Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters (Gameboy) Review

Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters (Gameboy) Review

Date Released: November 1991

Date Played: 1 March 2022

Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters is the sequel to the classic game from the NES.  It was the last game in the series for 21 years until the 3rd game in the series arrived on the Nintendo 3DS.  While the game is obtuse, clunky, and not the most fun experience by today's standards, it was highly venerated at the time of its release and was even voted as the 18th best Gameboy game of all time by Nintendo Power.  

Once again, you play as the classic protagonist, Pit, who is more well known from his presence in the Smash Bros. franchise than he is from his own game series.  Gameplay is pretty much the same as the original NES game where you platform your way vertically upwards as the screen infinitely scrolls horizontally.  For example, if you were to just walk to the right, the game would just loop forever.  As you jump upwards from platform and platform you can work your way upwards towards the stage's exit.  It's a unique approach to gameplay and I have always thought of it as working your way up a series of platforms on the outside of a cylindrical tower.  You can work your way left or right as you circle the outside, but will have to eventually make your way to the top. It's the biggest feature of the 8bit Kid Icarus games and is synonymous with the series. The real question is whether this system is any good.  I can't help but feel that if it were more fun we would have seen it in a lot more games that came afterwards.

In his search for 3 treasures, Pit will have to fight a wide variety of enemies by shooting them with his bow and arrow. Many of the enemies you face will be familiar if you've played the first game. You'll encounter the fear inducing reapers, upside down pots of infinitely falling snakes, the ever present 8-bit bats, and plenty of other odd monsters from mythology. As you work your way to the top, you will be entering many different doors that contain puzzles, challenges, shops, and the necessary upgrades.  Sadly, many of these upgrades can only be acquired if you've completed some sort of task in the game's level before entering. I'm not exactly sure how these work, but it seems that it has something to do with how many enemies you've killed in the stage.  Since you have no way to know what type of room is behind each door, it's a crap shoot when you enter.  Of course, the doors close after you leave the room, so If you accidentally went into the shop without enough money, too bad.  You're not going to be able to buy anything.  Need that important arrow upgrade from your father?  Too bad, you accidentally walked into the room before killing enough enemies and you get nothing.  It's all extremely frustrating and if you haven't memorized all of the room locations, you'll need a guide to help you.  You basically need to begin every stage by farming up a bunch of money so you'll have it already if you accidentally walk into a shop.  This should also help you grab those upgrades from your father because you've already spent 15 minutes mindlessly killing the same snakes over and over again so, hopefully, that will fill the requirement for you to get an upgrade. It brings the pace of the game to a crawl and some sort of different door sprite for each type of room would have made the game much better.

Speaking of guides, the game is broken up into 3 worlds of 3 stages with a final dungeon at the end of each of them before going into the final boss encounter.  These dungeons are convoluted mazes with traps, ruthless enemies, and paths that loop back on themselves to confuse you even more.  So once again, you're going to need the power (NINTENDO POWER!) to help you through them.  While this sort of thing was very common back in the 8-bit days, I feel like most people don't really have the patience for it these days.  It really pads out the game and makes it feel like a slog. I thought about pulling out some graph paper to make my own maps, but then I remembered there are plenty of walkthroughs online.  Needless to say, I was shocked to see that the dungeons were so complicated that they couldn't even put them into a text format and instead had to make bespoke maps of each one of them.  After looking at one of these maps, I had to laugh to myself because it's just so blatantly designed to troll the gamer. To add to this, the bosses at the end of each stage are incredible bullet sponges taking around 75 hits each to kill.  It's almost a comical how long these fights take and it's more of a battle of endurance rather than skill. If you die, you're sent back to the beginning of the stage which can be a little demoralizing, but at least you have infinite continues.  So, if you're willing to just bash your head against the wall until you get it right, victory will eventually come.

