Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy III / VI

The Short


Pros
- Fourteen characters, the majority of which have interesting backstories to explore
- Beautiful 16-bit graphics
- Best video game soundtrack ever
- Story is interesting and has a rather dramatic twist half way through
- Some genuinely touching and heartwrenching moments
- Kefka proves to be the best Final Fantasy villain to date
- Fast battles that don't require substantial amounts of level grinding
- Each character has a specific unique ability
- Manages to be both a linear (first half) and non-linear (second half) experience without breaking the game
- Overall, an excellently crafted, tight knit package

Cons
- Certain character abilities make the game incredibly easy
- Because of this, balance is all over the place, but overall the game is relatively easy
- Translation can be a bit off on the SNES version. GBA re-translation tends to be a bit better
- Some bonus characters don't get the same backstory treatment as the others

The Long

Final Fantasy III/VI is my favorite game ever. I honestly consider it to be the best game ever made. Now that you know how this review will play out, let's give a brief history as to how I found these games.

I was introduced to the JRPG when I was about eight. My parents were gone all day to some event, so we had a babysitter. He brought his SNES and all he did all day was play Final Fantasy IV (great babysitter) while we watched. I remember my younger brother actually cried when Palom and Porom turned to stone. The game made such an impression on me that about four-five years later, when searching an internet forum, I pressed people to giving me the name of this game that I had only sparse memories of (Tellah, a boss involving three sisters, and two children who turned to stone), finally discovering the Final Fantasy series (and emulator) for a first time. 

Nobody would give me a straight answer on the number, so I started up Final Fantasy III instead. I played it for a while before realizing it was the wrong one and switched to Final Fantasy II. It wasn't for months later that I finally went through and played the game. And oh man...it was an experience.

Pictured: An experience.

It's worth pointing out the only JRPG I'd actually played and beaten before this point was Wandering Hamster, an indie game built on the OHRRPGE game engine. So all this stuff was new to me. After beating Final Fantasy VI (which I will call it by it's real number the rest of this review) I immediately started it over again and played through a second time, changing my party members. Since then I've probably beaten this game 12-15 times on various platforms, including original SNES, GBA, PS1, and emulators. I actually imported the soundtrack from Japan back when that was a big deal; learned how to play The Phantom Forest as a trio with my brother on guitar, me on piano, and my mother on recorder;  my username for years was "Shadowiii" (based on the character and my belief it was III for the longest while); and made games with sprites based off the characters. So it's safe to say I have a decent emotional investment in the game.

So...how about we get on with the actual review, then? Also, there will be minor (and major) story spoilers, but come on. The game is almost twenty years old. You'll survive. 

Thanks Shadow, old buddy. 

Final Fantasy VI's story isn't entirely unique to itself. Apparently thousands of years ago there was magic in some form, but due to man's inhumanity towards man (or something like that) everybody nuked each other in the War of the Magi, an event referenced throughout the game but only partially explained. Magic was erased, and everybody lived happily ever after.

That is until an evil empire (known only as "The Empire") decided it would be a good idea to revive magic in some attempt to dominate the world...more than they already are? From the offset of the game the Empire seems to be in charge of everything, with only a few minor kingdoms still resisting rule (or simply allying). I guess they needed magic to take over the world, but considering they already owned 3/4 of it, reviving magic seemed a bit like overkill.

It's not over until I say it's over!

Anyway, the game starts following Terra (or "Tina" if you are into the Japanese version), a young girl oddly gifted with powers of magic who has been enslaved by the Empire. When an Esper (essentially a summon from all other Final Fantasy games) has an odd reaction to her that frees her from her enslavement and begins to reawaken old memories, you and your somewhat massive band of followers (fourteen!) have to figure out what the crap is going on, how the Empire is involved, and how to overthrow it while not repeating the War of the Magi.

By blowing up a factory! Wait...

The story in and of itself is interesting, starting off simple with a resistance group called the Returners (who do nothing over the course of the game. Go team.) and eventually escalating into a full-blown magic war that literally destroys the world. Yes, the villains actually win (which makes sense, considering their resources and prowess) half way through the game, and destroy the entire world, leaving you to pick up the pieces. Such a great twist. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As mentioned before, Final Fantasy VI has an insane number of characters. Mains such as Terra, Locke, Celes, Edgar, Sabin, and Cyan are mixed with lesser developed ones such as Relm, Strago, Gau, and then completely random guys like Mog and Gogo. While it is essentially character overkill (though the last dungeon, which requires you to split into three parties of four to tackle the massive area from three different fronts, is awesome), what is surprising is how well they pulled this off. Yes, you could say there was a lack of budget that required them to "back the camera up" and not focus in on just one main character and instead just give them all minor (or no) amounts of backstory, but bear with me a moment and I'll explain what I think about this.

This isn't even all of them; we are missing Gau and Shadow. 

One of the Final Fantasy series' greatest draw (and in my opinion, greatest weakness) is they are essentially in-depth character stories. Final Fantasy IV heavily focuses on the Dark Knight Cecil's transformation to become a champion of light. Final Fantasy VII follows Cloud as he unravels his past and has an emo-off with Sephiroth. These games get very close knit with their characters, but this is where I think things sometimes go bad. Because the relationships are so close, Square feels the need to make them excruciatingly melodramatic. Long stares, people saying "..." or "tsking" (if voice acting was around) constantly, close ups on people's vacant expressions and overblown reactions, the whole business. It's because they are so dedicated to making this an in-depth character story that the plots are essentially weaker, because once they get too close they take the whole thing too far. I'm not saying the rest of the Final Fantasy games have bad stories; far from it. I'm saying they have very, very melodramatic ones. There's a lot of good under there, but it's veiled by their attempt to make the game so personable that it goes a step too far.

This is where Final Fantasy VI works. Because there's such a large roster and they wanted everybody to have at least some backstory, many of the characters were skimped on a little, and the rest were presented through shorter, less drawn-out scenes. Heck, most of the best character stories (Shadow's dreams, Cyan's return to Doma Castle) are completely optional and missable. Yes, there are scripted sequences (during the first half mostly), but the meat of most of these stores happens by coincidence. You'll never see the coin scene in Figaro Castle (arguably one of the best scenes in the game) if you don't take the brothers Edgar and Sabin there together. You'll never know that Shadow is Relm's father (I warned you about spoilers) if you don't stay an an inn multiple times while he's in the party. There's just enough depth for nearly all the characters (again, exception of the weirdos you pick up at the end which have no backstory) that you feel like you know them, but they don't beat you over the head with it. It's more like how you know your friends: enough to understand when things are important to them, but not like you are constantly in their heads. It works, which is why I think nearly any fan of Final Fantasy VI has a certain fondness for the majority of the cast, even though there are tons of them. 

