The Glory Days of Valve

At this time every year, I replay The Orange Box. And it still holds up. The Orange Box was an amazing collection of games, both new and old, and it came with some of the most groundbreaking games that the industry has seen to this day. Celebrating its ninth anniversary a couple of months ago, this compilation of sorts left me so dramatically floored that I feel the need to attempt to recapture the initial excitement of its release every year.

Before we get into the real meat of things, let's back up a bit: What was in The Orange Box? Five games released for the price of one, it included two games that were the previously released fan favorite Half-Life 2 and its expansion Half-Life 2: Episode 1. But the real heart of the collection were its three new games. Yep, that's right — two games that were, at the time, still relatively new, and three that were brand new, all for the price of one game. That's how you hook the fans, folks. "The best deal in video game history," indeed. (Remember, Steam sales didn't exist yet).

So let's take a little trip down memory lane.

It's no wonder Valve would later be known for Steam Sales. This was only the beginning. At the time, a deal like this was unprecedented.

Flashback to 2007. I had just graduated high school. I was sort of aimless, unsure of what I wanted to do in life, and was attending a local community college while trying to figure out my future. I had vague notions of majoring in psychology. Ha. HA! Oh, you young fool. Anyway, that's not what this article is about. That fall, a miraculous collection of games was released on PC under the inconspicuous title of The Orange Box.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two

This was the big game that everyone was waiting for. The direct continuation of the previous expansion, Episode One, Episode Two advanced the Half-life 2 story and featured some very impressive technical enhancements along with the new campaign. Most of the game took place outdoors, which was a very big change of pace from the cramped dystopian cityscapes of the first two outings, and the environments were absolutely gorgeous.

Episode 2 featured new enemies and outdoor environments, making it feel fresh coming off of the reiterative cityscapes and tunnels of the last two entries.

The campaign itself was fast-paced and gripping, and held the player's attention from beginning to end. Episode Two featured a new Hunter enemy, which had only been seen briefly in a recorded message in Episode One. The Hunter was a dangerous and intimidating enemy which could follow you, indoors and out. Here, the story set in motion over the previous two games was in full force, and it ended on a massive cliffhanger that deeply affected fans everywhere. We're still waiting on the resolution to that cliffhanger, but I digress. The game met, and even surpassed, fan expectations, becoming a critically acclaimed success.

Team Fortress 2

The second new game in the box was Team Fortress 2, a cartoony, team-based shooter. TF2 had a rocky development cycle, even starting out as a traditional realistic army shooter, but the final release was unlike anything anyone had seen at the time. Each map was brimming with style, and the Source engine certainly did the game a few favors in both looking nice and running very smoothly. You did not simply choose your class in TF2; each class was a distinctive character with its own voice quips, looks and personality.

What other team based shooter at the time had a class dedicated entirely to healing? With a gun? Go ahead, I'm waiting for an answer. TF2 felt entirely unique at the time of its release.

Classes, such as the Medic or Pyro, were highly specialized and offered new forms of gameplay. Sure, we'd all seen flamethrowers in an FPS before, but to design an entire class around the concept was something innovative, not to say anything of the concept of a strict healing/support class. The highly stylized art, characters that brimmed with personality, innovative map design and streamlined, fast-paced gameplay all came together to create a massively addicting experience. The game was, in many ways, the precursor to Blizzard's highly successful Overwatch.

Portal

The real shocker, for many Orange Box aficionados, was Portal. This is the game that I think everyone expected to be nothing more than the bonus game of The Orange Box; a short and sweet fan-made romp that would be enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable compared to the big names it shared a box with. Boy, did it surpass everyone's expectations.

The clean and sterile art style allowed the game to work together with its deceptively innocent concept to tell a gripping story with a very dark undertone. The plot was one that was accentuated greatly by nonverbal storytelling techniques, such as writing found on the walls of Aperture Science labs, and GLaDOS proved to be a villain as memorable as the bone-schilling SHODAN from the acclaimed System Shock 2.

While the real star of Portal was its colorful antagonist, the puzzle based gameplay was fairly revolutionary at the time, as well. Portal took full advantage of its 3D rooms and portal gun to offer an engaging experience unlike any other game that was out there.