The gameplay is fine but is nothing to write home about.  Pit feels a little slippery and some of the trickier platforming is more harrowing than it needs to be.  Also, the game suffers from a fair amount of slowdown and screen flickering when there are too many enemies on the screen. The graphics look fine for a Gameboy game and it's nice to be in a the setting of ancient Greece instead of the standard fantasy and sci-fi settings of so many other games. The music is upbeat but not very memorable and can be a very repetitive and grating on the ears. I eventually turned down the sound so I wouldn't have to listen to the music anymore. On a positive note, the game isn't as brutally difficult as the NES game, but it's still quite a challenge and you'll die a fair number of times. As you clear each world, you'll receive a health upgrade which will help out a good deal. However, you'll still feel underpowered and ill-equipped most of the time unless you're able to fully find all the upgrades and grind out enough money to buy plenty of healing potions (You'll have to kill 250 snakes to buy a single potion, by the way). 

Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters just isn't a very fun game.  The normal stages of each world are mostly tolerable, but each world's final dungeon is painfully frustrating.  There are enemies that turn you into a helpless eggplant with no ability to attack until you find a cure somewhere else in the dungeon. Many times you'll get transformed, be forced to back-track 5 screens to get cured, fight your way back to where you were only to get transformed again, forcing you to repeat it all over. This honestly happened to me almost 8 times in a row in the second dungeon and almost drove me mad.  It's a baffling mechanic and the fact that it's featured in every single dungeon is shocking. If it weren't for these maze-like dungeons the game would be ok, but considering they take about half the game, it really brings down the whole experience.  

The older I get, the more I realize that a lot of these handheld games we played as kids just aren't as good as we imagined.  While I never played this game as a child, I firmly believe that this game would fall into that same category.  If it really is the 18th best Gameboy of all time, that makes the Gameboy one of the worst systems ever made with hardly any good games.  Is that the case?  I don't think so.  I just think this game was highly overrated at the time.

Final Status: Played

Final Score: 5/10 (...meh)

Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda (Switch) Review

 

Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda (Switch) Review

Release Date: 23 October 2020

Date Played: 13 February 2022

Introduction:

Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda is not only the longest title I've ever seen for a video game, it's also one of the biggest disappointments for any game that I've played in the last few years. 

If you've ever read any of my other reviews, you would know that I try to be pretty objective with my critiques of the games I play.  I'll go over a brief history of the game, talk about its mechanics, detail the aesthetic choices of the game, before finally giving my opinions in the end.  Well... this time I'm not going to do that. I'm going to give my feelings right up here at the top of the review because I'm having a difficult time objectively discerning just exactly what it is that rubs me the wrong way about this game... because on paper, it's seems like it should be magnificent.  My only option is to just spew my feelings in some pseudo-stream of consciousness method as I point out all the things the developer did well and why I don't like them for no good reason.  

So what exactly is this game?  The absurdly protracted title seems to try to answer this. It's Crypt of the Necrodancer featuring characters from the Legend of Zelda, obviously (please insert sarcastic eye-roll).  Which means we've got a mash-up game on our hands.  Crypt of the Necrodancer was a popular rhythm-based rogue lite game developed by Brace Yourself Games that was released in 2015.  While I haven't personally played it, I watched a lot of streamers who did, and it seems like a really fun game.  You work your way through procedurally generated dungeons and fight enemies using a music mechanic.  You and the enemies all move on the beat and if you can attack them with good rhythm, you get attack bonuses and become more powerful.  You collect items to help you build a good run and gain meta progression to make your character more powerful in future attempts.  So, pretty standard rogue-lite stuff with a rhythm element.  Sounds awesome, sign me up!

