Review: Wario's Woods

Video: Wario's Woods Unboxing

I've been seeing these red cards that say Nintendo Switch Online for quite some time without knowing what they were about, but I finally decided to buy one just recently to find out.  And was I pleasantly surprised to see that all it is is the Switch's Virtual Console service.

And I was quite interested to see all the different consoles that were already available for download.  Looking through all the games for the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 sure took me on a trip down memory lane.

So I first upgraded to the expansion pack and then bought an SD card so I could start downloading games, and decided to start from the very beginning with the NES.  And despite the NES being before my time, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the very first game was an old favorite that I loved on the Super Nintendo, Wario's Woods.  So I immediately started playing it.

What I Think Of Wario's Woods Overall

This is clearly Nintendo's take on the puzzle genre.  It's like the Mario version of Tetris, but with monsters and bombs rather than tetriminoes.  So it's actually more like a mix of Tetris and Bomberman with a Mario twist.

And as one of the very last games that I played on the Super Nintendo before it was time to move on to the N64, I still remember like it was yesterday when I purchased this baby from a toy store that also sells video games.  And I still remember all the fun I had with this game on my Super Nintendo.

What I Like About Wario's Woods

Even though this is mostly from my own experience from the when I played it on the Super Nintendo, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I still had it as I made it all the way round 95 in just one try in the Round Game.

Pulling off all of those chain reactions and making diamonds was still every bit just as much fun as I can remember.  Even when I was losing and getting game overs at round 99, I was still having so much fun that restarting didn't even bother me at all.

And while I haven't yet attempted to complete the Type B game, I still find it to be just as spooky as ever.  While I do still find it weird that you have to make matches with the bosses to hit them, it's still every bit just as much fun watching them make weird faces every time I do as it did when I was in grade school.  And even the fake Wario was just as goofy looking as I remember.

And even though it was pretty tough, getting those gold achievements in the Timed Race was still so much fun that repeating the same levels over and over trying to shave off seconds from your overall time never gets boring.  And even though I found it so much easier than I remember, most likely because of my previous experience, it was still just as satisfying to reach those Gold achievements as I remember it from the Super Nintendo game.

Overall, this was one of the best trips down memory lane that I've experienced.  And I'm even more impressed that I still have so much of my old skills that I pretty much blazed through it in just a few weeks, whereas it took me at least a whole year back when I was in grade school if I remember correctly.  

While it will probably take a while for me to dust off the rustiness that I have from not having played it in years for me to reach and clear Round 100, for both game types, I know that it's just a matter of time before I do.  And with this game being just as much fun as I remember, I see no reason why I would get bored and stop before I do.

What I Do Not Like About Wario's Woods

While me having played it when it was rereleased on the Super Nintendo when I was in grade school was a blessing in so many was as you've probably seen by now, it was also a curse in other was as you will see soon enough.  Obviously, the biggest one is me still being so used to playing it on the Super Nintendo, that I found it extremely hard to adjust myself to the NES controls.

I'm so used to having X and Y buttons to press when playing this game, that I found myself constantly pressing them trying to do my favorite move only for nothing to happen because the NES didn't have X and Y buttons.  And this confusion often has me fumbling a lot of things that would otherwise be easy for me to do.

Also because I played it on the Super Nintendo previously, I'm still used to hearing all of those crazy sound effects every time I pull off a series of chain reactions.  Yeah, Cool, Yoohoo, Ow Baby, You The Man, You Kick Butt, and so on.  Well you get the idea.  But I don't get that with the NES game.  Not even hearing Toad say "Sweet!" every time you clear a level.  By comparison to the Super Nintendo game, the NES game is pretty quiet.

And finally is a problem that I found with both games, and that would be the fact that there is no coherent story.  You are never told the reason why Toad is in Wario's Woods in the first place.  You're never told about a princess that Wario kidnapped, a plot by Wario that Toad is protecting the Mushroom Kingdom from, nothing.  

And because of this, it actually makes Toad look like the bad guy.  As if he just decided to go and invade Wario's home and kick his ass for no reason just because he's bored.  And even though we know that Wario is the bad guy and so we know that Toad has a very good reason for being in Wario's Woods, we're never told what that reason is.