GLaDOS was an effective villain due to how she was both eerie and completely in control, but she also served as comic relief, a blend of supposedly opposing character attributes that was near flawlessly executed. Who doesn't remember the ominously innocent voices of the actually very deadly turrets scattered throughout the labs? "The cake is a lie" persisted for years after the game's release, and the Companion Cube's loss was comically lamented by fans everywhere.

Portal wasn't just about the story, however. The game itself also proved to be wonderfully new and experimental, and offered a puzzle-based experience like no other game had done before. It was so successful, it led to a full-fledged sequel years later.

While you can't step in the same river twice, all of the games included in The Orange Box collection hold up extremely well and remain very enjoyable, even nine years after their release. Hats off to one of the biggest and best releases in gaming.

Back to the Beginning - Samus Aran's "Zero Mission"

Short post today. I've been updating this blog less and less, as I am wondering if it is worth continuing to do so. As such, I've been on an unofficial hiatus for quite some time. The future of this blog is up in the air - I'd love to continue with it, but time will tell if that is feasible or not.

I'm a huge fan of Metroid Prime, Metroid Fusion, and Super Metroid, and I rather enjoyed the second two Prime games as well, even if they fell a bit short of the greatness of those three. I'd never touched the original Metroid or its sequel, so I decided to fire up the Wii U VC and give the first game's remake, Zero Mission, a fair shot. I can safely say it ended up being just as good as what I consider to be the Metroid Trinity.

First: it has all the snappiness of Fusion with all of the exploration of Super. Super was always a very lumbering, very floaty game, while Fusion's animations and inputs were quick and concise. Zero Mission goes for the Fusion approach, which is much appreciated. Fusion was a wonderful game - I even liked its narrative focus - but it was a bit too linear for my tastes, so it was nice to see the franchise return (in more ways than one) to the open ended nature that it's known for. Zero Mission was a perfect Fusion (ha ha) of the two.

Second: it's beautiful! There's dazzling plasma animations for Samus' cannon and every area looks unique, is full of color, and pops out at you. What I love about this is how well it ties into Super, whether it was intentional or not - this is Zebes under Mother Brain's control, alive and full of energy. The return to Zebes has it almost in ruins, and it's much darker and more dismal. The upbeat soundtrack was also a plus for me. Did I miss the "grittiness" of Super Metroid? Yes, I did, but the game's brightness ended up being a positive for me regardless. It's not like Zebes was suddenly a happy place because it was bright, either; it still felt very alien and hostile.

Third: The Zero Suit segment at the end was exhilarating. It took the adrenaline from the SA-X segments in Fusion and upped it tenfold. Crawling through tiny spaces with Space Pirates right on your tail as you stop to shoot the blocks blocking your way had my blood pumping like no other Metroid game has managed to do. It went from stealth to INTENSE action at the drop of a hat. Getting the Power Suit at the end was a nice touch, and Mecha Ridley was appropriately creepy and menacing (if not a bit too easy).

I very much enjoyed my time with this game. It was a bit short, as was to be expected, but it was overall a great experience. I loved seeing where the Brinstar theme in Smash Bros. came from! I haven't spent much time with Another Metroid 2 Remake, yet, but it seems like a worthy successor to Zero Mission. It's a shame Nintendo pulled it down, but at the same time, it's good that it managed to get released.

Of Canon and Continuity

It seems to be more common to "reboot" a franchise or series than it does to tell a serialized story. Even when a story directly continues in a sequel, it often stands largely on its own and does not call very much attention to the games that came before it outside of recurring characters or off-hand references. Uncharted comes to mind - you're always Nathan Drake and his merry band of thieves and adventurers, but each story is mostly self contained.

There are, however, the occasional standout franchises or long running series. Among all games that treat their canon with respect and expand upon it well, Metal Gear Solid as a franchise, but especially the second game, is the king for me because of its added meta-narrative. What follows is a spoiler-free synopsis of why I think this is the case.

MGS2 goes about deconstructing the idea of a perfect sequel. You begin as Snake in the Tanker, and it has all the makings of a by-the-books sequel to the previous game - an older, more grizzled Snake, a bigger and badder Metal Gear, some returning names and villains from the first game... until it drops you off a couple of hours later as a new character. He is Snake in every way, but he also isn't. His code name is Snake, but it's quickly revoked. He's an enhanced supersoldier like the Snake we know, but unlike Solid, he's a newbie. He's obedient and capable, but he doesn't have the cool and composed air that Solid Snake did, instead frequently revealing his nature as a rookie on the field and losing his cool or making outbursts towards others. He's fighting an organization similar to FOXHOUND, but unlike FOXHOUND's clear-cut demands of a large sum of money and the corpse of a genetic supersoldier, their true motives and capabilities seem cloudy by comparison.