So, the title of this game leads you to believe that you are playing Crypt of the Necrodancer with Legend of Zelda characters in it.  Right?  It literally says Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda, after all. But what we were given was a straight up lie if you're to go by the title.  This game isn't Crypt of the Necrodancer with Zelda characters in it.  Instead, it's The Legend of Zelda featuring Crypt of the Necrodancer combat.  I'm nonplussed by the whole situation and actually feel a little cheated.  There's nothing wrong with what they did with this game, but it's not what I wanted, nor is it what I thought I was getting.  I feel the title is specifically misleading despite its verbosity and I don't know why they chose to lead with Crypt of the Necrodancer instead of Zelda as that would have been a much more fitting description.  Let me invent and example to further illustrate my point.  Say I made a game with this title,  Fatality in the Mushroom Kingdom: Mortal Kombat Featuring Super Mario Bros., anyone with a head on their shoulders would think this game was a gory and violent 2D fighting game like Mortal Kombat with Mario characters in it.  How could you not?  It's clear as day what this game is supposed to be just from the title alone.  Now imagine that you're a complete idiot, like I am, and when you pop in the game instead of seeing Yoshi tear out and swallow Peach's heart with his bulbous tongue when he does a fatality,  you're instead given a standard side-scrolling Mario game but with Mortal Kombat characters in it. It's just Raiden running to the right across the screen while collecting coins, breaking blocks,  and stomping on goombas, koopas, and the occasional miniature Baraka.  Still awesome... but not at all what was advertised. Still, I think there might be a little bit of confusion and more than a few upset kids on Christmas morning.

So, enough talking about 2 hypothetical games that would probably be incredibly radicle and fantastic.... and should totally be made someday (you should get right on that), let's get back to the game that actually exists by reiterating  my question from earlier, "So what exactly is this game?"  Sadly, Cadence of Hyrule is just a bog standard 2D Zelda game with the combat system from Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Note*** Brace Yourself Games must have had some big fans over at Nintendo, because by some actual miracle, they were allowed to use the Zelda license to make this game and I can only remember a handful of times that was ever allowed (looking at you CD-i Zelda games).  This must speak volumes for the actual Crypt of the Necrodancer game.

Gameplay:

I hate that I have to explain how a Zelda game works, but I guess I have no choice.  You wander around an overworld that's broken up into a grid.  Each screen is one block on the grid and as you explore around, you slowly fill in the empty blocks on your map.  You're trying to collect some handful of objects (this time it's instruments to go with the music theme of the game) to unlock the barrier to Hyrule Castle so you can go inside and beat the final boss.  Each of the instruments is located in it's own dungeon that has it's own theme like water, fire, ice, etc. They can usually be tackled in any order, and in the case of this game, the overworld is sort of randomly generated so you never know where they'll be once you start a new game. Once you locate one of them by exploring around the overworld map, you get to go inside and do the other half of the Zelda gameplay loop.  You kill enemies and solve puzzles (sometimes quite obtuse, mind you) as you wonder around the dungeon until you find the map that shows you all of the rooms.  Then you find the compass that reveals where all the important locations are on the dungeon map.  After that, you find an item that helps you complete the dungeon (like a grappling hook, raft,  power glove, etc.).  Then, you find the key to unlock the door that leads to the dungeon's final boss.  After you vanquish it (usually using the item you found in the dungeon), you'll get a heart container to increase your maximum health as well as one of the key items in the game (musical instruments in this case).  You'll often have to use the items you find in the dungeon to help you traverse the overworld and reach a secret location, or make it across a ravine, or a lake, etc.  But, you essentially just repeat this same process over and over until you clear all of the dungeons (4 in the case of this game) and then you go fight the final boss.

It's a classic formula and has passed the test of time because it's still as popular today as ever.  Heck I can remember seeing 4 different 
Zelda games listed as the "Best Game of All Time" during my life.  The original Legend of Zelda on the NES, A Link to the Past on the SNES, The Ocarina of Time on the N64, and Breath of the Wild on the Switch have all carried the honor.  And while I don't agree with any of them, I can certainly see why people feel that way and acknowledge their avid fandom.

