The Legend of the Mystical Ninja

 

Finally finished the Legend of the Mystical Ninja for the Snes and I gotta say, it felt a bit on the hard side if I hadn't abused the save scumming feature on the Wii U to get the most equipment... or even get the most money by cheating on the dice game. I don't think I would have succeeded otherwise. Maybe I just suck at playing those kind of game, but still, it seemed a bit unfair when the unpredictable townspeople started jumping around and throwing coins at me knocking away my newly bought piece of armor and my weapon level goes from this awesome Rygar yo-yo to a small pipe. All in all I prefer the Nintendo 64 game since there I could avoid everything pretty much without problem and my weapon stayed upgraded when I upgraded them. I even played that game a couple of times even before realizing I actually could buy armor to stop bullets and hits to damage me, but I wonder why have it when you could acquire 20 hearts or dots or whatever the life bar was.

The story then. It starts out with talk of a ghost attacking the villager and Goemon and Ebisumaru... Sorry, I mean Kid Ying and Dr Yang sets out to stop it. Then suddenly it's about saving a princess that takes you across Japan... I would guess, I don't think they ever pointed out where we were except by name and I ain't that good on the geography of Japan. Maybe I didn't like it due to playing by myself since it supports two-player and I only played it once with one of my sisters and since I suck on my own and she being worse on video games than me that wasn't the best combo. I don't think we passed the first level and since my only level was on the fourth level we couldn't cheat for more money and then armors and lives. Or I might just find someone else to play with. At least the music good and the cut scenes can be entertaining. Maybe the 64 game clouds my appreciation of this game or it might just be that you need a nostalgic connection to be willing to grind your way through the game legit.

Wonderful 101

 

I got Mario Kart 8 when it got out and as a bonus you could get a free game so I went with this one, the Wonderful 101, by some considered the best non-Nintendo game on Wii U, which truth be told isn't saying much with the abysmal 3rd party support. Still, they are probably right since this game is freaking awesome. It's a superhero game where you control one of the Wonderful 100 as you fight back the space invaders GEATHJERK Federation in the Earth Defence war III. The gimmick is that you can gather 100 people (either drafted citizens or the actual W-100) and with them perform unite morphs to attack or interact with the environment.

Its story is parts serious, but more often a parody or homage to superheroes, mecha-series, transformers, sentai or power ranger shows or just other video games. It's freaking awesome. For example and SPOILERS!!! the final boss is both part Mother Brain from Metroid and Unicron from the 1986 Transformers movie. The design of the characters also reminds me of Thunderbird, the classic puppet sci-fi series from Britain and the story itself references the Terminator as the aliens come from the future, back in time to destroy humanity. One mission references this sci-fi trope to enter a body to destroy a virus or something. Also you have the Pokemon syndrome to gather all W-100 from all over the world... and for some reason Japan seems to have the highest per capita ratio of wonderfuls. Maybe it's Godzilla or something. The thing about the different W100 is that they come from all over the world, I even found one from Sweden... the Grim Reaper himself. Apparently he's from Umeå. My guess would be an homage to Ingmar Bergmans Seventh Seal or whatever it's called in English.

The most awesome thing, except feeling as a superhero team a la Justice League, is the music. They even have a theme song and I freakin love it... if you crank up the vocals a bit since the music drowns out the cheesy lyrics.

Nitpick is that changing weapons isn't 100% as you either use the gamepad touchscreen or the right analogue stick (stick is preferred) and the camera can be tricky in certain sections when you enter a building and the gamepad shows the view and you must solve a puzzle and the only way I found to look around was using gyro-controls. A bit irritating at times when you want to look 180. Other than that it might be on the shorter side, the story that is since the replay ability is huge in finding all 100, all data files, get the best score on more than 3 different difficulties and the characters are likable and the main character Wonder-red is perfect as total serious superhero which crashes with all others. Then on the other hand of the 7 main Wonders only 4 are given enough screen time to fully flesh out their quirks. Really, maybe a couple more story missions, but as tightly knitted the story is, it might make it worse. Really recommended so power up and save the day.

Xenoblade Chronicles

 

The other must have JRPG for the Wii and compared to the Last Story's 30-40 hours game this one clocked in on 120 hours when finished. Really, I dreaded the playtime when I checked on it before starting cause how can a story keep you interested for so long, playing roughly 10 per day? Somehow it did. It start out with a prologue at the last line of defence for the humans... I mean homs as the Mechonis is advancing. The only one standing in their way is Dunban, the warrior who wields the Monado. In a final attempt he and his friends Dickson and Mumkhar push the Mechonis back so the other homs can retreat, sadly Mumkhar betrays them and gets himself killed. As a final act Dunban unleashes the Monados full power ending the war, but leaves himself crippled. One year later and we are introduced to Shulk, scientist studying the Monado and Reyn and Fiora in their home Colony 9. Fiora is the obvious love interest and Dunbans younger sister who nurse him back from the burns he received by the Monado. Well, we can't have a story without conflict so the Mechonis appears which forces Shulk to wield the Monado and this grants him the power to see the future, but at the same time a new type of Mechonis appears, those with faces. They slaughter and captures several homs, one being Fiora and this starts the quest for revenge. Later on we end up with a sniper/healer chick Sharla, magician High Entian (angelic elfs) Melia, Nopon heropon Ricki and Dunban.

And now for the spoilers, of course Fiora survives, as one of the faced mechon, but with the coinciouse of the Mechonis (the titan home world of all mechanical life, compared to the Bionis biological life) as she tries to stop the machina leader for destroying the Bionis. The twist is that he seek revenge for what the Bionis did all those millennia ago and prevent further conflict as the concioise of the Bionis, Zanza, will destroy all life to regain his form. Pretty standard stuff. Gods fighting  and it's not the obvious enemy that are the long term threat. The rather fresh twist was the walkway toward the final boss and we are in space near Saturn, then Jupiter, then Mars and finally near our moon. Beat the boss and the twist is revealed, the world is a post-apocalyptic universe where a human experiment by the scientist taking the form as gods, eradicating our world. Not new, but rather fresh.

Other than that this game is a huge and epic sci-fi story that aren't like any other JRPG. You can level up by killing anything you see, but that isn't recommended. Rather go out and explore as every new location grants you exp or do loads of quest, it even pays enough so I never had trouble with money, accumulating 6-7 million without problem. It actually felt more like a DnD session than just kill to level up. The bad things on the other hand is the micromanagement of equipment and collectibles and the like. First of you are limited to how many different things you can take with you meaning I have to sell or throw away certain thing that I might need in quests or to rebuild Colony 6 with, but I threw that away 10 hours ago since I didn't know I needed it. They try to fix this by giving you vision of the future of certain things and that is a small nudge in the right direction, but somehow when I threw an ingredient I have 10 of, as soon the quest is given I can't even find 1 after 2 hours searching. Cheating computer bastard. Also switching equipment is a hazzle since you can on certain armors equip crystals to enhance different thing, but if you want to keep those crystals you must equip them one by one again. Did I mention you must do this for 7 characters? Apparently they are doing a spiritual successor for the Wii U so I hope they fix that.

Update 2014-08-30: Nintendo also announced a port for the New 3DS so hopefully they fixed that. I'm also interested in seeing the game in 3D since I will probably look amazing. Hopefully I have a job so I can afford it by that time.