Even though there's no "star" of the story, I've always felt this conflict was between Terra and Kefka. 

It's subtly, as I mentioned in my Nier review, which video games in general (but particularly JRPGs) don't tend to do well. By taking a step back, the story as a whole is stronger, because it forces you to use your imagination. Again, the only way you'll know Shadow is Relm's father is 1. If you liked Shadow enough to use him and stay at inns with him, because you are limited to how often he's in your party the first half of the game 2. Infer from the rather sketchy hints before you actually go to where he is in his dreams 3. Use your brain. The same goes for a lot of the rest of the game, to the overall story to the villains. Final Fantasy VI does well with it's "taking a step back" approach, because it makes you feel smart when you find things out yourself (a fundamental trick authors use to keep readers engaged). This doesn't happen...well, ever in games (except Nier I guess) so seeing it done so well here is a breath of fresh air. 

However, if the game didn't have a central character, it wouldn't have much of a drive to push forward. But if can't be any of the fourteen we control (though I've always thought this was Terra's story, even if the game stops pushing that after about the 1/3 mark), than who is it? Easy. It's the villain, Kefka.

Who might just have the most brilliant musical theme ever. 

Kefka is the Emperor's right hand man, and he's totally insane. He starts out just a little loony, but it's clear throughout the progression of the game that he's consistently losing it. He's an actual psychopath, unlike most villains who spend most of the game puttering around and waiting for the heroes to arrive to mess them up. He is OCD, obsessed about simple things like sand in his boots. He's inhuman and can't relate to people, poisoning a castle full of innocents simply because it would be easy and it entertains him. He flat out says he can't understand human emotion. When your party pours their hearts out to him in an attempt to sway him before the final battle, he has this to say about it.

Oh, Kefka. 

Kefka is as mentally unstable as an Arkham Asylum, and just as batty (get it? Batman joke.). Because of the lack of camera focused on one of your characters, the game seems to spend quite a bit of it focusing on Kefka, which is brilliant. Kefka, as stated above, is certified as mentally unstable. He causes destruction because he enjoys it, though he does seem to have a problem committing. He runs from nearly all the battles you are in when he starts losing, abandons his friends at a moment's notice, and even when he gets the powers of the gods themselves and destroys nearly all the world, he leaves some of it alive. Sure, he randomly burns towns, but he can't seem to finish the job, sort of waiting for you to all show up and force his hand. Kind of how a person with this kind of mental illness would act. 

Point being, Kefka is extremely clever and manages to be entertaining, formidable, and detestable all at the same time. He's my favorite video game villain, and for good reason. He has legitimate depth to who he is, and he works (even as just a tiny sprite). 

Plus you've got that laugh. 

There's probably more I could say about the story that would be eloquent and come off as sort of smart, but instead I'm just going to sort of gush for a few moments. Because something Final Fantasy VI does brilliantly is crafting excellent scenes around the characters. You could argue that your little squad as a whole doesn't mesh quite as good as it could (though the same can be said of any Final Fantasy game, where outside the original 2-3 people the other characters seems tacked on), but there is no denying this game is potent when it comes to its individual, powerful scenes. For the sake of memories, I'm going to "quickly" run through three of my favorites. This will be SPOILER HEAVEN so if you don't want to read it, I'll let you know where to skip to with the next BOLD ITALIC text. 

Waiting for Shadow

During the end of the first half (which is also the end of the second act), you are on a flying continent with essentially the three gods of magic that created the Espers and magic and all that stuff. Kefka kills the Emperor in what is actually kind of hilarious in a horrible, black humor sort of way, and starts messing with the statues to try and draw their powers to himself. Shadow, aka the best character ever, valiantly tries to stop him while your weakened party stumbles to the safety of the airship. As you run through the continent, a countdown begins for you to escape. When you get to the very end (usually with a minute or so to burn), the game prompts you to jump. If you do, Shadow dies fighting Kefka, and you get away sort of safe.

If you don't, you can hit "no" and say "Gotta wait for Shadow..." If you do, during the final five seconds of the countdown Shadow will appear and he'll be alive the second half of the game. If you don't, he's gone. Permanently. 

Oh man, that scene is so good. I could gush about it, but I think it speaks for itself. The fact it's completely optional, without any specific prompts, and you as the player have to want to risk the game's judgement (aka reload a save, which is a distance back at this point) in an attempt to save Shadow is freaking brilliant.

Cyan and the Phantom Train

I said in my Nier review that few scenes get me emotional, but this is one of them, every freaking time. After Doma Castle is poisoned and the warrior Cyan has to watch his family die due to Kefka being a horrible bastard, he joins your party to seek vengeance on the Empire. A soft spoken warrior, Cyan rarely shows his emotions (even after actually seeing his dead family he bottles it up to return to the battle), which is why this scene is so damned heartwrenching.

You make your way into a forest and board a mysterious train. It's a moment later you realize it's the train the escorts the dead to the beyond, so you have to get the crap off. After suplexing the engine with Sabin you finally get off at a station, just in time to see Cyan's wife and child getting on the the train. He chases after them, but it's too late. They call their final goodbyes and he has to watch them leave him forever. 

After that is when the game gets brilliant. The music completely cuts out. Cyan is standing at the edge of the station, looking at his feet. If you have Shadow, he's silently standing aside, not able to look at Cyan. If you talk to Cyan he said nothing, and if you talk to Shadow he tells you to leave Cyan alone. You can't sprint if you have the Sprint Shoes, you can just walk in the silence, waiting. 

Several moments pass as Cyan remembers his family, and the game continues. Absolutely incredible. 

The freaking opera scene. 

