Nintendo Switch #6: WeakWood Throne

 

(1 skateboard, 2 towns, 1 faceless protagonist. That about sums it up.)

Developer: water x melon

Publisher: Drageus Games

Release Date: 9-11-2020

 

After almost thirty years of searching I think I have finally found it. I have stumbled upon something that only comes along once in a lifetime. My journey through the Nintendo Switch digital dollar bin has reached its apex. I have discovered the most incompetently made RPG of all time. It’s the RPG equivalent of Plan 9 From Outer Space or Paddy the Pelican. It does manage to have a starting and ending point, but between those two points it gets absolutely everything wrong. It’s a game whose mere existence raises a lot of questions. How does something which obliviously lacks any professionalism become a nationally released product? Most legendarily bad pieces of media will remain obscure for years if not decades. It’s not like Ed Wood was well known in his lifetime, and there’s no evidence that Paddy the Pelican ever actually aired. However, in the digital world getting products released is much easier, and a train wreck like WeakWood Throne can be available for a very low price to any of the millions of Switch or PC owners out there who can never have enough RPGs to play. It was released by one of those companies who put out a game in the US and then there are suddenly a couple hundred positive reviews of it in Russian. So I guess it’s a Russian company that makes bad games very quickly and releases them to legitimate markets? It’s a business model that doesn’t make much sense to me, but I don’t know much about money. It’s not like I get paid to write all these blogs. I just play games and tell you if they are any good. Now, let me tell you why this game isn’t any good.

(Why won't you talk to me Marlon? You're an alligator wearing a funny hat. I've never not wanted to talk to you)

 

WeakWood Throne is a game where every new discovery is a warning sign. It all starts with the stupid name. Seriously, is WeakWood Throne a dick joke? It sounds like a dick joke. It also has the word weak in the title which is never a good sign either. It’s like the game is inviting you to not like it. The game starts with your unnamed character in the middle of nowhere doing nothing with no explanation as to why they are there and what they are doing. The movement is a little slow, but don’t worry the game tells you that by holding down LZ you can ride a handy skateboard. Well that sure is helpful oh wait the skateboard goes slower than walking. How could they make a mode of transport that is actually slower than regular movement? It only moves faster over wooden bridges, so they decided to put a bunch of random holes in bridges just to make it that much harder to travel anywhere. The game is advertised as an open world game, so it’s important to have a good map so the player won’t get lost. Sadly there is no way to access an overworld map, and the mini map provided in the corner only shows some landmarks and not the actual land itself. If you want to know if you are near a bush you can see it on the map, but if you want to know if you are near a town you are out of luck. This game also emphasizes the plants that you can collect but they are mostly useless. I thought there was going to be some crafting involved, but all you can do with your leaves is sell them or complete a couple of quests with them. At least you know they are there however. They are right on the map.

(As promised here's the throne)

 

So I wandered around blindly for a while hacking away at plants that I thought were going to be important and finally stumbled upon a town. That’s when I seriously thought the game was broken. There are NPCs standing around who look like they want to talk, but nobody would even give me the time of day. Even characters with names are silent unless they have a quest to give or something to sell. The quest givers will speak once to give you a quest, but then they will never speak to you again. Even most of the earliest games in the genre will give NPCs at least generic dialogue. This game is bare minimum incarnate. As a consequence you get vague quests with no unsatisfying resolutions. The characters will talk when you turn in a quest, but never again after this so you can’t follow up on anything. And you have to complete every quest before beating the game too. So if you weren’t paying enough attention when an NPC is giving you a quest you just have to wander until you complete it. Luckily the world is small and the developers got lazy halfway through so there aren’t that many quests.

I wish there were more quests because anything to distract myself from the combat was a welcome relief. There is the promise of melee, ranged, and magic combat, but arrows move to slowly and magic wands are somewhat rare so it’s really just about swords. They try to pull off a twin stick combat style, but the collision detection is so poor that you’re better off just positioning your character in the correct spot. When you level up you get two skill points, but putting points in different skills only seems to allow you to buy better weapons. Giving myself more strength didn’t seem to make me any stronger by itself. Also, nothing really matters much anyway because if you die you just pop back up again from the closest entryway with no other consequence. There is no loss of money, no respawning enemies, nothing at all to motivate you to stay alive. Also, all four bosses are exactly the same. They shoot a projectile three or four times, have some sort of wide range power attack, and sometimes spawn extra monsters all while standing perfectly still. All you have to do is run around in a circle and then attack. It all makes the game feel like a slog even though it’s only around four hours long. Honestly I would normally complain about an rpg only being four hours long, but this may be WeakWood Throne’s only saving grace. If it somehow worms its way into your rpg backlog it will at least be gone soon. In this case the quicker the better.