The one and only thing that we can figure out about the story is that by the hero being Toad and not Mario or Luigi is that storywise, whatever bad thing that Wario did or is about to do to the Mushroom Kingdom had to have happened or was discovered is going to happen after Mario and Luigi had already gone off to deal with some other threat to the Mushroom Kingdom, most likely from Bowser.  And it's because Mario and Luigi were already gone dealing with that threat when the threat of Wario happened that left Toad as the only person left that could step up to Wario and stop him.

What I Find Found Strange About Wario's Woods

The one thing that I find really weird and funny about the game is that, by me being so used to the superior graphics of the Super Nintendo, the NES game has Wario looking like a straight crackhead.  As if you ever met him on a street corner, he'd be hitting you up for some crack/cocaine.  "Hey buddy, got some of that good stuff for me?"  Well now all of you drug addicts know who to hit up if you ever find yourselves in the Mushroom Kingdom!  Just make sure you bring some gold coins with you, as I'm not entire sure if Wario takes dollars.  And unfortunately, I don't know the dollar/gold coin exchange rate.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm loving every minute that I spend with Wario's Woods.  Not only is this a very fond trip down memory lane for me, as I originally played this game on the Super Nintendo back when I was in grade school, but this is also a very fun game that I'd very much enjoy even without the fond memories.

And while I did list a number of complaints, almost all of them are the result of me being so used to the Super Nintendo game, so I don't think that it would be fair for me to deduct points because it doesn't live up to it's more improved and updated rerelease on a superior console.  On it's on, no comparisons to the Super Nintendo game, this is one of the most enjoyable games that you can play on the NES.

Otaku Universe gives Wario's Woods for the Nintendo Entertainment System a(n):

A

Bringing down the Roof!

Review: Super Neptunia RPG

Video: Super Neptunia RPG Overview

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I went to Gamestop one day to find Grandia Recollection for my Nintendo Switch, not knowing that it was a download only game.  And while searching for it, I just happened across Super Neptunia RPG.  Considering that adventure games have always been my bread and butter, I knew from my own experience that when I see the letters RPG, that means this is an adventure game.

So having never heard of Neptunia before, I decided to take a look at it.  And naturally, I could not help thinking just how stupid the game sounds.  "The goal of us bad guys is to make everyone play 2D games!  Yeah baby, aren't we just so evil!"  Like what in the mother fuck?!  And as Neptune your goal is to rescue 3D games?!  Like double WITMF?!

So let me make sure I've got this straight.  This Bombing guy stole everybody's 3D games so that they can only play their 2D games, and this Neptune girl has to beat up this Bombing guy to rescue everybody's 3D games?

Dumbest plot ever, especially considering that Bombing man would have to break into people's houses to get their 3D games.  Which is a crime the last time I checked, so all Neptune should have to do is call the police to get him arrested.  But then again I suppose if she were to do that, then there wouldn't be a game to play.

But after my parents told me that Christmas was coming up and they'd buy me a game as a present, I decided to go ahead and give this Neptunia a chance.  After all, I can always bring it back if it really is as dumb and stupid as it sounds.  Only for Christmas to come around and to realize I didn't have enough money for Grandia because we forgot about taxes, so I had no choice but to play Neptunia first.

What I Think About Super Neptunia RPG Overall

So it was time for the moment of truth.  I loaded this game up and got started and everything, and the first thing I'm wondering is where did all of these swimsuit models come from all of a sudden?  Well it turns out that the whole thing was some dream that Neptune was having, and the game was using her dream as a tutorial.

But afterwards, the game turned very cutesy, which is not necessarily a bad thing, I just never played a game where everything is all cute and cuddly before.  Even the loading screen has some cute little smiley faced yellow square thing.  Well if the game companies are saying that Neptune wrote it, I think I can see now why the description on the back of the case makes the game sound so dumb and stupid.

And because everything was so cutesy, I couldn't even tell that was a monster I had to fight the first time I saw one.  I'm just walking up to it thinking it's some cute little pet that Neptune is going to pet on the head or rub it's stomach or something.  Good thing it led to a cut scene where Neptune was saying that's a monster and she must kick it's ass.