So everybody knows about this scene, and it might be what the game is most famous for. After you join the Returners dedicated to kick some empire butt, you learn that a man name Setzer has the only airship this side of the Empire. Locke (your thief) and Celes (your magic general who switched sides from the Empire but is still torn on her decision) head to an opera house as they've heard Setzer has a thing for the lead singer Maria there (who you never see, surprisingly enough). Once you get there the house is in shambles: Maria is gone! But due to some strange fluke, Celes looks exactly like Maria. So they enlist her to sing the part to bait Setzer.

Implausible story bits aside (how the heck could Celes, a general, sing like a freaking "opera floozie?"), this scene is unmistakably powerful. You have to learn Celes' lines and pick the right ones least you sing wrong and get kicked out (though I suggest you do that at least once; it's hilarious), control her as she dances, and thwart an attempt to mess everything up by Ultros the purple octopus. Keep in mind this is, for the most part, interactive. You are just as much picking lines and moving as you are watching the opera, which is great. 

But there are two really magical parts about this scene. The music, which despite using a tinny midi "voice" to sing the lines still works, and the analogy at play here. The music is a given: this is Uematsu's best work, filled with clever nods and subtleties, and the opera swells and fades beautifully. But what else is clever is the fact they picked Celes to be the star, not Terra. This wasn't an accident. The opera is a story about a woman torn between two men from the east and the west, one being the kind-hearted but downtrodden one, the other wealthy and powerful. Just like what Celes is going through right now, torn between the Empire and the Returners. It's a pretty blatant analogy once you see it, but disguising it as the memorable opera might have thrown some people off guard. Regardless, this is a beautiful scene, and certainly one of the finest in all of gaming. 

And now back to our regularly scheduled program. 

END SPOILERS

Now that we are finally off the story, what about the game? Well, Final Fantasy VI is a traditional JRPG affair, with random battles and level grinding and loads of equipment to buy and find and equip and all that stuff. The trick is that every one of the 14 characters plays a little differently, having the same basic stuff (attack, magic, items) and is then given one final ability that is unique to them (Morph, Steal, Blitz, etc.). While this is a fantastic idea in concept (an attempt to make the characters more interchangeable while still keeping them unique, something Final Fantasy VII didn't do as well), in execution it needed some more thought. Both Sabin and Edgar have moves that cost no mana, hit all enemies, and do insane amounts of damage. Shadow is the only character with an insane dodge stat, a built in powerful counter (and you can equip a weapon to make him counter more) and can seriously bring the pain. Terra's ability, Morph, doubles all her damage. She can do it once a fight for an extended period of time, but with the exception of the final boss you can usually murder any boss in the game before Morph turns off if you are even remotely skilled at JRPGs. There is literally no reason to not have that above be your party, as they are the best optimized.

Other characters have abilities that range from "ok" to "awful." Locke's "Steal" is helpful early on, but it's a conditional thing. It's good when stealing from bosses, but I wouldn't trade it for a powerful Blitz. Celes' Runic lets her absorb magic and get mana from it, but it's first dependent on equips and she can suck her own team's magic, which in the end of the game is useless. Relm can copy and then possess weaker enemies, which is neat but I'd hope you are more powerful than the random encounters by that point so that cloning them is a waste. Gau can steal enemy styles in what is actually a really cool idea, but getting the Rages is tedious and again...why would I use this instead of a Blitz or Autocrossbow?

But hey, the boss music rules. Just try to not kill them too fast that you can't hear it. 

It's horribly imbalanced, to say the least. Due to the fact Terra, Edger, Sabin, and Shadow can all equip powerful weapons (even though Terra should probably have just used staffs like Strago, since she is a mage), using weapons is just as viable as magic for 90% of the game. This also makes the game stupid easy, with only a few challenging parts if you are stingy with your potions or MP. 

Still, I think the game is fun, even if it isn't that much of a challenge. Battles are really quick, which helps because they pop up all the time. Leveling happens at a pretty consistent clip, as does learning spells. You gain spells by equipping "Espers," and after battles earn horribly named "Magic Points" (vs "MP," which I only discovered was a different thing on my third playthrough) to learn a variety of spells. As with most Final Fantasy games, all status effects are useless, so stick to straight damage and heals. Again, as it stands this is pretty much par for the course for an SNES RPG, and despite all my bashing there is a draw to the systems at play here. Because it's so fast it never gets frustrating, you get upgrades (both levels and weapons) quickly, and so you are constantly being rewarded either by leveling up or story segments. It's balanced bad but the pacing is excellent, and since it's so easy you really don't need to level-grind much. Which is great: more time for the awesome story. 

Yes, more Kefka. I think he's funny, come on. 

The game also does an interesting switch up half way through. For the first two acts of the story you are pretty much set in a linear path, with the exception of the very end. Since you don't have a controllable airship for a while, you are shuttled to where you should go via plot, though it does mix it up by splitting your party and other things. It isn't really until you go on the flying continent, Kefka blows up the world, and your party is scattered that everything changes. What was once a linear game is now completely non-linear. You start stranded on an island as Celes, in what is one of the most isolated feelings in any game. After being given the taste of freedom on an airship, now you are on a destroyed world, not knowing if anything else exists. Trapping you was a brilliant idea in and of itself, but that isn't the point. The point is you go out to find the rest of your party members, and the game forces you to find two of them. After that, however, you can do whatever. Want to try and fight Kefka with just three people? Knock yourself out. Want to find everybody? You can. Want to do side missions for said characters? Also an option. It becomes the definition of non-linear, which is a dramatic shift. And it works. Which is cool. 

Yeah, I kind of didn't know how to wrap that thought up. Sorry. 

This game is graphically gorgeous. This and Seiken Densetsu 3 (essentially a sequel to Secret of Mana, which never came out in the US) are often considered the gold standard for the SNES pixel art games, and it shows. Despite being clearly a grid-based tilemapping system, you'll be hard pressed in many instances to find the seams, a sign of an excellent pixel artist. Sprites have a wide variety of emotions that work despite them all being tiny caricatures. The enemies look incredible, bosses especially, with a level of pixel art detail unheard of. The landscapes are well animated, every place you visit is interesting, and despite copious use of "pallet swapping," the game still has enough original content to keep encounters interesting and fun.

Ok, time for the big guns. The music. THE MUSIC. 

Nobuo Uematsu, you are a genius. 