Cadence of Hyrule follows this exact same formula with very few differences, which is really disappointing to me.  I've been playing Zelda games since 1987, and I'm kind of burned out on the formula.  Even going back and playing the ones I never finished have been less than stellar experiences and I can rarely push myself to beat them because I get so bored with the process and it's insistence on rehashing the same ideas over and over.  So, it's obvious I was frustrated to have to do it all again with this game.  Sadly, this game does things even worse than the standard Zelda games.  Yes, there are lots of items to collect that are supposed to help you on your journey, but the vast majority of them I never even had to use and really seemed to have no purpose.  You might have to use the hookshot to grab a heart piece, or grab and push the occasional block to clear a path.  But, in general, most of the items seem pointless.  The item locations are all randomized in a lame and half-hearted attempt to shoehorn in some rogue-lite elements, so you never know what it's actually going to be in that purple chest you're so desperately trying to reach.  You hope it's the item that will allow you to reach that heart container you saw earlier, but sadly it was just some stupid leaf that pushes away enemies and serves no other purpose in the game.  What a waste of 10 minutes.

You have your standard Zelda weapon assortment that you can collect and use throughout the game such as bombs, a boomerang, shields, and your bow and arrow.  In addition to this, you have different weapons that have various attack attributes.  There's the shortrange dagger, a sword that slashes in front of you, a spear that reaches further, and a flail that attacks to the side. These weapons are a departure from the traditional Zelda games and are a nice touch. You still upgrade your heart containers, gather bottles, uncover secrets, and buy items, like in all Zelda games but there isn't really any meta progression outside of unlocking new characters to use in subsequent playthroughs.  Dying in this game really only causes you to lose your rupees and a few assorted consumables and isn't much of a hinderance as you can usually restart pretty close to where you left off and regain any of the temporary items you lost rather quickly.

As for the Crypt of the Necrodancer portion of the game, everything hops around to the beat flashing along with the music and displayed at the bottom of the screen and are set to a tile based grid where every unit occupies once space. You attack enemies by walking into them and striking them right on the beat gives you an attack bonus (especially if you can chain them together).  The various weapons attack in different patterns that can allow you to take on multiple enemies at once or keep your distance if need be.  They are a nice addition to the game and being able to switch between them at will is very beneficial.  All of the standard Zelda enemies are here and they have specific attack patterns that coincide with the music, so you'll have to memorize their attack patterns and lean to counter them while also keeping the beat yourself. There are a lot of enemies on every screen and keeping track of all of their behaviors when you're in a tight situation can be difficult.  It's a good combat system and I think it works well even in the Zelda framework but can get a little tedious in some circumstances.  After you've cleared the same area for the 20th time, having to sit there and repeatedly tap buttons along with the rhythm can start to feel a little monotonous and like it's wasting your time. To counteract this, you have the Sheikah stones from Breath of the Wild this time around and touching one will turn it into a waypoint on your map that you can then warp to to have to save yourself from walking back and forth across the map.  

You'll initially only be able to play as either Link or Zelda, but you'll unlock more characters as you continue to progress and you can switch between them at any of the aforementioned Sheikah stones.  They each have their own special abilities that you can take advantage of, however, I found Link's charge slash to be the most powerful attack in the game, so I mainly stuck with him.

Story:

The story is pretty basic. A villain named Octavo has lulled Link and Zelda to sleep and stolen the Tri-force.  Cadence, the heroine from Crypt of the Necrodancer is teleported to Hyrule by the Tri-force at the last second for her to save the kingdom.  She has to awaken Link and Zelda to help stop Octavo before they can help her find a way to teleport back to her own world. It's a very basic plot and falls right in line with all of the other Zelda games, so that's to be expected.  Most people don't play these games for the story anyway.

Presentation:

This is the area of the game where Cadence of Hyrule excels.  The game is absolutely beautiful and and is my favorite looking Zelda game of all time.  It has a nice A Link to the Past look that has been rounded off and made more pleasantly cartoony.  Everything is bright and colorful and and has a real pop to it that is quite endearing.  The enemy models are well done and have a nice spin on the traditional Zelda baddies that we've all seen countless times.  The protagonists are absolutely precious and are unbelievably cute.  My 8 year old daughter is in love with them and just can't get enough.  This is cuteness is only intensified by the high pitched but serious grunts, hi-yahs, and yells that they all make.  Link's sounds, in particular, have always been appealing, but in this game they are really, really appealing and would be a treasure to have on your smart phone as a text notification.

