So here is the mighty Magnus from Kid Icarus Uprising, nude and rude! He was placed in the game to make sure not all the fan art is twinky stuff. :P I have been sitting on this picture for way too long. Lazy me, not posting him. Yelmo did an amazing job and I am a little protective of this picture, cause it's so spot on. ;D I love getting Yelmo to draw long haired rough types. He casts such a special something on them. They always look ready to go, like they were just cleaned, but not shaved quite right. :P Uncut cock Magnus is amazing. Thanks Yelmo. :)
I have to say that it was seeing it again last night that inspired me to write the following post. This is my second in depth look into Kid Icarus Uprising. As I said, my review is too long to post all at once. So here is a little more of my thoughts on the game. Now, just to let you know, I did enjoy this game for the most part, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a ton to bitch about.
Sometimes I think Nintendo aimed a little too high with this title. While Magnus is cool character, one has to question if he at one point during the titles long production period, had a greater purpose and if that was totally abandoned, then later attempted to be integrated back into the game again. Really what is Magnus purpose in Kid Icarus Uprising? He appears in level two, so we assume he's going to be a big part of the story. This never happens though. His back story is never explained properly at all. We never find out his true relationship with Lord Gaol and I think there's mention that he lost a child to the war, or something. That never gets mentioned again. Everything is let so ambiguous about him. Why? What got left on the cutting room floor?
He finally appears as a brief playable character after the games story has long run out of steam. At this point the game is being as random as it possibly can with the story line. Forcing you into Magnus's body for game play scenarios that have more then a blatant homoerotic undertone to them. Then, once Magnus is done saving Pit, he's left on Earth in the middle of a war torn city to fend for himself. There's no reward for him, no praise, nothing save for a brief
thank you. Pit Icarus pops back to life and leaves Magnus as he scurries off to find his Goddess. Shouldn't he instruct Magnus to inform the people of what's going on in the heavens? At this point, for three years the Goddess of Light has been killing mankind for sport. Someone needed to do some PR, but his never happens in the game. One has to wonder why the people cheer her and Pits during the credits, as Pit played the role of head slaughterer.
Maybe he does this, or maybe the Goddess explains things to the people of Earth, but it goes unsaid. In a game the prides itself on it's story telling, it sure has left some big gaping holes in it's plot.
Later he appears for a repeat boss battle, but is no where to be found during the ending, which felt like a glaring omission, but then the ending didn't seem to care about any of the side characters except Yaoi... I mean, dark Pit and the little raging bitch they called Viridi. During the course of the title every other character bitches and cries on screen for hours except Magnus, the strongest of the bunch. He only gets only a fraction of the others screen time. Maybe it's best that way. The other characters yak and yak way past the point of having anything interesting, or relevant to say and just insult you as Pit as much as possible. Maybe that's why I liked him the best.
Still, what a rip for both Magnus and the player. I think a lot of people thought that this Devil May Cry/God of War inspired character was going to be unlockable, or playable more often, but that never came to be. You can't even use him in multiplayer. I guess they created him just cause really need more characters for Smash Bros. We only get to play with his big sword during one mediocre level, placed so far into the game one has to wonder if he was forgotten by the dev team and then quickly inserted in. Another surprise from Nintendo! YAY! It felt like a very half assed placement, made only to extend the amount of levels needlessly longer. Still it wasn't all bad. At least you could play with him. Honestly Magnus was an awesome character and one that deserved exploring. It's such a shame that the developers didn't think so and left so much unsaid about him. The same could be said about Medusa too, but that's a post for another day.
When I think of Magnus I think of weapons. When I think of weapons in Kid Icarus I think of the fucking
MESS it was. Kid Icarus Uprising has some very fundamental flaws, but the biggest revolves around it's weapons. Here's a quick look at them.
Oh fuck me, I know the group that made the game is called
TEAM SORA and Kid
Pit Icarus now looks like the illegitimate half brother of the Kingdom Hearts hero, but could that
Royal Blade be a more blatant rip off of a Key Blade? There's a fine line between homage and rip off Nintendo. I think you might have crossed it here. Notice that blades are the main focus. You even start the game with a blade, not a bow and arrow! Nintendo desperately wants to siphon some cool from Square Ennix.
I was disappointed staffs had no magical properties. As for claws, I never used them. In a shooting game, I don't understand the thought behind just taking a melee weapon with you. Maybe they shoot. I wasn't risking hearts, or the time to find out.
Orbs I am guessing are probably inspired by the gems that used to circle Pit back in the day. I'm probably giving the game makers too much credit. I doubt my theory, cause if they were, they wouldn't be a primary weapon.
