Kid Icarus - Of Myths and Monsters Review by: Zircron Swift - 7.7/10
Kid Icarus Of Myths and Monsters ReviewKid Icarus, Of Myths and Monsters, the only sequel to the Kid Icarus series is on this Game Boy here. But why never a third game until somewhat 19 years later with kid Icarus: Uprising? The first game was a classic, and I expect the second game to be just that as well. Kid Icarus wasn't that popular back then. In fact, there was meant to be a playable character in Super Smash Bros. for the N64, but was scrapted due to Pits popularity back then. So where was he in the mean time? Well, I never played this game before, and if I am to uncover the secrets of Pits disappearence, then I must complete this game. Lets have a look at this one:
The story goes a little like this: The death of Medusa, the goddess of darkness, brought about not only peace, but the return of Palutena (the goddess of light) as well. Angle Land was restored to peace, and all was well. But then, Palutena had a weird dream, and ordered someone to tell her what this dream meant. The dream forshadowed a darkness that would invade Angle Land, and this darkness was Ocros. As soon as he uttered his name, he fell dead. With haste, Palutena summoned the captin of the Icarus Army, Pit. She tells him of the urgency of this new threat and says that Pit needs the Three Sacred Treasures to defeat this new threat. So she sends you on a training course to increase your magical powers so you can wield these Sacred Treasures.....Um....Lady Palutena? With all due respect, Pit was able to gather the Three Sacred Treasures before and use them to an extent that he defeated Medusa. Why not say.....give him the Sacred Treasures now? I don't see why he has to train when he could use them before. So why not save time and......oh, well as it turns out, Palutena - as a secruity measure - sealed the three Sacred Treasues away in the labyrinths of the three areas. Pit has to prove his worth anyway, either way you look at it.
You start at the UnderWorld Tower. The first thing I notice is that the screen isn't fixed. I thoguht it was a really huge area to explore, until I realised that I was doing a Pac-Man and going right all the time yet going round in circles. So the only way forward it up. It's like the first Kid Icarus game, where you go up, then right then up again. The second thing I notice is that Pits wings aren't moving as I jump, which is odd, as it did in the first one. I then realised that by tapping A as I decend will make Pit flap his little wings and make him decend slower (Awww...how cute ^^ =3). Makes me think if that happened in the first game as well.
The deal is still the same as in the first game. You can enter doors to either kill bats, buy wine or hammers, get power ups from that Old Zelda Guy and play "What pot doesn't have the God of Poverty in", where you can loose an arrow at a pot for the cost of five hearts for either ten hearts or a hammer. If your unlucky, you'll find the God of Poverty and will find that you are unable to break anymore pots. I prefer this version of the Pot game than the original version, because you can collect any item you find in the pot straight away, but in the NES version, if you collected an item, then the pots would disappear leaving you with your prizes. If you got the God of Poverty in that game, you would lose everything. In this game, it just ends the game, and you can collect the rest of your prizes should you have chosen not to pick them up.
The graphics are ptreet good for a Game Boy game. The backgrounds are nice and detailed enough for you to look at. The enemies and textures are somewhat creative and at times creepy. To my disapointment, the snakes aren't nearly as cute a in the original (and they don't have wings! =((((). The design to Pit is somewhat cute. I can;t really choose between the NES and the Game Boy Version, though. They both have some sort of angelic charm to them that I just can't quite figure out.
The music is awesome. Not quite as good as the NES version to my ears, but it's still awesome. My favourite piece is the labyrinth level. The music there is damn catchy and fits the level design very well. But the best part about it is that it matches the beat perfectly with the sound of you walking. Yep, that's right, walking. If you walk at the right time, you become an instrument to the music level. I got bored once, and this ammused me for some time. The boss music is threatening as you fight the boss, and some level music fits the design well.
Once you enter a door, the door is locked. But you can get a key to re-open that door. These keys can be sold at the market...some strong level of trust they have here, selling other peoples keys to strangers. When you die, all closed doors remain closed, including the ones you were in should you die there. You can get training programs to get power-ups, but these are way harder than the NES version. The Old Zelda Guy will bombard you with spinning square things, and I die many a time during this. I like how he tells you "You must train harder, Pit." In fact, find it funny how Pit - an angel - when he dies, becomes an angel and his body falls throught the floor.....Inception!!! The controls are tight. You don't slip or slide unless on an icy platform, just the way I like it. You can loose your bow up, left and right, but not down. Down is used to get below some platforms.
The difficulty, though, it pretty insane. You start with one bar of life, but you can get more bards at the end of every level should you score enough points. This made the first labyrinth insanely annoying to me. One thing to note is that although there are statues all over the place, not one will be made into an angel in the boss fight, as the death of Medusa turned all those turned to stone into the original form, they give items (normally little glasses of wine. Lets call them "shots" of wine, shall we?), so use them if your a little low on health. The eggplant wizard is still around, but being turned into an eggplant might prove handy. There are points that you can only enter if you were, say the size of an eggplant. Normally these spaces are near a nurse, so don't worry about it. I tend to ot take the "short-cuts" as some really aren't, and I still can't attack when an eggplant. One thing that really annoys me is that the bosses don't have a health bar. In the first game, they did have a way of indicating how much live a boss had left, but here, there is no such thing. I had to count the number of shots becuase I was paranoided. It took me 100 arrows to kill the first boss at level 2 arrows. After that, it wasn't a problem.
Overall, I give this game a 7.7/10 My eyes are now open. I realise why there was never a third Kid Icarus game until 2012. The reason is that it's too much like the first game. Although I loved this game, it beared too much resemblence to the NES game, making the experience somewhat boring and frustrating. There was nearly nothing new in this game, so if your going to play a Kid Icarus game from the 80's and 90's, At least make it the NES version. So why did Mega Man become so popular, even though there were 6 games in the NES series? I think it might be that Mega Man is a better material to make sequels that are very much the same, and still make it fun (well, for Mega Man 1-3....), but with this kind of material, unless it's a die-hard retro fan of Kid Icarus, the third game following suit will be pretty much the same. You need to add a different aspect and perspective to this, but still retain the Kid Icarus charm, and in all honestly, I think Kid Icarus: Uprising does just this, and I can hardly wait! It's going to be the next best thing since Professor Layton first came out....
Graphics
8 Sound
8 Addictive
8 Depth
9 Story
7 Difficulty
9
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