Finally, we get to the best part of this game... it's music.  Danny Baranowsky knocked the music on Crypt of the Necrodancer out of the park and he was brought back for this mash-up.  He has provided 25 songs for the soundtrack and every single one of them is magnificent.  Many of the songs are remixes of classic Zelda songs (such as the overworld theme) and they sound just as fresh and catchy as ever.  It's really remarkable what he has done and he is by far my favorite composer working in the gaming industry today.  In case you didn't know, he did the music for Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac as well, two of the best video game soundtracks of all time. 

What we're left with is the best looking, best sounding, and most endearing Zelda game of all time.  If you're into aesthetics, don't sleep on Cadence of Hyrule because it's really something quite special.

Conclusion:

I know, I know I spent the first half of this review ranting about how disappointed I was by this game and you don't need me to rehash all of that again.  But, just because I was disappointed and felt misled by the title of the game, don't think that Cadence of Hyrule is bad.  Because it's not.  It's actually a pretty good game that packs a fair amount of content and a decent challenge.  I just wish it had been more rogue-lite focused and not such a back-to-basics Zelda game like we've seen countless times already.  If you are a huge Zelda fan and can't get enough of that same gameplay style, you should play this game because you won't be disappointed. If, however, you were looking for something fresh and unique with a Zelda spin on it, you ARE going to be disappointed like I was.

As for me, I loved the way the game looked and sounded.  The Crypt of the Necrodancer style combat was just... ok, and wasn't nearly as fun as I thought it would be.  Maybe it's because I'm a musician, but I found it to be a little underwhelming in its execution.  Perhaps I would like the original Crypt of the Necrodancer better because I hear it focuses more on the combat and that there are a few more mechanics to flesh it all out.  Sadly, the Zelda gameplay loop has completely burned itself out in my eyes.  I've seen it done over, and over, and over during the course of my life and it just feels so stale.  It's been 35 years that I have been playing the same kind of Zelda game and if that were an old fashioned union job, I would have been retired... almost twice now.  I feel like Zelda owes me two pensions for my time put in.  Keep that in mind before you chase me into the nearest tower with your pitch forks.

This physical release of the game contains all of the current DLC and is the definitive way to play the game, so if you want to grab a copy, this is the one to get.

Final Status: Beaten 

Final Score: 7/10 (good, but not groundbreaking like I wanted) 

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

 

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Switch) Review

Date Released: 29 August 2017

Date Played: 18 November 2021

I can't even believe this game was made. I wonder how the meeting was at Nintendo when Ubisoft approached them about using their beloved Mario franchise in a crossover with the Rayman Rabbids franchise to do a turn-based tactical shooting game similar to the Xcom games. I'm surprised Shigeru Miyamoto didn't laugh them out of the room. Nintendo loves to keep most of their Mario game development in house, so handing over their cash cow to Ubisoft seems like a potential disaster. Regardless of how the sales pitch went down, Nintendo greenlighted it and the game actually got made.  Any you know what?  The game is really good and a lot of fun.

Because of their crazy antics and general disregard of decorum the Rabbids have misused a young inventor's newest creation and have accidentally transported themselves to the Mushroom Kingdom.  One of the Rabbids continues to misuse the invention and begins causing havoc everywhere by merging his Rabbid buddies with various objects and characters from the surrounding areas.  Bowser Jr. sees this and decides to kidnap the chaos causing Rabbid and use him for his own evil deeds.

Mario teams up with the usual cast of characters; Luigi, Peach, and Yoshi as well as Rabbid versions of the same characters.  This lively cast then has to set out through 4 worlds to try to save the day. There is very little dialog, but the crazy Rabbids and familiar Mario cast more than make up for any lack of voice acting with their familiar and unique personalities. As Nintendo knows, a lot can be conveyed with a simple twirl and thumbs up.  They are the same characters we know and love and it's very nice to see them in a new and novel situation as well as a different style of game.