Look at all the clubs! Boom, bam, zam! We are so creative with the club designs...all sorts of nonsense is present. It's a design time team running wild.
What is with that cannon right out of a Dreamcast game? This isn't
Phantasy Star Nintendo. The equally B grade sci fi/horror Frankenstein thing is just as misplaced.
Look how underplayed bows are. It's just sad. Shouldn't the bow page be even bigger then the blade page? How about we make a Zelda game where Link runs around with whip and swords are underplayed. Yeah....let's see if the fur flies after they reach that decision. Just because we are older, it doesn't mean we old school fans vanished Nintendo.
First off this is a Kid Icarus game. Since when is Kid Icarus a third person shooter? It's set in a mythological world with Greek Gods and monsters...so why the hell are there so many guns and canons? Really? Pit is supposed to have a bow and arrow. He's not supposed to have a 19th century pistol, or shot gun. I was happy to find that others felt the same way:
I can sum up my feelings for Uprising very simply:
How would you feel if they made a Metal Gear Solid game after 20 years and it played just like Tetris, or Super Mario World? Bet you wouldn't be too happy either. I don't consider this game a sequel to my beloved old titles. Sorry Nintendo, game over. After 20 years, there's no more continues left.
Getting back to the weapons....Variety is the spice of life, but the weapons theme is all over the place in this game. We have stuff ranging from ancient times, to modern, to the far future. Okay I am being a bit harsh on the weapons, but some sort of synergy would be nice to see. A lot of weapons in the same group don't resemble each other at all. The first Blade looks like a gun, not a sword. Some of it is great, but some just seems way to strange. Take for example the club that looks like an
apartment building. What the heck? I thought the Babylon Club was pretty neat at first. Then I found out Clubs are fairly useless.
The sheer amount of weapons is just a bit overwhelming as well. I sat and stressed over what weapons to use and upgrade for hours and hours till my 3DS battery was dead, more then once. (Not that that is a difficult accomplishment, given the batteries life.) I stress over this shit, cause I come from the day were a wrong move in doing this can totally fuck your game up. Didn't someone at Nintendo ever hear that
less is better? I get that they wanted to provide variety, but some of the best games of all time had only one, or two weapons. Do we really need dozens of varieties of the same weapon, leading to what feels like hundreds in total???? There's only 20 + levels for crying out loud. Have video game players become this blind with greed?
My second and bigger complaint was with the weapons system set up in the shop. I always felt like the shop was constantly teasing me, displaying weapons that were really good, but always just out of my price range. My first play though, I just used the default difficulty the game set and didn't really have anything equipped to give me extra hearts. So I never really earned that much. This is another flaw of the game. Heart earnings are really sparse in comparison to the prices in the shop, even if you play a higher difficulty and obtain and have the right items equipped. I got the feeling that scanning cards was mandatory if you really wanted to afford something decent, early on. Even after I scanned enough cards to start the game with $24,000, there was always something placed right out of that range. Maybe they were trying to emulate the feel of how expensive things were in the original Kid Icarus, but if you actually played that game, you would realize that these prices
only seem out of range at first. Play into it a bit and very soon you have more money then you know what to do with. (This NEVER happens in Uprising.) Someone at team Sora, wasn't very good at Kid Icarus if that was the case. (Which I don't doubt, when I read that Zeldas current director sucks at the original Zelda games. Seems like any dough head can work there.)
Now in any other game that might not be a problem. You just go out and get some more money, come back and buy your weapon. Not in Uprising. No, no, that would be too simple. Nintendo needs to constantly
surprise you now. The items in the weapons shop are completely random each time you enter it. So you can't even set goals for yourself, cause what was there last time, won't be there the next. Items feel like they NEVER come back, EVER. Sale items are a bitch as well. They never say how much they were prior to the sale, so I have no idea if I am getting a deal, or not. I guess I should be looking at the value, but the numbers are ambiguous, as various weapons are all assigned a worth value that does not state the exact effectiveness in battle. To do this, you have to go into an arena screen and try the weapon out yourself and either mentally, or physically write down it's effects. Things take off more damage up close, then further away, do varying amounts of damage when you dash backwards, or forwards, etc. Theirs a list a mile long to go over while in the testing arena. I have chosen cars easier. UGH! You can note the
stars beside each weapon for range and Melee, but
is
each star rating based on it's effectiveness compared to
other weapons, or others of it's kind? They don't tell you that. You see, each weapon say like the Royal Blade, comes in dozens of variations and powers. Weapons are given stats that effect you in battle, such as life extensions and raising your effectiveness in certain situations. Sadly, because you have no stat bar to show what your current stat numbers are, you have no real way of telling how effective any of this is, even when you are out in battle, besides of course stats that have a physical attribute such as freezing, or burning enemies.