Final Fantasy VI has the best soundtrack of any game ever. Period. Hands down. No questions. Every single track in this game sounds beautiful. You can complain because it's basically just the SNES's midi chipset, meaning everything was probably done by Uematsu on a synth keyboard, but whatever; I do not care. It all sounds beautiful and breaks the lines between background music and actual, memorable songs. I cannot think of a single song in this game I do not like. And there's like a hundred of em'. 

So I could go on and on about how specific tracks are brilliant, like how Kefka's track perfectly describes him as it starts out a whimsical and almost goofy and then gets darker and darker until the end. I could talk about how Terra's theme also doubles as the incredibly haunting world theme during the first act, but it shifts during the second because the story is no longer just about her. I could talk about how the Figaro castle song double as both Edgar and Sabin's theme using musical style to brilliantly express this, and how it so perfectly compliments the softer "Coin Song" when you go over the two brothers' pasts. I could show you how the basic town music from before the world is destroyed compliments the new town music after the world is destroyed, and if you put them side by side how incredibly similar they are. I could talk about how the ending boss song is twenty minutes long and is a mixture between a Bach Fugue, Kefka's theme, the opening theme (brilliant), and just general awesomeness.  I could talk about the opera, which is just...urrrrrr it's so good! But since I've already talked enough and secretly slipped these hints in (or not so secretly), I'm going to focus on my favorite or at least my first noticed musical trick Uematsu slipped in: Locke and Celes' themes. 

So Locke is a treasure hunter with a secret: despite coming off as carefree, he let the one woman he really cared for down, to the point where she is essentially in a coma the entire game. Upon meeting Celes he is determined to not let this happen again, promising the standoffish former General that he'll protect her, even though she is more than capable of protecting herself. 

Here's Locke's musical theme, which is a great song in and of itself for our free-spirited thief...er, "treasure hunter."

And here is Celes', which is actually a variation off the Opera theme, albeit without vocals. 

Pretty good stuff, eh? It gets better.

So like I said before, video games mess up romances. That's why I liked The Prince of Persia, Enslaved, and Nier so much: the romance wasn't shoved in your face. It's pretty clear to everybody that Locke and Celes have a thing, though nobody particularly gets all teary-eyed about it or even really acknowledges it, even in the very end.

But Uematsu knew. And because he's a genius, he showed everybody that we were supposed to know, even if nobody would say it on screen. He said it in his music.

During the ending of the game (I am avoiding spoilers as best I can here, I promise), everybody is escaping Kefka's tower (because you killed him. Spoiler.) and the game sort of goes to each character individually, playing a recap of their song before showing a resolution (sometimes comical) regarding that character. Each character gets their own turn and variation on their songs.

Except Locke and Celes. Their part is together. And this is what plays. 

YouTube is being stupid, so please skip to 6:12.

He wrote their themes as a duet. The whole game you were hearing these songs, and after 30 hours you now realize they were meant to fit together. It's crazy brilliant, the transition between Celes' and Locke's themes. 

Added bonus being that Shadow's theme is directly following Relm's (seeing as Shadow is Relm's father), though the game never explicitly explains why. 

I could go on and on about the music, but I've already talked enough about this game, so I'll just say what I said before: It's the best game soundtrack ever. No exceptions. 

Plus it has this kickin' dungeon theme. 

I can't believe it...I might actually be out of things to say about Final Fantasy VI. I'm certain I could conjure up some more if I really wanted, but instead I'll just leave this where it is.

Is Final Fantasy VI a perfect game? No. No game is perfect. This game has its share of flaws, the most glaring being the lack of balanced characters and general easiness of the battles. But despite that I think the battles in this game are still fun, bosses especially, and if you really are bothered try playing a game with all the mediocre characters in your party. It's a challenge!

So no, Final Fantasy VI isn't perfect, but I still think it's the finest game ever. Why? Well, plenty of nostalgia and rose-tinted goggles to be sure, but also because it was a first love. I enjoyed games before Final Fantasy VI, I really liked games. But I don't think I really bought into them until Final Fantasy VI. It was this game that inspired me to start making my own games in High School, and from that stemmed me realizing I wanted to be a writer. It's had a massive amount of influence on my life, however indirect, and that's pretty awesome. 

It also is just a solid game. Yeah, you can tear it apart and find faults, but I can't match its experience. While the argument for "best game ever!" for everybody is such a subjective thing that my argument for it is moot anyway, I can totally say it is my favorite game ever, by a very long shot. 

If you haven't played it, you are a bad person, and need to get on it. It's on almost every system known to man, including emulators, so go get it. Right now. 

Saying "five out of five stars" seems a bit redundant, but we aren't breaking tradition now. For a 100th review, my favorite game ever. Now I'm going to go flying off into the sunset. 

See you next time...

Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne

The Short


Pros
- Adds new units, new balance, and a full single player campaign
- Finally adds boats back in
- New locals are vibrant and colorful
- Added tons of new heroes and content via patch downloads, all for free
- Upgrades to the map editor made custom maps go from "crazy" to "completely insane"
- DOTA.
- The definitive version of Warcraft III


Cons
- New campaign's story isn't as good and ends on a cliffhanger
- Graphics haven't been touched up at all

This menu screen has been etched in my brain forever. 

The Long

So after Warcraft III was awesome and I loved it and all that, I was pumped for the expansion The Frozen Throne. I was at summer camp when I bought it, and was super excited to go home and play it. What I didn't expect was that this would be the start of an obsession, one that has continued all the way to this day. Because with The Frozen Throne came the better map editor, and with the better map editor came DOTA. 

But we'll get to that eventually, because first I have to review this game on its own merits. 

"On its own merits"...with a DOTA screenshot

The Frozen Throne continues where Reign of Chaos left off. The Burning Legion got sufficiently stomped at the World Tree, though the tree was destroyed and most of the world is now roasted. Arthas is still out there, as is Illidan (a fallen Night Elf) making trouble. Illidan is especially being a twit, uniting with the Murlocks (a water race) in an attempt to take over in the Burning Legion's wake. Once again the various forces have to ally, though this story is a much darker one that focuses heavily on Arthas' continued fall from grace rather than the overarching war. 

As it stand, the story is a decent one, though it doesn't reach the heights of Reign of Chaos. It has a few shocking moments (like the ending), but as it stands it doesn't break from the norm. There's some human racism and a few other things to spice it up, but the world isn't exactly brought to a new depth here, and while it's fun and diverse the missions tend to get "samey" (with the exception of the Undead campaign). 

