Quad reviews Kid Icarus: Uprising

[Quadcentruo]

***THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS TO THE STORY. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK***

As most everyone should know by now, Kid Icarus: Uprising came out a little more than a week ago (at the time of this post) for the Nintendo 3DS. This game is the sequel to the NES game Kid Icarus, which never really gave you any direction but "up" in the first few levels, then you were on your own for the fourth level, but that's besides the point.

You play as Pit, an angel and servant to the Goddess of Light - Palutena. 25 years after being defeated, Medusa is reincarnated and sends her Underworld army to attack the peaceful people of the world. You are sent to defeat her commanders, retrieve the 3 Sacred Treasures from the original game, and then are sent to defeat Medusa - pretty straightforward and oddly similar to the original. Little did I know, Medusa wasn't the main enemy. It turns out Hades was the real enemy behind the Underworld.

The game did an excellent job creating that plot-twist after defeating Medusa - you just beat the Underworld leader, the credits are rolling, Pit and Palutena are celebrating, BUT SUDDENLY! Hades breaks the credits and says he's the one who's behind everything. On the topic of plot-twists, this game definitely had some nice twists to it, but they seemed unnecessary. It certainly seemed like Sora Ltd. was trying to find ways to add chapters onto KI:U by adding in new antagonists and then messing with the pro and antagonists. In fact, you probably could've removed two major antagonists and the middle 1/3rd of the chapters and the story would've hardly been affected at all. Either way, at least the storyline tried to make sense in what it did.

What I enjoyed about this game much more than other games that are similar to this is each boss at the end of a chapter has its own personality. In some games, the only real time a boss will speak is when you reach the boss area. In this game, however, from the moment you reach a boss's domain, Pit and Paluenta start exchanging dialogue with the chapter boss. This made the enemy seem even more believable and made the chapters more interesting to traverse through. The only bosses that have exceptions to this are the ones that don't talk in the first place. Even the main antagonists speak to you regularly throughout the course of KI:U's story. This made it more clear on what an enemy is planning and why they are planning it, rather than trying to shove all the plans of an enemy in short segments in a cut-scene every now and again.

As for the controls, they take a bit of time getting used to. Not the flying parts of stages, but the land parts of stages. While in Air Battles, the level works like a rail-shooter where you are automatically moved along a set path and you have to destroy as many enemies as you can to avoid being killed, unlike a rail-shooter, you have some room to move around to avoid enemy fire. So while you are moving along a set path, you get to move in a small area to try your best to avoid fire.

In land battles, the controls require a bit of multi-tasking. You move the camera and aim your weapon with the touch screen, you attack with the left shoulder button (by default), and you move with the circle pad. There are powers you can activate in the lower-left hand corner of the touch screen, but in the heat of the battle, sometimes instead of activating a power, you end up scrolling the powers to the left or right. Which is why the directional pad has the ability to move the powers left or right and active said powers, but you do lose your ability to move for a slight moment. So which would you sacrifice - moving the camera or moving your character?

During land battles, you have the ability to shoot at enemies from afar or get close and attack with melee. While some weapons are better with range (such as staffs, orbiters, and bows), others are better with close-combat (such as claws, clubs, and arms), and others are decent at any range (such as blades, cannons, and palm). The cool thing about some weapons is they have the ability to home-in on targets and deal massive damage. The unfortunate part of homing is sometimes your reticle will decide to home-in at an enemy you are not aiming at. I thought this may have been auto-assist messing me, but when I checked the options menu, it was turned off by default, so this got on my nerves even more.

I say what kept me moving through KI:U was the individual personality's of each character, the feeling of getting stronger with each progressing chapter, and the twists in the story. The personalities are setup for each character fairly quickly when they are introduced, so when they are triumphant in battles, you cheer, but when they are struck with tragedy, you feel sad. That kind of connection in characters can only be achieved when you properly setup a character's personality. I couldn't tell you how saddening it was to see Palutena become corrupt and say she's done dealing with Pit and the humans along with the collapse of Skyworld. Such events kept me driving to find out what happens to the characters.

I think what also kept me going was the dialogue of characters. The dialogue between characters can range anywhere from drop-dead serious to the most silly and absurd thing you have ever heard in your life. The characters also liked to break the fourth-wall. Knowing Nintendo, most of the fourth-wall breaking had to do with their own games (there was mentioning of Nintendogs, Donkey Kong, Metroid, and even the original Kid Icarus).

Even though everything about this game made me want to keep playing, the moment I finished the final chapter was also the moment in which going through each chapter for extra goodies was more of tedious work rather than story-building tension. This game has little replayability, but it has a lot to offer after you finish off the final boss... which is a shame because getting through chapters after you finish the game gets annoying, rather than exciting.

After you've had enough of playing the single-player mode, you can boot up your wi-fi and try your hand at Together mode - which is essentially versus mode. There are two types of game modes - Light vs Dark and Free-For-All. Free-for-all is exactly how it sounds - everyone for themselves. You battle others, racking up kills while doing your best to avoid being killed. The person with the most points at the end of the time limit is the winner. Then there is Light vs Dark, which is a team-based mode where 3 dark angels face-off with 3 light angels. Each team has a team life gauge which is drained a bit whenever someone is finished. The amount drained depends on the value of the person's weapon - the higher the value, the more of the gauge is drained. Once the life gauge is emptied, the angel of the team (dark being Dark Pit, light being Pit) appears and is controlled by the person who ended up being finished to empty the life gauge. Once the angel is finished, the match is over and the other team wins.

I'll admit, I actually really like both modes. You don't really have to rely on your teammates too much on LvD and you are self-reliant on FFA, so each is equally entertaining. However, on LvD, there is a possibility your team could drag you down seeing as you all share one big life gauge. I would recommend anyone who has easily accessible wi-fi to at least try the Together mode and see if they like it or not. There aren't really any flaws I see in this mode.

What I thought to be a letdown was the fact that I couldn't hear the music too well. It wasn't that it was too quiet - well, actually that might be it. It was too quiet and the sound effects of projectiles, battle sound effects, and character dialogue tended to drown out the music. From what I could hear though, a lot of the music is an orchestrated remix of the songs from the original. They even put in some of the original music, such as the melody from when a Reaper is alerted. I would've loved to hear the music more clearly, but it was just slightly too quiet.

I think I've covered everything I need to, so here it is: the all-important score.
Graphics: 8 of 10 - For a handheld console, the graphics are very nice. However, there are times where the graphics falter a bit - such as the mouths of the characters when they talk outside of cut-scenes.
Controls: 8.5 of 10 - The controls need some time getting used to, but are a breeze when you adjust to how everything works.
Story: 9 of 10 - The story was engaging and had enough twists to keep it interesting, but it felt like they were throwing slightly random ideas out in the open.
Character Development/Dialogue: 10 of 10 - The characters were deep, believable, and every single character had a story behind it that was easy to grasp and understand. Even the dialogue between characters is believable and even humorous at times.
Overall Gameplay: 9.5 of 10 - The air and land battles were quite enjoyable. The only issue I really have with them is where a homing shot goes compared to where you aimed.
Overall Score: 9 of 10 - This game was incredibly enjoyable. The only things that needed fixing were the controls and the after-game content to add replayability.

Other notes: This game is fairly difficult at times. Make sure you know what you are getting yourself into before you increase the Intensity levels. Also take note you'll get better weapons at harder difficulties.