The villains and the skeletal structure of the narrative are deliberate retreads of the first game, in a much more hamfisted way than the tanker portion of the game. This framework all comes to a head during the endgame, when the player and their own expectations are used to shatter their perception of what the game has apparently been trying to do until that point. Not only that, it then shatters those expectations with twist upon twist upon twist. What is the S3 plan? Even after finishing the game, you might still doubt the validity of what you've been told.

Even beyond the meta-narrative, and the fact that it so brilliantly uses its own medium to drive home a point, there is a legitimate extension of the world introduced to us so far. We learn of other organizations similar to FOXHOUND, the impact of Metal Gear on the world at large is addressed, Solid Snake gets a proper continuation of his story and grows quite a bit as a character, and other characters, such as Otacon or the colonel, return or get properly alluded to. This all happens while introducing us to new characters and new stories, even when those characters may initially feel like retreads of the previous game. It really is - despite its deconstruction of the concept - the perfect sequel in my eyes.

Metal Gear Solid 3 carries on the notion of building a cohesive world even more by going back in time to reconcile the narratives of the Solid games with those of the original two Metal Gears by introducing us to Solid Snake's "father," Big Boss. Up until this point, it was a bit of a hard sell that the noble Snake (and even the not so noble Snakes) were clones of this man, but by going back in time and seeing the physical and ideological resemblance, it helps the player accept Big Boss's relationship to his sons, and his fall from grace, in a very organic way.

You can see which pieces of the father were inherited by which son, and Big Boss himself, known during this time as Naked Snake, feels like a fresh new character despite being a literal and figurative clone of those who came before. This Snake grew up in a more natural environment, and, at the time the game takes place, is not a genetically enhanced or otherwise special soldier. He is simply a man on a mission, and his character reflects that. He jokes around with his support team, he smiles, and he expresses self-doubt, all while remaining a rock solid agent that's willing to get the job done. Metal Gear Solid 3 uses its protagonist to create a perfect fusion of the old and the new.

I think the entire Solid series, outside of the subsequent Big Boss games (Peace Walker and The Phantom Pain), is one of the best examples of building a strong continuity between games that there is. Even from a gameplay standpoint, you watch the games slowly evolve; everything is familiar enough to be the Metal Gear you love, but different enough to be a fresh experience. MGS1 has the stealth based gameplay and the soliton radar. MGS2 keeps these, but adds dynamism to its encounters by having bodies stay on the ground and soldiers call for backup. MGS3 take the idea of focused infiltration and sticks it in a wide open jungle setting, while also removing "future tech" such as the soliton radar and replacing it with 1960's technology. MGS4 has quality of life improvements such as crouch walk and a new camera. Everything about these games feels distinctly "Metal Gear," even when it's a new idea, and that is why I think this series truly serves a shining example of maintaining an excellent continuity between entries.

Turn Based Brilliance: An Appreciation for Fire Emblem

Fire Emblem has entered into the public spotlight with its recent surge in popularity with Awakening, Fates, and the large cast of Fire Emblem characters in Smash Bros. I'm appalled that we almost never got to see this series in the west. If it weren't for Marth and Roy in Smash Bros. Melee, I doubt we ever would have. Thankfully, Nintendo went against the decision to remove them from the American version of the game. Yes, that almost happened!

Fire Emblem Theme

I recently replayed through Fire Emblem (7: Rekka no Ken/Blazing Sword) on the Wii U Virtual Console, and it holds up extremely well. Awakening was one of the best games to come in 2013 amidst a slew of other amazing "Year of the 3DS" games, and is probably still one of the best games on the system.

