Star Ocean 2. It's the sequel to the Enix game Star Ocean on the SNES which was never released in America. It follows the son of the characters: Claude who, well.... stubbornly decided to check out this anomaly on a planet which everyone kept screaming "Don't fucking go!", but he did anyways and it got him transported to this planet which he immediately meets your second main character: Rena. Rena happens to be the strange young magical girl of unknown origins.

Lemme just say, the worst part about this game is the first 30 minutes of it. Claude is an idiot, Rena is a cliche, and it's nothing but talk-talk-talk. So what I do is save RIGHT after leaving this area because it's pretty much where the fun begins. It suffers from, what I like to call, "Slow RPG Intro syndrome" where the first 30 minutes.... is just nothing but "OH MY GOD... JUST GET TO THE FUCKING POINT".

So skipping this, you start off.. and right away you notice something: The world music is fucking amazing. No seriously, this is easily the best world music I've ever heard of in any game. Listen for yourself:

The entire sound piece is one full piece of music. It doesn't repeat. And the more it goes on, the more epic it sounds. It's completely orchestrated... something I don't think I've ever seen in quality in any RPG. It's truly remarkable the amount of effort and quality that goes into this one song... Well, there's ALSO the 2nd world map music as well, which.... not as good, but still just as good in terms of effort.

So the battle system is pretty simple. It's an Action RPG which you hit X to attack, L1&2/R1&2 for skills. You choose any person in a team of four to control and everyone controls differently in terms of skills and attack patterns, and trust me.... One of the most fun aspects of this game is trying out different characters. What I love most about this battle system is it's not TRYING to be complicated, it's literally just mashing X and watching your character just destroy everything. Later in the game, you could equip Bunny shoes to run 5 times faster and just do laps around the enemies... It's so fun.


Now I mentioned 'trying out different characters' because this game is unique in that each time you play you can get different characters. For starters, I ALSO said "two main characters", because you can either have Claude as the main character or Rena. Both stories play out relatively the same, a handful of cutscenes are different... but who you choose decides on what characters will join you later on: Rena gets you Dias the swordsman and Claude gets you Leon the magician. But aside from that you also do private actions which can get you Ashton or Opera, assuming you do them in the right order, or if you visit a town early enough you'll get Precis instead of Bowman. And if you get Opera, you can get her boyfriend Ernest*. But each time you play, you have so many different methods of obtaining different characters that it's a different experience each time you play!

Skills make a HUGE part of the game. They alter how your character grows, like for example in the picture above 'Functionality' raises your STR, DEX, AGL, and INT for 20 levels, and below those you gain Combat Skills which affect the way your character behaves in combat: Feinting, Parrying, Casting faster, Cancelling attacks, Hitting weak spots for more damage. Each time you level up you gain Skill points which can go to any of these ( 40ish ) skills, and how you decide to accumulate will decide how your character grows. And IF you know what you're doing, you can break the game and DESTROY your enemies with these skills.

Something else skills give you: Item Creation commands. And these things are what make the game fun: Art, Customize, Metalwork, Compounding, Alchemy, Survival, Machinery, etc. They ALL help you if you use them correctly and once again, can help break the game. For example, before you're even 20% done with the game, you can make a weapon with about 1099 attack ( you can buy a weapon with about 150 ), which will pretty much one-shot every enemy and some bosses til near the end of the game. And this is how you get your weapons ( and best weapons ) for all your characters... from Minerals which you VERY easily ( for the most part ) obtain.


Leveling in this game so fun. You have 255 levels and by the time you beat the game, you'll be around level 120, which opens up a bonus dungeon with enemies MUCH harder than you've ever fought before. Each level in the bonus dungeon has higher level of difficulty much higher than the last one and as you progress, you start to grow levels much and much quicker while also obtaining godlke armor to pimp your characters out with. Each time you finish a level in this, you truly feel like you've accomplished something since each level contains a puzzle and challenge to get through them. I would say this is probably half of the games entertainment right here.