 

So that’s the game. I am not going to have a lengthy conclusion like I usually do because I think I have it pretty well covered already. I am sure there are some flaws I forgot about, but if you want to uncover them all you’ll have to play it yourself. Also please don’t play this game to uncover all the flaws. That would just be sad.

 

1. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2. Super Mario Odyssey

3. The Legend of Zelda

4. Galaga

5. Donkey Kong

6. Exodus: Ultima III

7. Pac-Mania

8. Wrecking Crew

9. Super Pac-Man

10. Pac-Man

11. Viva Pinata

12. Dragon View

13. Excitebike

14. Drakkhen

15. Arc the Lad

16. Clu Clu Land

17. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

18. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

19. Metro-Cross

20. Double Dragon

21. Ice Climber

22. Gaplus

23. Dragon Spirit

24. Pinball (NES)

25. Ninja Golf

26. Super Soccer

27. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

28. Red Sea Crossing

29. Baraduke

30. Evoland

31. Tennis

32. Renegade

33. Hogan’s Alley

34. Gamma-Attack

35. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

36. Galaxian

37. Dragon Crystal

38. Cosmic Commuter

39. Hot Pixel

40. PocketBike Racer

41. Wild Gunman

42. Defunct

43. Gyruss (2600)

44. Looney Tunes Racing

45. Squidlit

46. Baseball

47. Birthday Mania

48. Bad Street Brawler

49. Burly Men at Sea

50. WeakWood Throne

51. X-Men (HyperScan)

52. My Name is Mayo

53. Marvel Heroes

54. Ben 10

 

 

Game Gear #1: Dragon Crystal

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

Release Date: 1991

 

 (Luckily the game doesn't actually take place from the crystal's point of view)

Every so often someone who didn’t live through it will ask us older gamers why the Game Gear got toppled by the Game Boy. It was technically superior after all. It was in color and had a backlit screen plus sharper graphics. The answer to this is is of course complicated, but the key advantage the Game Boy had was games. The Game Boy had a large and interesting library of games with many exciting exclusives. Almost all of the key Nintendo franchises got at least one Game Boy exclusive. The Game Gear, however, has one of the most boring libraries in all of gaming. It is almost completely comprised of miniature versions of games already released for the Genesis. Outside of a few Sonic games there’s just not much to get excited about unless you like inferior versions of licensed titles. That’s why I really wanted to like Dragon Crystal. It’s something different on the Game Gear. It’s a classic roguelike in an era where those were rare especially on consoles. It’s hard to think of another one other than the similar Fatal Labyrinth released during the 16-bit era. Of course, it was released on the Sega Master System in Europe so it’s not a total exclusive, but it’s still more interesting than 8-bit Aladdin. Unfortunately, it has the worst type of flaw that any roguelike can have.

If you’ve never played a roguelike they work like this: you wander around in a randomly generated dungeon trying to get to the end without dying. There are usually levels to gain and equipment to find making them nominally RPGs, although they are often missing other RPG conventions like world maps and NPCs. The main hallmark of a roguelike is permadeath meaning that if you die it’s back to the start with a brand new level 1 character. Dragon Crystal doesn’t completely adhere to this parameter. It does have the potential for a few continutes. However, it doesn’t help the game become much easier. Dragon Crystal is difficult through and through. When difficultly is done right I find it to be an asset, but when it’s done wrong it can really ruin a game. Dragon Crystal definitely has too much of the wrong kind of difficulty.

 

But first the positives. I certainly like the way it looks. It’s a game where the maps are hidden, and uncovering them involves creaking along through colorful environments. In a genre where everything tends to look the same it’s nice to have a game with several different backgrounds and monster designs. Walking through giant smiling cacti instead of plain black backgrounds goes a long way. I also like that there is a good good amount of items to uncover. It encourages more exploration when there might be something new out there to find. Of course, identifying the items can be dangerous in itself because they are only listed by colors until you use them. Still, if the potions and books are found on the lower levels they are usually not fatal. I enjoy the game’s sense of style so that’s a point in its favor.