But I wasn't really feeling the story at all, it was just a series of doing all of these different tasks and killing monsters.  But things did finally start getting real with the story when I got up to the point where Noir gets kidnapped from the Akoop Ancient Archive by the Mad King and needs to be saved, though I still think it was totally dumb for them to split up when Noir was telling them to stay together.  So even though I was still doing tasks, they were more meaningful tasks as I could now see where they were tied to the story.

What I Like About Super Neptunia RPG

One of the main things that I like about the game is that it doesn't really get all that violent, no blood or anything else like that, so it's very family friendly.  Nothing that the kids are not allowed to see, unless you keep your kids away from beaches and swimming pools because you consider girls in swimsuits to be too sexy for the young ones.

Another thing I like is how silly Neptune really does keep things very hilarious.  She very often refers to herself as a hero goddess and there are so many funny jokes around her "double workload."  But it's not just Neptune, it seems that all of the girls have crazy personalities that make them interesting in their own right.

From Noir cosplaying while sleepwalking, to Vert being a video game addict that plays for days straight without sleep, to manga loving Blanc making everyone help her shop at that anime convention.

While it did take me a little while to understand it, I think the whole thing about how you get skills from your weapons and armor is pretty interesting.  This does help make the characters rather easy to customize to your liking.  I find Neptune to be best suited as a physical fighter while Noir and Chrome are magic fighters and Blanc the healer, but those are just my personal preferences.

But overall I'd say that the story is the main thing about the game that I enjoy.  From the encounters with Bombix Mori to the aforementioned craziness of the characters themselves, the story was a lot more enjoyable than you'd originally think from reading the back of the game case.  While I certainly won't spoil anything here, I will say that I never knew it was possible to kick your own ass.

What I Don't Like About Super Neptunia RPG

I would most certainly say that the battle system needs some work.  Playing as only one character, that girl who stays back and keeps everyone else healed, while the computer plays everyone else is just my personal preference.  So having to play as all the characters is not something I'd take off points for.  If you want something done right, after all.

But I do think it's rather dumb that my healer Blanc has to be standing out front and wide open for the bad guys to beat up on in order for her to heal the group.  They should've given her, or at least given us some way to give Blanc, a way to always be healing the group as long as she's in the party regardless of where she's standing.

Even though the bad guys can choose who they want to attack, I couldn't help noticing that it's mostly the person in font that they choose the most.  The only way to do anything about this problem is to grind and level up the girls enough that Blanc won't be killed by the bad guys all jumping on her exclusively as if the other girls don't even exist.

But the first time I did this, they suddenly made the monsters a whole lot stronger as if to punish me for being smart enough to think to grind and level up.  This is the next thing I did not like, as you can probably guess.  Like after all of that grinding I did in that volcano, the best grinding spot in the game that I've found so far, they're going to make the monsters stronger to defeat the whole entire point of me grinding in the first place?!

And finally, what is with the whole clock thing that they've got going on.  The whole thing about having to wait for the count of twelve before I can do anything gets rather, tedious I'm guessing?  I don't even know the right word for it.  The best way I can think of to describe it is like being that bad little kid who's been put in the corner for time out.  Yes I know that I can attack sooner, but I personally find it more effective to wait for twelve so I can hit them multiple times in one go.

What I Find Weird About Super Neptunia RPG

What is up with all the Nintendo references?  First there's Neptune talking about "Boing" almost every time she jumps, then we find out that Vert's all time favorite video game is Met - A - Roid (Too much of a dead giveaway of what game this is suppose to be!), then we meet these kids who are supposed to be Bokemon masters (No, I won't say it, it's just way too obvious.), and then there's an area on Poly Island called Under the Pipe where the dogoos and other Neptunia monsters look like goombas and koopas!

Like what the hell?  Is Neptunia supposed to be somebody's idea of a wannabe Nintendo game.  About the only one I didn't see is Zelda, no one in a green tunic or some kind of task to gather the pieces of the Triforce or anything, unless it's the fact that the girls are fighting with swords.

My Conclusion About Super Neptunia RPG

Well even though I have more dislikes than I do likes, everything I listed as a dislike is only a temporary problem that can be fixed from continually leveling up.  So once you level up enough, all the problems will be gone.