If you don't want to buy shit you can merge stuff. Now, here's another fun time sink. When I hear merge, I think of two things. Number one, that I need special weapons to make the best ones and number two that I will at one point have to look online, or buy a guide to figure how to do this. Well as it turns out, everything is actually fairly random, made to surprise and entertain you, by giving you a somewhat new experience each time you play. You can merge weapons and try to keep the stats you like, combining old into new weapons, but some of those combinations you are not going to like, or want. This is especially true if your current one becomes something that alters the game play too much. (I.E a bow becoming a club, a shooting weapon changing to one you can only swing at people in front of you. Clubs can fire, but only if you charge to shoot them. Making them very slow for range battle, with being able to shoot out one shot per charge.) It feels like if you really want to make something good, you have to play the game three steps ahead.
1.Make sure you have the difficulty on right level to get the gear you want.
2. Make sure you look up where the hidden items are.
3. Make sure you have the right equipment that can pass over the right stats to the new weapon when merging.In fact that list is too short, but you get the picture.
Do you know what all this does? It slows the game down. What should be a fast paced action game gets mired down by hours of fiddling with shit in a shop, something that should really be a two second purchase decision. It's worse then clothes shopping with your mom. OY!
Even after you save up, or fuse the best weapons, their effects and usefulness really don't matter much. Most of the weapons feel very samey. Most of the bosses are not that strong as well. If you do die, the game will automatically reduce the difficulty and allow you to change weapons. This is the only time it will allow you to change weapons in game, so you can't even test one weapons usefulness over another on the same stage without restarting the game. (If you leave a stage before beating it you will also lose a chunk of your hearts, but lets not go there.) The game is essentially broken. You die, you play the stage with the same weapon, but now, it's not so bad, it's easier, so the weapon works better. What has the average player learned? Nothing, cause they haven't achieve what they wanted to. Did they die due to the weapons failure, or was it their ability to use the current weapon? They will never know. You just move forward after beating the level. How about if you die due to falling, or get a one hit kill from a monster before you feel confident in the new weapon? You won't know for sure, cause the difficulty gets reduced. The game just gives you a toffee and pats you on your bum if you fall down. Quite the opposite of the real Icarus crashing and burning when he decided to use something for the wrong situation. (I.E. Flying too close to the sun with wax wings.) I guess Nintendo would have given
THAT Kid Icarus a parachute.
I swear the game makers were terrified of being labeled as having hard difficulty like in the first game. That's one reason why it burned my ass so much when the creator said they made sure they respected the original game. If they did respect the original game, they would provide it with balanced game play and a proper leveling up system for both Pit and his weapons. Look it's weapon damage, not advanced physics. Make sure weapon damage is clear, that's all, don't hide it under meaningless numbers and fucking useless
Mario Stars. Nintendo just doesn't want to admit that simple fun game play with simple to understand, clearly labelled stats draws people in, while complicated shit you see people agonizing over making charts and starting wars about online just drives people further away. I think adding a merging option is just a bad idea to begin with, if you want to sell your game to a larger general audience. Considering how simple the actual game play is, I am surprised at how needlessly cumbersome the weapons system is. Complicated options like this are poison to most players (Casual, or not) out there. Most people worry about just being able to play and beat a title, you add in all this other shit and you might as well put a
do not touch sign on the game.
Kid Icarus weapons are a complicated mess. I really blame the people at Sora who came from the Smash brothers camp for this. They constantly add too much content to games that are not large enough to find significant uses for them all. It's like filling your bath tub with so much water it runs all over the floor. Sure it's wetter, but it's not better. >__< I've seen RPGS with way less items then this game and RPGS go on for 60 hours. Kid Icarus is at it's best probably about 14 hours and once you beat it, it's going to take you even less time to get through it again. Unless you count the 20 hours you spend in the shop aggravating about what to fuse and what to purchase. I think it would have been better to just focus on a few weapons types and really make their attributes stand out. Making each purchase special and exciting, instead of just something to discard as quickly as possible to get the next best upgrade.
Mom,
this Kid Icarus is going to the toy store while you make up your mind about your accessories okay?
Oh well, at least the art is beautiful, they spared no expense. Remember another disasters amusement that used the same expression?
I'm sorry, thought I turned on Kid Icarus, not Space Harrier.
Wolverine-acus?
No. Just, No.
