Second try, still falls shortThis just happens to be the second game made by Sly Dog Studios. Their first game was a flip-screen platformer with Metroid-style progression and item collecting, but it had too many flaws to be worth playing. Although it wasn't a great first shot, it gave valuable experience to the developer, and their second try would be much better, right? Things have been changed up a bit, and you're now playing as the villain of the last game! I was hoping this one would be good. How does it stack up?
The graphics are mostly just recycled from The Mad Wizard, and they still aren't used especially well. Colors are still dull, detail is still lacking, and animations are still simple at best. As far as I can tell, though, the bosses are entirely original, and don't look all that bad. Something I really disliked, though, is that every map in the game is just copied straight from The Mad Wizard and pasted into this game. Was this game really so rushed that the developer couldn't even make four levels without reusing content from the last game?
Music and sound are a bit improved, although they're still not too great. The music is better to listen to, but it still gets repetitive since it loops fairly quickly and you'll be hearing it repeat several times before the end of the level. The sound effects are fairly similar to what was in the last game, and aren't especially memorable. I can't even remember them to describe them very well.
The storyline is as follows - you're Amondus, the villain of the last game, and you're here to take over the land of Prim and set the stage for the previous game. Yep, it's a prequel! The fact that it's a prequel that lets you play as the villain of the series gets it an extra point, simply because there aren't very many games, let alone NES games, that allow you to do that. I still have yet to understand why he wants to take over the land so badly, though, since the only human being here is Hekl. If he has to deal with Hekl, which is the impression that I got from the storyline, why can't he just do that without having to invade the land and take it over?
The gameplay is drastically different from the last game in the series. The last game was a flip-screen platformer with an emphasis on exploration and item-collecting, while this game is a scrolling shooter with four entirely linear levels to go through. The only issue is that the developer decided to try to make things more complicated than they needed to be, and the result is a shooter that just isn't fun to play. It's especially bad because shooters aren't all that hard to make! Well, at least he finally learned how to make the NES scroll. Can you imagine how awful a flip-screen shooter would be?
The first issue is with the controls. First of all, unlike every other scrolling shooter in the history of the NES, you don't just fire forwards - instead, you have four different firing modes that the game automatically switches between whenever you move to a certain region of the screen. Oh, you wanted to get closer to the enemy? Sorry, you're now firing incredibly slow balls of energy instead of regular projectiles, and you weren't able to hit him. The only time the firing modes were at all useful was during boss fights, and even then I only found use for the "fire forwards" and "fire backwards" modes. Why not make it a manual switch? Oh, that's right, because all of the other buttons are taken up for this game's OTHER gimmicks!
The second major gimmick that you have to deal with is capturing. You have a cursor on-screen, but it doesn't actually aim your projectiles - instead, you have to target goblins and press B to capture them. The problems are numerous - To control the cursor, you have to hold A and use the pad to move it. Obviously, you can't move while doing it, which makes you very vulnerable to enemy attacks. The cursor also moves very slowly, and the capturing process is even slower, which makes it difficult and sometimes literally impossible to capture every goblin you see. It's really distracting to pay attention to the cursor and your character all at once, and it just makes you so much more likely to get hit. It would be okay if it were just for bonuses and you could ignore it, but it's absolutely required to capture a certain number of goblins per level. If you don't meet the requirement at the end of the level, you get to start the level ALL OVER AGAIN! This is the kind of thing I'd expect from an LJN game! What were they thinking? I'm almost turning into the AVGN just writing about it!
Because of the second gimmick, the game is much, much harder than it needs to be. Later levels force you to dodge huge amounts of incoming fire, and I have to move this stupid cursor around and collect goblins too? This is a bit too much! I never even liked goblins anyway, why do I need to capture them? Aren't I supposed to be a super-powerful wizard? This one gimmick ruins what could've been a somewhat fun shooter! If this goblin-capturing system weren't in here, this game would at least be a 6 overall.
The boss designs are at least passable, although they suffer from issues as well. For one thing, you need to stay a certain distance away from the boss, or your shots will either become slow energy balls or fire in the wrong direction, which makes fighting a boss very difficult. Another thing to note is that some of the bosses are just immense damage sponges, the final boss being the worst of all. He takes around 100 hits to defeat! No boss should ever take that much damage unless they've got something interesting to keep the battle fresh, and none of the bosses in this game have anything up their sleeves. They just repeat the exact same pattern over and over until either you or they die.
Overall, this is another potentially fun game ruined by too many poor decisions. If there were a way to play the game without the goblin mechanic, it would be worth playing. As it is now, though, it's really not worth your time. It's poorly-designed, overly frustrating, and doesn't really have much of a payoff for how difficult it is to manage a character and a cursor at the same time. I would recommend staying away from this one. I just hope this person's next game is a bit better...
Final Rating: 3 annoying goblins out of 10
Graphics
4 Sound
5 Addictive
3 Depth
3 Story
6 Difficulty
9
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