The older entries in the series, the ones that were never translated, are challenging, but very fun games: FE4 with its trademark generational system is great, and FE5, one of the hardest games I've ever played, both stand out as some of the best strategy RPGs in the genre due to their unique mechanics and crushing but rewarding difficulty, respectively. Fire Emblem 4 and 5 also take a seldom seen approach in that Fire Emblem 5 is a midquel to Fire Emblem 4, taking place in between chapters five and six of that game. The story is full of political intrigue - it's certainly the most politically oriented set of games in the series - and takes place over the span of two generations, so you're able to watch the children of the heroes take over at a certain point. It's an ambitious concept that the games pulled off very nicely.

The Japanese box art for Fire Emblem 4. Its subtitle is "Seisen no Keifu," or Genealogy of the Holy War. Pictured are Sigurd, the hero of the first generation, and Celice, his son who takes over in the second half of the game. Sigurd, who can be seen here riding his trademark white horse, has the distinction of being one of the only lords in the series to be an adult, rather than a teenager.

My first experience with Fire Emblem was, like most Americans, with Marth and Roy. Reading their trophy entries in Melee revealed that they came from Japan only titles, which added a certain sense of mystique to their character, making them feel somewhat exotic when compared to the cast of otherwise familiar characters. When Fire Emblem was announced for the west, I played the series for the first time, and fell in love instantly. I love how every unit has a name, a class, and a face. (I hate how reclassing took away the individuality that came with chaining certain characters to certain classes, but that's another story). Not one unit is a generic nobody, and every single one has a personality and a history.

The story is almost always cliche, but I don't think there's been one FE with a plot I did not enjoy. Most of the stories revolve around a sacred item known as the Fire Emblem, whose history, purpose and appearance changes from game to game, and a bid to save your kingdom from an evil invader. As I mentioned above, some of the games do step outside of the series' comfort zone of "little lordling saves the world and rescues his kingdom," such as the Tellius duology - Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - where the main character, Ike, is not a lord, but rather a mercenary leader. Even in this case, the game is still very much grounded in high fantasy tropes, but again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Without spoiling too much, the Tellius games even manage to make ye olde Black Knight trope interesting again.

Hero Ike faces off against The Black Knight. The knight's identity is unknown for most of the two games that he stars in, and he has a rather personal connection to Ike and his father that is also shrouded in  mystery. His story, while certainly cliche in many ways, is one of the best told and most gripping story arcs in the series.

I am playing through Fire Emblem 6: Sword of Seals right now, and perhaps the most stand-out feature of this game is in how difficult it is compared to Blazing Sword. Roy also pales in comparison compared to most lords, being relatively weak and uninteresting even by cliche Fire Emblem standards, which is disappointing after being introduced to him through his much superior Smash Bros. incarnation. Playing it as a sequel to Blazing Sword is neat, however - it picks up very nicely from FE7's epilogue and "cliffhanger" ending. Seeing returning faces is great, too - I never realized that the map in Laus was shared between games, or that Eric was the map's boss in both of them. FE7 is clearly a more polished game, and rightfully so, as it came out afterward, but I'm really liking FE6's colorful character design and larger scope in regards to its plot. The extra challenge can be nice, too. Despite Roy's lackluster lordliness, it's nice to finally see him in his own game after years of him being "that guy from Smash Bros."

As long as I'm on the subject, I might as well parrot some love for my favorite class in the series. Mine has to be Swordmaster and its variants, although it pains me not pick other amazing classes like Hero or Paladin. From the Fire Emblem Wiki:

The Swordmaster (ソードマスター, Swordmaster; 剣聖 Kensei, Sword Saint, in the Japanese version) is the promotion of the Myrmidon. These lightly armored foot soldiers are capable and have an increased chance to deal critical attacks. The Swordmaster has a high amount of speed when compared to many of the other classes, giving them high accuracy and evasion, making them a very deadly class. The Swordmaster class was officially introduced in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (where Ayra and her daughter Larcei defined the class, including its signature skill, Astra). The Blade Lord Lyndis from Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken and the Great Lord Eirika from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones are considered to be a variations of Swordmasters, having the same stat caps. The average HP stat of Swordmasters varies greatly regardless of gender, it can be high or low.

My introduction to this class, like many others, was with Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword, commonly known as Fire Emblem in the west. Lyndis is a lordly variant of the Myrmidon and Swordmaster classes, but the character that really sold me on them was Karel, the Sword Demon.

A pre-promoted unit in any given Fire Emblem has an 80% chance of being not as good as a unit that you raise yourself, but Karel tears up the battlefield with the best of them. He looks extremely cool and returns in the next chronological entry as an older, wiser, and redeemed man, now known as the Sword Saint.