Now obviously having problems that need to be fixed in the first place will most definitely prevent this game from getting a perfect S, even though it is perfect S material once they are fixed.  So as long as you have no problem with putting in the work in the beginning you will be rewarded with an S ranked game in the long run.

Otaku Universe gives Super Neptunia RPG A(n):

A

That's what I've been looking for!

Review: Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Video: Muramasa: The Demon Blade Unboxing

I just happened to find this little gem while browsing through Disc Replay one day and I made sure to grab it, mostly because it's a game that I'd been planning on getting back when it was new but never got around to it until just now.

What I Think Overall

Muramasa: The Demon Blade turned out to be one hell of a game that I'd recommend for any Otaku.  This baby is a lot like Naruto meets Inu Yasha and then teams up against Samurai Champloo.  It's all about the olden days of Japan, back in the age of the samurai.  You're running around collecting souls like you're Kikyo, you're jumping from tree to tree just like you're from the Hidden Leaf village, and you're slicing up ninjas and samurai as if you're on a quest to find the samurai who smells of sunflowers.

What I Like About it

One of the things I really like about this game is it's intro.  No matter how many times I see it, I never get bored of watching it.  You see the characters for the first time, and even get a close look at their sharpened samurai swords.  And the part where you're running through the woods is a lot of fun.  And the soundtrack just make everything so much more Japan - like.

Speaking of Japan - like, eating at the different restaurants really gives you an idea of how the Japanese used to eat back in those days at those little tea houses.  You learn quite a lot about Japanese cuisine from this game, including which meals even the Japanese would still use a spoon for, which ones they'd simply eat with their hands, and the ones that they'd use chopsticks for.  You also learn a lot about how each of the meals was made just from the descriptions, and even which meals are better with sake.

If Baten Kaitos was the most beautiful GCN game ever made, then Muramasa: The Demon Blade has clearly earned that same title for the Wii.  The backgrounds are some of the most beautifully detailed I've seen in a game in quite a while now.  You can almost feel yourself getting lost forever in those deep woods, running up and down the rolling hills of those farmlands, needing a winter coat in those snowy fields, and a dry towel on those water splashing beaches.  They even included a bit of interaction with the backgrounds as well as you can slice up the bamboo and other items while you're fighting.

One interesting thing to note is that despite the premise you see in the opening of "I am the Demon Blade.  I must have blood.  I'll kill you faster then Heero Yuy.  I'm such a bad boy.  I've been so naughty this year Santa." and all of that, when you get past all of that the violence in the game is almost no different from a Legend of Zelda game.  This definitely makes it one of most family friendly games out there, assuming you skip the intro of course.  Rather than blood and gore, you see souls come out of the bad guys when you kill them.

What I Do Not Like About it

Now thus far, I've only played through the story of Momohime, the princess of Narukami who's possessed by a demon, which I only know because I'm the type that reads the instruction book.  This is one of the gripes I have with the game.  They don't give you any of the background stories of the characters.  When the game starts you're just suddenly getting jumped by ninjas with no idea of what's going on.  You only find out about the background story in little bitty pieces as the game progresses.

Of course you already know what I'm going to say about the fighting, but I'll only take off a half a point this time since as I stated earlier the violence is pretty much on par with something along the lines of Super Mario.  No wonder this "bloody" game got off with only a T rating.

What I Found Strange

One last thing to note is, what is up with the bouncing ninjas?  It's not a complaint or anything, it's just very odd watching ninjas bouncing up and down on the screen as if they have basketballs in their pants (or maybe Momohime really is a naughty girl and she's hitting them in their balls literally.  They really do have some high soprano voices every time they get hit you know!).  Hey Kakashi, you never mentioned anything about the village hidden on the basketball court.  So who's the Slamdunkkage, Michael Jordan?

Conclusion

Overall though, this baby is one that I highly recommend to, not only Otaku, but anyone who has any kind of interest in Japan at all.  Muramasa: The Demon Blade gives you the whole experience of living in Japan back in the olden days of the samurai right from the comfort of your own living room.  Despite it's very few and very minor drawbacks, Muramasa: The Demon Blade has more than earned it's place in the gaming collection of not only Otaku, but any gamer who has any interest in Japan.



Otaku Universe gives Muramasa: The Demon Blade for the Wii a(n):

A

Now if only there were some sake!