It does have an interesting Orc campaign that plays more like an MMO than an actual RTS, focusing on giving you two heroes and a few random units. Surprisingly, only the first chapter is on the disc, the rest have to be gotten via patch downloads. It's a nice twist, though an actual Orc campaign might have served better. 

The new areas are cool, though the graphics still look mediocre.

But where The Frozen Throne shines is with its improvement to multiplayer and balance. Each race gets one new hero giving them a total of four and, since you can only have three heroes during a match, deciding which one to use becomes a big decision. The new heroes are well balanced and fix previous problems (like the Orcs not having a healer hero), but then they added more. Before you could recruit mercenary unites from random guild halls hidden throughout multiplayer maps, but now they actually have unique heroes there too. Want to summon a Panda warrior to fight for you? You can! It's crazy and adds a level of unpredictability to matches, which the game certainly needed. 

I won't go in detail regarding the new unites, suffice to say that they give the game what it needs: a fresh take, a better balance, and a whole lot more replayability. I didn't really get into Reign of Chaos' multiplayer, but I really got into Frozen Throne's. Something about it sticks better, like Brood War compared to the original Starcraft, and for that I suggest it over the original's. 

Blizzard also gave away a ton of new heroes via patches, introducing new character models and new spells and everything, which is really cool. Normal companies would have charged for these, but with Blizzard they just came with the patches. Good show, and it also revamped the multiplayer every time. They still patch this game to keep it balanced, which shows their constant dedication.

Enough of that, time to talk about DOTA. 

My friends and I call ourselves the "Dota-rds," showing you exactly how mature we are. 

So one of the things I mentioned in my Reign of Chaos review was the fact that these games have an insane map editor. Well, in The Frozen Throne Blizzard just said "screw it" and unleashed the floodgates: you can do just about anything you can fathom with it now. People have made full-fledged JRPGs, actual MMOs that save your progress even after you quit, super complex tower defense games, racing games, wave-based defense games, and the list goes on. By allowing people to make custom spells (the biggest map editor change between Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne), people could now make entirely new heroes with entirely new skillsets, as well as devise their own items and effects. It was this craziness that led to the phenomenon that is DOTA.

DOTA (for the uninitiated) is actually an acronym for "Defense of the Ancients." It was based on an old map type called "Aeon of Strife" (or "Aeon of *whatever*") back in the Reign of Chaos days, though these weren't particularly enthralling because they used pre-built heroes and broke the balance something awful. But with the ability to edit spells, character models, and more, The Frozen Throne was prime for an upgrade. And they did upgrade it. Oh boy, they did. 

That's some crazy stats. 

So here's the general gist behind DOTA (and the MOBA genre it invented). There are two ancients on either corners of the map, and the goal is to destroy (or defend) them. There are always three lanes leading between them, with a river in the middle that allows free traversal between the lanes. There are also multiple shortcuts on either side (you can see the map in the lower left corner of the above screen shot) through trees and forests, which also allows for sneak attacks due to hiding spots and lack of vision. Everyone only controls one hero, while the main "creeps" are spawned by the AI. All the creeps ever do on both sides is spawn and run directly for the ancient, attacking whatever the find along the way (usually each other). There are tiers of towers guarding each pathway and, ultimately, the final base. Your goal is simple: outlevel or outbuy the other heroes, bust through the towers and into the base, and destroy the ancient. Then you win. Easy.

The tricky parts come later. First off, there are over ninety heroes to pick from in the current DOTA iteration, which is insane. Since all their abilities lead to completely unique playstyles, you'll have to be familiar with most of them to both know to play your hero and what you are up against, lest you underestimate them and die to an unknown spell effect. To earn money in this shindig you can either kill creeps for a small amount of coin, sit around (since you get money based on time anyway, albeit very slowly), or murder enemy heroes for fat bank. 

There are also tons of items, including many that can be fused later into better, more powerful artifacts. You have your mix of consumables, armor, weapons, etc. with varying complex effects. Many even give you spells to use. 

So basically you have to manage your hero while still working together on 5 v 5 player teams until one emerges victorious. It's a rush, and since there are so many heroes, items, and playstyles no two games are the same. Games are pretty quick relatively speaking (usually 30-45 minutes) meaning you can burn through one and still have time to do stuff the rest of the day. Like more DOTA. 

Huntin' creeps.

For a custom map, DOTA is crazy in how well balanced it is. While some heroes have their obvious foils (one is straight up titled "Anti-Mage"), when two balanced teams square off it can be a very difficult war of attrition. It's gotten so popular that Valve is straight up porting the game into it's own standalone title (with the brilliant name of DOTA 2), changing literally nothing least they mess up the immaculate balance. And they still haven't given me a beta key, which pisses me off, but that isn't part of this review. 

There are problems with DOTA, the biggest being the bar of entry. DOTA is insanely complicated, with hundreds of items and nearly one-hundred heroes to learn and keep track of, with new things being added and changed constantly. I was lucky in that I started back when the game was still young, so it was a gradual learning process was the game was improved and patched, but for a newcomer it's completely overwhelming. It doesn't help that the community is full of impatient jerks. If the Xbox Live community is a bunch of profanity spewing twelve-year-olds, than the PC community is arrogant elitists, who don't give anybody even a chance to improve before insulting and slandering them. It can take a substantial time investment to understand DOTA, and even if you are good people will still treat you badly. It's an awful community, but that's why you 1. Always play with friends 2. Ignore the haters. 

Almost done with DOTA, I promise. 

Still, for those who persist they'll find an insanely addicting sub-game within the Frozen Throne main game. I started playing this game "officially" during my freshman year in college, our entire dorm floor forming a league and basically going in and kicking the crap out of everybody and everything on Battle.net. Many of us have kept it up to this day, still booting up The Frozen Throne almost nine years later to throw down on some DOTA (though most got into the DOTA 2 beta without me, so now they play by themselves. VALVE! You are ruining my social relationships!) . It's addicting, fast, and very fun, and it's totally crazy this evolved from just somebody messing around in the map editor. 

Literally at the crossroads. 

Back to vanilla The Frozen Throne, the graphics haven't seen much of an upgrade, but they certainly prettied up the effects and the lands you traverse. The music is still just...there, which is fine I guess, but it doesn't stand out at all. It's really about the new units and unique map editor, with the multiplayer being so solid you are willing to forgive the fact the game looks ancient by today's standards. 