An older Karel finds redemption. As his story is told in reverse, this is the first incarnation of the character you see, provided that you play the games in their order of release.

The animations for Myrmidons and Swordmasters are also among the best in the series, with a very flashy flair to the way that they move and an extremely intense critical hit. Even their regular attack has them spinning through the air. Lyn's Blade Lord variants are quite possibly the most stylish critical animations in her game. You can always count on the Myrmidon line to add an extra bit of cool to their attacks.

Karel's critical animation from Fire Emblem 7.

Lyn, the Blade Lord, with her own unique critical animation.

Lyn uses her divine weapon to up the ante. The Game Boy Advance sprites were, as you can see, extremely stylized, and are largely regarded to be the best style of presentation that the series has had.

Even when the series moved onto awkward 3D models in Path of Radiance and beyond, the Swordmaster class always managed to convey a sense of immense speed and skill with its animations, with its units sheathing and unsheathing their swords extremely quickly and making very precise strikes with their blades. 

The most recent Fire Emblem, Fates, has quite possibly the most brokenly overpowered character in any of the games in Ryoma, and his class is... you guessed it, Swordmaster! Ryoma takes the class to an entirely new level with his sacred sword, Raijinto, which essentially functions as a Silver Sword with a ranged attack. His terrifyingly strong offense combined with his high dodge makes him nigh unstoppable, and represents the best of what the class has to offer.

Overall, I'm very glad that the series is finding so much recent popularity. Hopefully it continues for years to come. Cheers to an amazing series!

Warrior of the Future, Trunks: A Case Study of Wasted Potential

We all have the experience of thinking a certain character is great when they're introduced. Maybe they have one episode where they're the highlight, but then they stick around for the rest of the show without ever doing anything important again. Maybe they're falsely hyped up to be integral to the plot of the show and then subsequently drop off the face of the earth, or end up never doing anything substantial. Maybe they do participate in the plot, but not in the way that you thought or wanted them to.

A prime example of this, for me, is Future Trunks from Dragon Ball Z.

His arrival on the scene is one of the most captivating moments in the entire series. He comes out of nowhere and decides to face down Frieza, the most powerful enemy we've seen up until that point, and not only wins, but takes him - and his father, for that matter - down effortlessly, and with style. Not only that, but this purple haired badass can go Super Saiyan, something that very recently we've only seen Goku, the hero, able to accomplish, and only through immense turmoil. Also, he had a sword. Nobody else had used a sword in the Z portion of the series up until this point. (Gohan had one as a kid, but that hardly counts).

His intrigue doesn't end with his stylish appearance. He's introduced as Vegeta's son (!) from the future (!!) and his mother is Bulma (!!!) His future is a post apocalyptic wasteland, and he and Gohan were the only survivors, fighting against not one, but two threats far greater than Frieza ever was. He's come back in time to set things right, and he's going to fight alongside the heroes we know to help fix the future that went wrong.

Except he doesn't ever really do anything again, really. From the moment he comes back in the Android arc to the moment the Cell arc is over, the only thing of note he does is A) Allow Cell to enter their timeline inadvertently and B) Fight Cell and lose, making a fool of himself in the process. He gets a cool design overhaul with Saiyan armor like his father and a ponytail, but it doesn't do him any good, and he goes back to his original style eventually anyway.

To be fair, it's not at all Trunks' fault that he doesn't get to shine during the Android and Cell story arcs, and unlike the other Z Fighters (I'm looking at you, Vegeta and Goku) he is trying his hardest at all times and never wants to prolong fights for any superficial reasons. He has the drive to finish the fight, without any of the Saiyan love for battle that so often bites them in the end. This is a pretty consistent trait of his from his introduction up through his latest appearance in Dragon Ball Super, which is part of what makes him stand out so much from the other characters in the series. I'm rambling a bit: the reason he doesn't get to shine is because his signature weapon - his sword - breaks early on in the story, leaving him without any real style of his own, and his one real moment in the spotlight has him using a form of Super Saiyan that is largely useless. This was to show Trunks' respect for his father and his pride, as well as Vegeta's knack for what's useful in a fight; Vegeta realized the form was useless right away, showing us that as powerful as Trunks may be, he is still naive and inexperienced. You can't blame him. Unlike Goku and Vegeta, he hasn't had any formal training, and also unlike those two, he is only a seventeen year old kid.