 

However, it all falls apart with the genre’s biggest flaw. Success in Dragon Crystal is almost entirely based on luck. All the equipped weapons, or at least through the twentieth floor where I hit a wall and couldn’t go on, are close range. The only ranged attacks come from items. There are some monsters that will pretty much destroy you if you don’t have ranged items. So if you haven’t found any along the way you are going to die. There aren’t very many item slots either, so you are not going to be able to stockpile a ton of them. You just have to hope that there are going to be some extra ones near the monsters. What’s worse is there are monsters on the higher floors that drain your stats on almost every hit. The only way to recover them is to find the right potions. This can be hard to do when strength has been reduced to almost zero and armor has been rusted. The only way to win is to find the right potions in the right place at the right time. And of course there are always plenty of monsters even when there aren’t plenty of potions. Also there’s no way to save on the original hardware. If you get drained in the final third of the game and can’t recover you are just out of luck, and it can take a couple hours to get there. Imagine playing the game for two hours only to have all your strength drained by a blue snail and having no way to recover. I don’t have to imagine because I lived it, and let me tell you it was not pleasant. Of course I was playing on 3DS where I was able to play with save states, but I think to actually beat the game I would have to save after almost every turn and reload if something bad happened. That’s not much fun either.

 

So if you had a Game Gear back in the early 90s and got tired of playing licensed platformers I could see buying Dragon Crystal. Actually it got very good reviews back in the day. However, I think it was more for the novelty than anything else. There just weren’t a lot of games like Dragon Crystal out there at the time. Today roguelikes are loved by indie developers and there’s just about every flavor of them on the market. I can compare Dragon Crystal to other games and see all of its flaws. I enjoy a challenge, but I don’t like a challenge that’s based on pure luck, especially when you can’t tell if your doing well or not until a couple hours in. The novelty is enough to keep it out of the red, but the best I can do is 37^th right behind Galaxian. The best way to play it might just be to see how far you can get instead of trying to go to the finish, but that’s still not much fun. I’ll probably still try to beat it someday though. I’m just that kind of person.

Game Gear quality precentage: sadly 0/1 so far

 

1. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2. Super Mario Odyssey

3. The Legend of Zelda

4. Galaga

5. Donkey Kong

6. Exodus: Ultima III

7. Pac-Mania

8. Wrecking Crew

9. Super Pac-Man

10. Pac-Man

11. Viva Pinata

12. Dragon View

13. Excitebike

14. Drakkhen

15. Arc the Lad

16. Clu Clu Land

17. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

18. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

19. Metro-Cross

20. Double Dragon

21. Ice Climber

22. Gaplus

23. Dragon Spirit

24. Pinball (NES)

25. Ninja Golf

26. Super Soccer

27. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

28. Red Sea Crossing

29. Baraduke

30. Evoland

31. Tennis

32. Renegade

33. Hogan’s Alley

34. Gamma-Attack

35. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

36. Galaxian

37. Dragon Crystal

38. Cosmic Commuter

39. Hot Pixel

40. PocketBike Racer

41. Wild Gunman

42. Defunct

43. Gyruss (2600)

44. Looney Tunes Racing

45. Squidlit

46. Baseball

47. Birthday Mania

48. Bad Street Brawler

49. Burly Men at Sea

50. X-Men (HyperScan)

51. My Name is Mayo

52. Marvel Heroes

53. Ben 10

(Images are from vgmuseum.com)

NES #14: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Release Date: 1-14-87 (Japan) 12-1-88 (U.S.)

There is a certain segment of the population that will tell you that Zelda 2 is the black sheep of the series. They will say that not only is it the lesser of the two NES games but that it is one of the weakest Zelda games overall. These people couldn’t be more wrong. Zelda 2 is a masterpiece that is only disliked by people who don’t like change and are afraid of a challenge. Zelda 2 is certainly different. Instead of the overhead adventure game we now have a half-overhead half-side scrolling action RPG with actual levels to gain and towns to visit. Even the name is different. It’s the only game in the main series to not have “The Legend of” in the title. This means that if you arrange your games alphabetically it will end up far away from the others. This is appropriate because it’s hard to think of a sequel that is more different than the original. Perhaps Nintendo’s experience with the original Super Mario Bros. 2 had something to do with it. Its failure to be released in America made them think that people wanted sequels that were more than just expansions with harder levels. Whatever their motivations, however, few games were ever as forward thinking as Zelda 2. You may not realize it, but it’s a game with a far-reaching impact that few games can match. It’s not as played as the first game, but so many people who fell in love with it went on to make games. Every action RPG and adventure-styled platformer owes it a debt of gratitude. More than just clones, Zelda 2 influenced whole styles of games. If you’ve never given it a chance, it’s probably time to check it out with an open mind. It’s a truly great gaming experience.