Though the set-pieces still look pretty nice. 

As it stands, even today The Frozen Throne is a worth investment for any fan of RTS or RPG action. The core gameplay still holds up, and there's a large group that still competes online. The upgrades to the single player aren't substantial but the new units are, making the game considerably more fun to play, even by yourself. But if you hate the core game you are guaranteed to find something you'll love on the online custom games, with the craziness in the maps coming out of the woodwork. Though it's true most of the talented developers have moved to Starcraft II, there's still plenty to love here, and considering you can get the whole collection of Warcraft III games on the cheap, there's been no better time to dive in.

Were I just rating The Frozen Throne's single player, I'd probably give it four out of five stars. But with the inclusion of DOTA, which makes The Frozen Throne my most played game of all time, I can't give it any less than five out of five. This was a life-shattering phenomenon for me, and a way I met and bonded with lots of new friends and allies. I even met a ton of awesome people over Battle.net because of it, people I keep in contact with to this day. It's been a crazy ride (one I hope continues once I get my hands on DOTA 2), and for that I can't award it with a score any less than perfect. 

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

The Short


Pros
- Unique hybrid of RPG and RTS elements
- Four races, each unique and well balanced
- Long single-player that focuses on each of the four races
- Strong story about redemption, revenge, personal failings, and hope
- Shifts focus from massing units to smaller, more micromanaged skirmishes
- Strong competitive online multiplayer
- Map editor allows for some crazy scenarios
- Fantastic art design

Cons
- Graphics look technically dated
- Music isn't anything special
- The weird RPG/RTS fusion can turn a lot of players off
- Water units are gone from Warcraft II, though air units are still there
- Storyline leaves a lot of things unresolved

The Reign of Chaos has come

The Long

I actually played and beat Warcraft III before Warcraft II. A friend lent it to me after I'd gotten my own tower computer, and I burned through the entire game rather quickly. As a long time fan of both Starcraft and the Age of Empires games, as well as this being about the time I was really getting into the old Final Fantasy RPGs, I loved the uniqueness of Warcraft III. At the time its colorful graphics and interesting characters captivated me, and it's odd mix of RPG and RTS elements where exactly what I wanted. 

But I might be getting ahead of myself. Let me explain (in brief) Warcraft III.

Which involves lots of crap. 

Storywise, Warcraft III excels. Similar to Blizzard's space opera Starcraft, Warcraft III has a well-crafted (get it? Crafted? Hur Hur) yarn at its core that even has a few dramatic plot twists. Essentially, the Burning Legion (aka Demons From Space) has shown up on the Warcraft world, with the intent of taking it over and turning all its inhabitants into undead. I don't get what they think they'll do after they turn everybody into zombies and burn everything to the ground, but villains in these things haven't really thought it all through. The story is then split between the four races: Humans, Orcs, Night Elves, and the Undead. Each has their own unique arc and purpose for fighting and level of involvement. It works because each race is self-contained while still being a part of this big whole. The Human campaign is about the young paladin Arthas who (in an "Anakin Skywalker" esque twist) is corrupted by his bloodlust and desire to destroy the undead to the point that he actually falls and becomes one (and one of the biggest villains in the Warcraft universe). The Undead missions continue Arthas' story as they move to take over the world of men. The Orc story shows their young warchief Thrall as he attempts to take his people across the seas to safety away from the Burning Legion, and the isolated Night Elves have to deal with the multiple refugees encroaching on their lands as well as the Burning Legion coming to destroy them.

As it stands, I found the Night Elf campaign to be the weakest (which is too bad that it's also the last), with a resolution that was a big corny and the characters never proving compelling. The rest of them, however, are well written, and I was genuinely curious to see how each individual character arc was going to resolve. 

The full-3D allows for in-game cinematic, which look...ok. 

But the meat of any RTS (Real Time Strategy) is the gameplay, and it is here Warcraft III takes a unique tangent from other RTS games. Usually RTS games involve building massive armies with a good mix of soldiers, then sending them crashing into each other with casualties quickly escalating until somebody has some soldiers left and somebody else doesn't and the game ends. Warcraft III took this and turned it on its head with its unique approach to the genre.

First off, the game focuses on doing two things differently: smaller battles with further emphasis on specific unit abilities, and heroes. We'll quickly break these down.

Warcraft III takes care in having every unit be useful from start to finish. In most RTS games, you start with crappy fodder units that are cheap and die easily and then abandon by the end of the game. Warcraft III does good to make sure every unit has a good balance of abilities, strengths, and weaknesses to make them viable. Even the crappiest Footman has his benefits: he can learn an ability to make him nearly immune to ranged fire, he's cheap, and you can buy them in bulk because they don't cost much "population" space. This spans across the races to every unit. Due to the massive diversity, you are required to diversify yourself or else you'll eventually face an opponent who has built your weakness en masse, and you'll be crushed. The balance is near-perfect (though Orcs seem a bit weaker to air than the others) and since your maximum population unit is substantially lower than other games, you'll have to pick your units very carefully. 

Second is perhaps the biggest change: Heroes. In addition to building regular units, Warcraft III now has special hero units. These units level up, learn new abilities and spells, can purchase or pick up weapons, potions, and armor to equip, and even learn an "ultimate" at level 6. Heroes only gain XP when around battle, so it's important to either go around hunting down neutral "creeps" (killable creatures that come with whatever map you are playing) or fight enemies. Heroes can be revived but at a hefty cost, and they are also extremely powerful and tout the best spells in the game so it makes sense. While units are certainly important, having a level six hero when your enemy has a level three hero can completely change the tide of battle. 

Leveling up your hero is necessary to win

It's this fusion of traditional RTS elements (unit diversity, finding a mix between ground and air units, etc) and the RPG elements with the Heroes that makes Warcraft III shine. Since you are limited to the number of units (and heroes) you can have, you are constantly required to make difficult choices. Do you spawn two heroes but have them split the XP, or just have one fat carry? Do you focus more on ground or air, offensives spells (with your hero's leveling) or defensive spells? Units are more expensive than other games, and the more of them you have the more "Upkeep" the game requires, meaning you'll earn a percentage less gold the more units you have. So you are effectively being penalized for having large armies, which makes you realize exactly how valuable they are. Every Footman death is noticed when they were expensive and important, so the game turns more into keeping your small squads alive and knowing when to strategically retreat rather than throwing mass bodies of soldiers against each other. It's a unique and fun twist on a tired genre.