I'm sure that, if pushed to the same extent that Gohan was during his fight with Cell, he could have easily taken his place as the first Saiyan to reach Super Saiyan 2. But, that isn't how things played out, and Gohan needed his moment in the sun. This mysterious warrior from the future that was able to kill Frieza so easily is shoved to the side for the rest of the series. He does get one more moment of glory in his own timeline when he kills the Androids, but for all intents and purposes he did almost nothing to help the Z Fighters actually fight the Androids beyond giving them the heads up that they exist. Dragon Ball is notorious for sidelining its characters, but you'd think someone like Trunks would fare better than he did. His present timeline counterpart - the much less appealing Kid Trunks - does far more than he ever did, even if he never received the same level of praise and popularity as his future counterpart.

I will say, even though his last act in Z was the equivalent of returning to the first area and fighting level 5 monsters when you are level 50 in an RPG, he again showed his brutal efficiency and no nonsense fighting style, making his exit from the series just as stylish as his entrance.

Now that Trunks is back in the latest arc of Super, I hope he gets his chance to be useful. He's already shown that he took out his timeline's incarnations of Dabura, who was around Perfect Cell's level of strength, and the wizard Babidi, as well as reached Super Saiyan 2 on his own. In addition, he's apparently learned to channel ki through his sword, shooting a blade beam at new villain Black. He's definitely no slouch, and he's already shaping up to be a key figure in the story.

Poor Trunks. His future can't seem to catch a break. I'm glad he's back, but there's one thing that bugs me. Why is his hair suddenly blue!?

Riding the Zelda Wave: A Link Between Worlds Retrospective

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's E3 reveal has everyone in a Zelda mood. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good time to revisit one of the more popular incarnations of Hyrule... or rather, its direct sequel.

Let me start off by saying two things: one, I am a HUGE fan of Link to the Past, to the point of absurdity (it was one of my first video games), so I came into this not expecting it to surpass the original. Two, I enjoyed it my first time around, but not as much as other 2D Zeldas, such as the Oracle duology or The Minish Cap. Overall, I found it to be a disappointment, even if I had fun with the game.

This time I played on Hero Mode, and it makes all the difference. Normal mode is simply too easy. Hero mode requires you to stay on your toes. You die. You become more engaged with the game. It's harder than LttP, but still closer to it in difficulty than Normal Mode. Hero Mode makes the game fun.

The map is completely derivative of LttP, at least the map of Hyrule, but that's also where its charm lies. It's fun to go back and visit the old locations again, and see new faces and subtle changes to certain areas. The desert being walled off and only visited later as part of Lorule's dungeons was a nice change of pace and a creative way to design a new dungeon in an old area. I also like how they didn't reuse the dungeons from LttP; even the ones you visit again, like the Tower of Hera, are totally different in their design.

Lorule is a hauntingly beautiful world and, in my personal opinion, much more enjoyable than the series' other parallel universe of Termina. I love its use of purples and blues, and it's visually distinct enough that it doesn't feel like a retread of LttP's Dark World at all. My only complaints with Lorule are that A) The name is a really stupid pun and B) Despite what I just said, it's also true that it's too similar to the Dark World to believe that it's a totally different place. Regardless, it was a very enjoyable experience and the second set of dungeons were very creative.

The portrait mechanic is something I initially didn't like, as I felt it was too much of a departure from LttP's mechanics, but this time around I really warmed up to it. Zelda is at its best when it takes a gimmick and runs with it, whether it be time travel, transformative masks, changing the seasons, ocean traversal, or whatever - and this game not only take Link to the Past's alternate world travelling gimmick, but also adds one of its own with the portrait wall crawling. It added its own unique flair to solving puzzles and felt like a fresh experience.

The rental system, on the other hand, was a nice idea in concept. I don't dislike it. The non-linearity it offers is as refreshing as the new portrait mechanic. However, it also took away the charm of finding a new weapon in a dungeon, and renting items over and over again when you die could get tedious. Despite the tedium of re-renting items upon your death, Hero Mode made the concept more fun, as in Normal Mode you are never in any real danger of losing your items and there is much more of an incentive to save up rupees to buy them.