The graphics look very... Mario... and are very colorful and bright, just like you would expect.  Playing in handheld mode on the switch lowers the resolution to 720p and locks the framerate to 30fps which is standard, but does slightly detract from the full presentation of the game in docked mode. Still, for gaming on the go you can't complain. Exploring around Peach's castle which serves as a hub area is a lot of fun and there are plenty of secrets to find as well as plenty of humorous and eye catching objects around the scenery.  I appreciated the display on the time travel washing machine that is taken directly from Back to the Future. It's the little touches like this that helps a game stand out. From here you can branch off into each of the four worlds as they become available.  The first is the grassy Ancient Gardens which looks like your standard first area in any 3D Mario game.  After that, you'll be visiting the Sherbet Desert which is a mashup of the standard desert and ice levels you always seem to encounter.  Thirdly, is the Spooky Trails area that brings out the haunted mansion complete with Boos that are another hallmark of the series.  Finally, is the Lava Pit which is exactly like you would expect.  All of these areas are very unique and have a lot of different personality and exploring around them in between the battles is some of the most fun you'll have with the game and serves to give a well needed cool down between the combat portions.  

Of course, magnificent music accompanies you on your journey that range from well know pieces from previous Mario classics to brand new fully orchestrated works that fill in the gaps.  Like you would expect, these are memorable, unbelievably well composed, recorded and mixed expertly, and just add so much to the overall experience that they are basically enmeshed with the Mario franchise by this point. You can't have a Mario game without great music; and this game is no exception.  Even though it borrows heavily from previous games in the series, it presents them (along with the new tracks) in such a deft and mindful manner that it truthfully elevates the game to a new level. On more than one occasion I found myself humming along to the music while I was focused on exploring an area.  This is good thing and shows how well Nintendo understands the importance of a great tune with a catchy hook.

While on the aesthetic side of things, let me discuss the animations of the characters.  All of the standard Mario cast and it's Rabbid counterparts have unique animations and personalities that are manifested by their movements.  Seeing Rabbid Luigi stop, drop, and roll after getting lit on fire is hilarious and so well done.  Rabbid peach being addicted to social media and constantly taking selfies at the worst moments, Mario's jumps and twirls as he lands on an enemy, the way Peach lobs a grenade, and so many other unique touches gives a lot of heart to this game.  I never tired of seeing these and though you can fast forward through a lot of the combat steps to save time, I rarely ever did it because I loved watching the animations of the characters so much.

Ok, so that's a lot about the setting and aesthetics of the game.  What about the gameplay?  I'll come right out and say it.  It's really good and very addictive.  It's broken up into two phases.  Firstly, you explore the areas in the game in typical 3D Mario fashion while solving puzzles, finding hidden areas, taking in the scenery, and collecting coins and other unlockables. As mentioned earlier, these sections are a lot of fun and do a good job of breaking up the repetitiveness of the game. They also add a bit of a platforming feel to the experience and serve as a somewhat familiar component in the game in contrast to the wild departure of the combat phase. I think this was a wise decision and was needed to ground the game and make it feel more like it belonged in the Mario universe. As you are exploring around, you'll come to a battle area where combat will break out.  At this point, the game turns into a grid based tactical strategy game.  You get to chose a team of three characters and you'll take turns moving around the map while taking cover, shooting at your enemies, buffing/debuffing your team, and all the other things you expect in this sort of game. You have special abilities that are on a cooldown that can give you an edge over your foes. Hiding behind different types of cover will give you varying degrees of protection from enemy shots and holding the high ground against your opponents can often give you the advantage you need to win the day. The combat is more simplified than you're normally used to seeing in this sort of game, but it adds some interesting mechanics that give it some remarkable depth. Each character only has a small handful of skills and abilities to aid them. These are all tied to specific characters and there's no real room to change up how a character plays.  If they are designed to be a healer, they're a healer.  If they're designed for a close combat melee character, there's no way to get around that. In addition to these specific skills, all characters whether friend or foe can dash into enemies for a free attack if they are close enough.  They can also bounce of the heads of allies to give them a boost to travel further or to reach a higher elevation. Doing these actions are a huge component of the game and you'll find yourself doing these with every character on pretty much every turn. You'll also have to outmaneuver and flank your enemies to have a chance of winning and having a sound attack plan is essential. As you may have noticed from the peanut gallery of the internet, this game is pretty tough and can be relentless at times.  Often, it feels like you're overwhelmed, or that the enemies are overpowered, or even that you're put in a less than favorable tactical position from the onset.  You'll fail a lot of battles (especially at the beginning) and sometimes you'll have to repeat certain ones several times to succeed.  Luckily, the game takes pity on you and gives you the option to get a heal and health boost before each combat scenario and this can really help and essentially serves as the game's, "easy mode."