Now you might be saying... "Wow, so far you've said nothing but how easy this game is to break. Where's the challenge?", which is fair... this game is veeeery easily broken**, however with a simple private action, you can make the final boss harder than the boss of the bonus dungeon BY FAR, and even your best armors and weapons will still be a huge challenge.



Now if at this point you haven't already ordered the game. I apologize for your tastes being so awful, because what I just described to you was the best RPG. And what's funny was, I didn't even MENTION the story***, because honestly, when an RPG is already this fun without mention of a story, you're in for a ride and it's definitely something that I believe no one should ever pass up. I stumbled on this game by complete accident, it was purchased on a whim and I was completely hooked from Day 1.

The game was re-released on PSP. The translations are better****, the combat was changed a bit, voice overs were added, and a character was added. Honestly, I think the original was better, but I still enjoyed the PSP port. So do yourself a favor and help yourself to either one of them; you will thank me.


* Though I only got him once. I honestly think he's useless.

** IF you know what you're doing. If you DON'T know what you're doing, then you will very easily miss a lot and the game will be very challenging.

*** The Story actually kind of sucks... Haha

**** The Translations might be better but half of them felt completely needless and unnecessary.

Pokemon Creepypasta: Inadequate Gold

Been working on this for a week or so. Give it a watch. It's a completely true story!

Pokemon Cards

So lately I've been in a real pokemon mood lately. I've been working on this creepypasta, I picked up Pokemon Platinum, and I've been researching new and old glitches which were completely unknown to me. So things have been really interesting to me... so I began to reflect on my past of Pokemon and the greatest parts of them. Looking back on all the games and stuff relating to said game; I'd have to say Pokemon cards were probably the crowning moment of Pokemon... or to be specific, Generation 1 of Pokemon.

The awesome thing about Pokemon cards were actually the things that you didn't know about them. Like when I was a kid, the Japanese cards, Ancient Mew, Charizard, and Gen. 2 were probably the biggest things in Cards. Hell, I remember at one point in time, I went to a Toys-R-Us during a Pokemon convention and I traded.... something... for a Southern Island Togepi. Something that was very rare and very valuable ( back in the day ), and that to me was very exciting; you didn't run into these cards, you didn't know where they came from and it was something special to have them in your possession.

My most valuable cards I have now are probably Zapdos, Allakhazam, and Ancient Mew.... Looking back on it, I really don't have very many holofoils as this all happened when I was in 6th grade. It's a shame too because as I reflect on these things, trading and collecting these cards was probably the most fun I've had. It even got me slightly interested in Magic the Gathering.

It's kind of a shame that the fad ended so quickly. With the saturation of Gym cards, Diamond and Pearl, and whatever other decks that came along; once the original series was ousted, I officially quit caring about the trading card game. I remember going to the mall one day and Pokemon Cards were like... 1.99 a pack, and I was like "Oh shit! What a deal!", so I decided to buy a pack and sure enough I got a Holographic Nintetails; this was from the original deck... EXCEPT it had a giant "Second Edition" on the lower left. This pretty much cemented in my head that this entire game was dead to me. I could no longer collect the original decks and considering the newer decks were not that cared for; they were worthless. This was a horrible day.

I remember my very first Pokemon booster pack. I got a Hitmonchan from it... I remember back in these days, finding an actual store that sold cards was almost impossible. I had to convince my parents to drive 50 miles north to some mall for, not a Booster pack, but a Deck Starter kit ( the ones that contained a Holofoil, a bunch of cards and energy ). To my knowledge only ONE store ever sold them, and they wanted like 5 bucks a pack for them. My parents were always broke so I never had the opportunity to get them...

Sometimes I have the urge when I'm shopping around at Walmart to just pick up a pack and see what I get. I know that I'll probably end up being disappointed, I'll get some worthless holographic card vs a more rare worthless holographic card. And I'll just get some nostalgic depression afterwards, kind of like I am now. But you know what? I think it's still kind of cool that the card game is going on. Something that I enjoyed as a child can be enjoyed by other children and hopefully the game will become popular again. I know it's unlikely... but anything to revive my old childhood hobby would make me really happy once again.