 

Playing it now I am still struck by how big the world feels. Where the first game was mostly forest with very few people, Zelda 2 has all different environments and actual towns to visit. Where most Zelda games have only one or two villages, this game has eight spread out all over the world. I also enjoy how each environment has its own side scrolling map during combat. It’s not just a couple of generic ones over and over as you would expect from an 80s game. Also there are secrets everywhere. Few games evoke the spirit of adventure like Zelda 2. Magics and special moves can be earned in towns, and they usually have a quest to unlock them. Between the spells, items, heart containers, levels to gain, and regular dungeons there is a lot to do. It is a game with very little wasted space neither having the aimless wandering of the first game or the “follow the arrow” linearity of some of the later installments. It’s a marvel of pacing and design.

 

It’s a game where even the perceived flaws work out in its favor. I know some people are turned off by the difficulty, and from a modern perspective it’s a bit brutal. You only have three lives, and if you get a game over you either go back to the very beginning or the start of a dungeon. What’s even worse is that you lose all your experience points upon game over. I like this, however, because it makes every move count. Where other Zelda games are leisurely and carefree, this one is full of tension. It causes the player to make some difficult decisions, like deciding to pick up exp boosters or not. They do not respawn, so if you pick one up it’s best to make it count. It’s that great kind of tension that the NES was known for. It really is a game where both the action and RPG elements are equally important. Even good action RPGs usually focus more on one than the other. They usually focus on either the combat or the RPG elements. Zelda 2 does the balancing act perfectly. The character building and exploration are great while the combat is difficult and varied. Why can’t more games get it right?

 

As far as I can remember Zelda 2 was the first RPG I ever played, and it made quite an impression on me. I still remember playing through it back in the pre-internet days and having to really explore everything to get through it. Through all the frustrations of not knowing what to do, however, it never stopped being fun. There’s just something about Hyrule that sucks a person in. With Zelda 2 Nintendo crafted the perfect sequel. It expands on every part of the first game. It looks, sounds, and plays better. It is more than twice as big, and gets the most out of all that space. It is also the game most responsible for popularizing the action RPG. Games that came before it, like Dungeon Slayer and Hydlyde, got some of the concepts right but failed in the execution. Zelda 2 put it all together, and games were greatly improved because of it. I think it is obvious where I am going to put it on my list. Call your friends everyone and tell them we have a new number one. That is right where a masterpiece like Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link belongs.

 

NES quality percentage: 8/14 = 57.14%

 

1. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2. Super Mario Odyssey

3. The Legend of Zelda

4. Galaga

5. Donkey Kong

6. Exodus: Ultima III

7. Pac-Mania

8. Wrecking Crew

9. Super Pac-Man

10. Pac-Man

11. Viva Pinata

12. Dragon View

13. Excitebike

14. Drakkhen

15. Arc the Lad

16. Clu Clu Land

17. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

18. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

19. Metro-Cross

20. Double Dragon

21. Ice Climber

22. Gaplus

23. Dragon Spirit

24. Pinball (NES)

25. Ninja Golf

26. Super Soccer

27. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

28. Red Sea Crossing

29. Baraduke

30. Evoland

31. Tennis

32. Renegade

33. Hogan’s Alley

34. Gamma-Attack

35. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

36. Galaxian

37. Cosmic Commuter

38. Hot Pixel

39. PocketBike Racer

40. Wild Gunman

41. Defunct

42. Gyruss (2600)

43. Looney Tunes Racing

44. Squidlit

45. Baseball

46. Birthday Mania

47. Bad Street Brawler

48. Burly Men at Sea

49. X-Men (HyperScan)

50. My Name is Mayo

51. Marvel Heroes

52. Ben 10