I also very much liked the upgrades and how they were performed - finding lost Maiamais was one of my favorite things to do. It took the collectathon concept and made it feel substantial by giving you a useful reward for every ten Maiamais that you find. The Maiamais were also adorable.

Spoilers follow.

The story was more absent than it has been in recent Zeldas, but more present than it was it was the classic games, which was a nice compromise between new and old. Hyrule's cast of characters was relatively bland, but where the game really shone brightest was in the inhabitants of Lorule and the story behind their kingdom and its Triforce. Hilda and her last minute betrayal were well done - I never saw it coming the first time around, and she was effective as an empathetic villain.

The ending makes her entire scheme seem intellectually bankrupt, however, as Link and Zelda use Hyrule's Triforce to wish Lorule's back into existence. Why didn't Hilda do this from the beginning? Ravio and his existence as the "other Link" is probably my favorite plot twist in any Zelda game, if only for the fact that we technically get to see an incarnation of Link speak. Yuga was... ok, I guess. Ganon, Demise, Ghirahim, Zant and Vaati were all more interesting villains than he was. Yuga came off as kind of a clown.

Lorule's "Triforce trio" was ultimately a refreshing new take on the three characters we've grown attached to over the course of several games, and their subdued personalities were a thematically appropriate inverse for a world that had its own Triforce shattered. Ravio lacked courage, Hilda lacked wisdom, and Yuga lacked power.

Overall, it was a fantastic game, and a nice return to the "Fallen Hero" timeline of the original games. Perhaps Nintendo will visit it again in the future? One can hope.

Quick Look: Gungnir, Dept. Heaven Episode IX

What a neat little gem of a game this is.

This game is a strategy RPG through and through - Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre have their fingerprints all over this game. However, it also has a unique flair to it that only developer Sting could bring to the table - their RPGs always stand out as different from most, and this game is no exception. You don't get more experience for killing blows, for example: experience is gained from acting, whether it be using potions, attacking, etc. The game has its own twist on the grid based, turn based battle system where you can force your character to move when they're fatigued at the expense of their max HP for that battle. You can choose any member of your team to move on your turn, rather than wait for a specific unit to become ready for battle. You can also choose your "ace" at the beginning of battle, and, depending on who you choose, the units in your army will receive different bonuses. Even with the trademark Sting flair, however, this game plays much more traditionally than their usual titles, which is somewhat disappointing coming off of the one-of-a-kind Riviera, but also refreshing for fans thirsty for traditional tactics games.

Pictured here are the four supporting members that you can choose to support your "ace" unit getting ready to sortie.

The story is what you'd expect from a SRPG, and not quite what you'd expect from that art style. If you're coming off of the lighthearted Riviera, it's kind of jarring how much darker this plot is by comparison. You play as Giulio, a persecuted minority in an evil empire who is A) the son of a rebel hero B) the younger brother of a revolutionary leader and C) the successor of the Norse-inspired magical spear, Gungnir. You're set up for greatness in every way, but at the same time you also start at the very bottom of society. The first battle is you and your friends raiding a caravan for food. You're not much better than low-life bandits, although Giulio himself has a noble undertone to his actions and words that will no doubt bloom into something substantial later on in the story. The story delves into supernatural elements very early on, as soon as you're introduced to the spear Gungnir. It has a Valkyrie Profile-esque tone to it, with the afterlife and even a valkyrie warrior taking the stage at various points. It's not quite as sweeping or gripping as FFT or TO, but I would go so far as to say that it comes very close, and I would even go so far as to call it a very good story. If you like the typical SRPG storylines, play this game. Despite the supernatural twinge, it is still a relatively grounded plot and no more invested in the fantastical than FFT was with its Zodiac Stones.

Ragnus, protagonist Giulio's older brother and revolutionary leader, makes a grim inquiry.

This is also, incidentally, Episode IX in the Dept. Heaven series, which also includes:

Riviera, the Promised Land
Yggdra Union
Knights in the Knightmare

It supposedly takes place in the same universe as those games, despite sharing almost no similarities.

Overall, the bottom line is this: this game is an unsung gem of the PSP's library, and it's well worth playing if you like Japanese RPGs, strategy RPGs, or Sting/Atlus games. If you can check even one of those boxes off, this game is worth your time, even if the others don't usually appeal to you.