In addition to having to master the tactics and mechanics of the game, you'll also need to upgrade each character's skills and weapons.  These can be unlocked overtime and purchased with skill orbs or the coins you collect from exploring the maps and winning battles.  Each character has a different skillset and you'll have to select a good team for Mario to help him best his foes.  I say it like that because Mario (who is pretty much my least favorite character in the game) HAS to be on your team.  So, you're stuck with selecting two other characters to serve along side him.  I find the roles that they have assigned to the different characters to be hilarious.  For example, Peach is a healer (like you would expect), but she also wields a huge shotgun and grenades.  Luigi... is a Sniper.  Rabbid Mario is a chaingun wielding psycho.  It's all very clever and I appreciate what the development team did on this front to inject even more humor into the game. Of course, the bosses are all epic, challenging, and have some really interesting mechanics that evolve over the multiphase battles. They can be quite challenging and you might have to attempt them a couple of times. So, it's really wise for them to have memorable and fun character design so you don't get bored with them or dislike them too much.  Be on the lookout for these bosses because the "Rabbidized" versions of some of your favorite Mario characters make an appearance that is often very delightful.

As you upgrade and unlock more characters... and hone your combat skills, the game does begin to get a little easier.  I found myself smashing through battles with full health and wiping out handfuls of enemies on my first turn towards the last half of the game.  This is in direct opposition to the first half of the game where I was just barely scraping by with only one or two characters barely alive at the end of a battle after failing it previously and having to retry. Knowing that both I and my team were getting better over time was a strong motivator and helped me push through some of those frustrating parts.  I could see someone getting quite irritated with this game and rage quitting.  Sadly, I wish I could tell them to hang in there because it gets better.

As for my final conclusion...

This is a really good and unique game that I would recommend to any fan of turn based strategy or tactical games.  I'm not sure that I would necessarily recommend it to a Mario fan unless they were actively trying to find something different from what they are used to.  It has all of the characters, scenery, music, and personality from a Mario game, but that's where it ends.  The gameplay is just so wildly different that it might be a deterrent for the platforming fans.  Personally, I like the game a good deal but didn't really fall in love with it.  I'm not sure if it was the difficult combat at the beginning of the game or what, but it took me three and a half months to beat this game.  I would play it for a few hours and have a pretty good time with it, but when I turned off my console, I didn't really have a craving to come back to it and sort of had to force myself to load up the game and play it.  Yes, the combat can be a little draconian at times and man would see that as a negative, but I enjoyed having to overcome those challenges and found it refreshing for a game that looks so "kid friendly."  The only negatives I have about the game is that I wish you had more control over your party selection.  I didn't like being forced to use Mario in my party and wouldn't have used him at all if it wasn't required. Also, the co-op mode is locked behind single player completion. Meaning that if you want to play an area in co-op with a friend, you have to finish that area solo first. I wish there had been a separate solo and co-op campaign so you could experience the game with a friend for the first time together rather than your friend having to tag along on an area you've already completed before.  Also, Mario games are typically pretty friendly for children; and while this game doesn't have anything offensive about it, the difficulty may be off putting to some younger kids that want to play. My daughter watched me play and really wanted to join in but couldn't get the hang of how the game works. Other than that, the game was fun and I look forward to seeing what the development team will do with the next entry in the series.

Final Status: Beaten (90% completion)

Final Score: 8/10 (Great)