Though "more zombies" is never a bad strat. I think. 

This is combined with Battle.net, Blizzard's multiplayer service, which hits it out of the park. There's a robust ranking system, online leaderboards and ladders, and a matchmaker that is...ok, if a little slow. But the star of the show is the custom maps. Warcraft III's map editor is insane, allowing for some truly awesome feats for those talented. Several entire new genres of games (MOBA, and making Tower Defense games mainstream) spawned from Warcraft III, which goes to show that if you put the creative tools in the hands of your fans they'll make something awesome. Again: entire game genres from a map editor of an RTS game. It's insane.

The game looks as colorful and vibrant as its predecessor. 

Graphically, Warcraft III is mixed. The art design is fantastic, setting up a theme that would later be used in its blockbuster World of Warcraft MMO. It's bright and a bit cartoony while still able to be dark and methodical, which fits. Effects look particularly flashy, and the attention to detail on the units is astounding. Unfortunately, time hasn't been kind to Warcraft III, and it's 2002 3D isn't nearly as impressive as it was a decade ago. Units have high polygon counts and look blocky, and though they are still well animated they kind of now look more like blobs rather than actual units. Bumping up the resolution can help, and one still can't help but be impressed at the art, but it still stands that the graphics don't look particularly good anymore.

The music is also a bit of a disappointment. After both Warcraft II and Starcraft had some catchy, memorable tracks, Warcraft III's fully orchestrated soundtrack seems content to sit in the "background noise" category of music. It isn't bad, it just isn't memorable or particularly enthralling. Which is too bad considering the pedigree. 

Units have a good mix of attacks and spells

As it stands, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is a standout title among RTS games. Despite a few minor issues, the game is an excellent one, and is certainly worth looking into. It's had a polarizing effect among fans for it's design choices to shift towards a more RPG, micromanage heavy style, but I personally love it. It's hard to master, even if you are good at other RTS games, and the hefty single player gives you plenty of value even if you never journey onto Battle.net. The only reason this game isn't as well played as it used to be is because it's expansion, The Frozen Throne, essentially took everything that was good in this game and ramped it up, including the map editor. But that's a review for a different time.

As it stands, I'm content giving Warcraft III a four out of five. It isn't for everybody, and the expansion pack essentially made this first game obsolete, but its still a single-player blast which you should check out (as with all of Blizzard's games). 

Plus, you can have an epic "Bears vs Tanks" battle. What other game has that? NO OTHER GAME IS THE ANSWER. 

The Incredible Machine 2

The Short


Pros
- Over 150 puzzles of the Rube Goldberg variety
- Two-player head-to-head puzzles
- Allows you infinite customization to create your own puzzles, backgrounds, etc.
- Soundtrack is surprisingly good, with mp3 quality tracks
- Balances well between being very difficult and very easy
- Has a great deal of style throughout

Cons
- Will not work on modern machines, even in DOS-Box, due to a memory detection bug
- The "sequel," The Incredible Machine 3.0, works in Windows but strips out every UI element that made the game charming
- Some of the puzzles can be borderline mind-bending in their obscure solutions

Pictured: My childhood.

The Long

We weren't allowed any video game consoles growing up. My mother never saw the point of owning something that only had the singular purpose of playing video games, so she never allowed them in the house. Because of that, we'd have to do with computer games for the majority of my childhood, though I do remember the fateful day when we discovered emulators. My first owned console was a Nintendo Gamecube in college, so everything past the PS1 era was experienced after 2004. 

That being said, I was lucky, because I was growing up pretty much during the golden age of Sierra-On-Line. Looking back I can think of many games that sucked away most of my time: Lords of the Realm 2, Missionforce: Cyberstorm, King's Quest VI, Warcraft III, and the Dr. Brain games. But there is one game that both my brother and I spent nearly every waking second playing. A game that was part creative tool and part actual game, one that was never outmatched for "Nathan's Life Wasted" time until Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne came along with DOTA. Yes, it's The Incredible Machine 2. 

I love this game. 

I still remember it well. I wanted this game for my...oh crap, was it my eighth birthday? [Insert quick fact-check here], ok it was my ninth birthday, because it came out in 1994. Anyway, I really, really wanted this game for some reason, but this was before Amazon.com provided internet convenience to every home, so my mother drove me something like two hours to a small video game store in Santa Barbara (Software Etc? Maybe?) just to buy me this game. It was in a mall, we stood in line for a really long time (I was born in December, so it was probably a Christmas line), but in the end I got my prize: The Incredible Machine 2. And thus my childhood was burned away.

The Incredible Machine 2 is a simple concept, and you've probably played a game like this at some point, since they keep trying to re-release it with different titles but never quite grasp the charm of this original game. Essentially, it's a game based on the Rube Goldberg devices, those overly complex steps involving random objects to do simple tasks (like turn on a light). The game gives you anything from 1/2 to a 1/4 of the puzzle, and then gives you limited objects to solve it. It's a simple idea, but due to the massive number of objects and multiple things you can do with each of them, puzzles can become complex quickly.

Something like this

It's a simple concept, but a good enough one for both kids and adults to be entertained. Despite having an overly-long tutorial (for kids, I guess, but also unskippable) the game gets hard fast, with some of the "Very Hard" batch being downright devious. There's over 150 puzzles, and finishing them all took my poor, only-allowed-to-play-videogames-on-Saturdays 9-year-old self several years to complete.

The amount of stuff you could edit was nuts. Also, all these screenshots look better when you click on them; shrinking them is making them look like crap for some reason. 

But the best part about this game is the puzzle creator. Back in the days before the internet was a big deal (we didn't have internet until 1998), The Incredible Machine 2 allowed for you to create your own puzzles and share with friends via...floppy discs? I guess that works. It had two forms of this: a tutorial that walked you through every step of the process, and a sandbox where it just sort of threw you into the creator and said "GO NUTS!" 

There's an art to creating puzzles. You have to determine what objects you have "locked" in, and which you "unlock" (which the player then has to decide where they go). You can also throw red herring objects (Can Openers were our favorite, since they could double as inclines) to try and screw up your friends. And, after you were finished, you could color the backgrounds with a variety of images to add a personal flavor to your puzzle. You could even mess with gravity and air pressure! How nuts is that?

Even the menus radiate charm

Between my brother and I, we made probably over 300 puzzles, including several that were part of a "Series" that had a sort of disjointed storyline going on. We figured out how to manipulate the puzzle systems to create fake cutscenes, got really good at using the backgrounds (which don't interact with the actual objects) to provide hints for the puzzles, and more. We have about half of them still saved on a floppy disc somewhere back home (unfortunately the other half were on our 486-66...never to be seen again), a testament to this game's amazing systems. We entered contests hosted by Sierra-On-Line (and didn't win, though it involved mailing them a floppy disc with your puzzle on it), competed to out-puzzle each other, and more. It was nuts. But we never did get our friends to play them (none of them owned the game), so I suppose it was a "party-of-one" thing. Oh well.

It has a VS mode, where the cat faces off with Professor Tim. Protip: Cat always wins. 

One of my favorite parts about this game was it had style. From the objects to the menus, everything worked together to have a pleasing GUI and really just add to the style. It also had a surprisingly great soundtrack, using MP3 quality music (something Nintendo wouldn't figure out until last year's Zelda, hur hur hur) that could be played off the disc in a CD player! Yeah, like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, only not as good! Whatever, I loved these songs. They aped the style of nearly every genre you could think of (except maybe Rap), except if they had lyrics they'd be singing about puzzles and inclines and can openers. Freaking hilarious.

"Don't drop a hog in the parts bin, you'll be forever trying to find it."

It's unfortunate that the "sequel," The Incredible Machine 3.0, took everything I loved about the game and then sucked it up hardcore. It was essentially the exact same batch of puzzles, except made for Windows 3.1. Which sounds fine, except they made the UI look like Windows 3.1 instead of their own custom thing, which looked like a bunch of gray boxes. Great. Also, the version on Good Old Games is apparently the floppy disc version rather than the CD version (were you seriously trying to save space, GoG?), which means all the music is garbage Midi rather than the awesome CD version. Massive disappointment. Added bonus that the package they sell it in says it has The Incredible Machine 2, but they are lying, and if you email them to tell them it they'll give you a snippy remark about how everybody knows they are the same game.

LISTEN YOU JERK, THIS WAS MY CHILDHOOD. I THINK I WOULD KNOW WHEN YOU DID IT WRONG. URK. 

(Rant over)

Seriously, this looks like ass compared to the original. Thanks, GoG. Thanks for lying. 

It's really too bad, because I still own my original The Incredible Machine 2 disc, but it won't run. Since our dangfangled modern machines have more than 8 MB (yes MB) of RAM, the installer can't detect that high and it decides that since it can't detect it you must not have enough, and therefore aborts the installer before you can even start. I tried messing with its brain in DOSBox, but the installer was too smart (?) for me and still wouldn't work. So I either have to buy a 486-66 again or just play the crappy Incredible Machine 3.0. Sad, sad day. 

Ah, much better. I love you, Incredible Machine 2. 

I love this game. Even playing the gimped 3.0 version, I remembered how much I love it. It's a fun game for both kids and adults, and they've tried over and over to "reboot" it (with The Incredible Machine Contraptions, and the modern, oddly named I <3 Geeks [Seriously, that's the name of the DS game]) but none has ever grabbed the charm of the original DOS version. I really wish I could get my copy to work again, but for now I'll just have to run of nostalgia fumes until I find some ancient computer that will run it at the Goodwill or something. 

You can get the Incredible Machine Mega Pack off GoG for $10, and I now see they changed the product description because of my complaining to say The Incredible Machine 2 is no longer included. So I guess that's good they aren't lying anymore, and the rest of the games in the pack are pretty good (though it doesn't have The Incredible Toon Machine), but I'd only suggest it if you don't mind the ugly version. As it stands, 3.0 doesn't get me my fix, but...whatever. I love this game. 

I need to find my floppy disc. 

Five out of five stars. 

And my disc still plays on my old Walkman! Ha ha ha, 90s!

Braid

The Short


Pros
- Beautiful visuals
- Unique puzzle-platformer with no dead time and genuinely ingenious brainteasers
- Time reversing mechanic is done in a way not seen before
- Music is incredible
- Story is captivating
- Has probably the single greatest ending level in any video game, except perhaps Portal 2


Cons
- While the story is good, it takes the fast train to pretentious town pretty quick
- On that same note, its attempt at "deep" ambiguousness just makes it seem silly
- While the 3-4 hours of gameplay are fantastic, they left me wanting more
- No replay value whatsoever. Once you beat it, you are finished with it.

Braid is one pretty game. 

The Long

What if you had the ability to do things over? Yes, like Prince of Persia, now that I think about it. But it's this idea of being able to redo mistakes that the game Braid centers around, both with its gameplay and story. Braid is a puzzle platformer about time manipulation, an indie game by the extra-pretentious Jonathan Blow. This game received a lot of acclaim when it came out, only to be countered a few months later by people deciding they didn't like it anymore. I don't know why this game got such a massive amount of internet backlash (maybe it's because Blow is kind of a jackass), but regardless of how its creator is or even how pretentious its story tries to be, Braid is still awesome. If I were to ask it to cut all story elements out entirely and stand just on its puzzle gameplay and graphics, Braid would still be a very good game. Part of my favorite games ever? Maybe not. But we'll get to that later. 

Braid gives homage to a lot of other classic platformers. 

At it's core, Braid is simple. You start with one ability: hold X to reverse time. You have no limit to how long you can reverse time (you can erase your progress over an entire level if you want), there are no limitations, nothing. This obviously means death isn't an issue, since you can always back it up if necessary. From these simple beginnings the game becomes more and more complex. You find items that are immune to your time-reversal, meaning if you open doors and then back time up, the doors will stay open rather than close again. There is a world where walking to the right moves time forward, while walking left moves it back, and standing still causes all time to freeze. There's a world where, after backing up time, a shadowy doppleganger will redo the last thing you did. And there's the final world where you are given a ring that puts up a "slow time" bubble, which slows not just your enemies but you as well.

Forgive me if that was a spoiler or something, but that is actually the entire game. You have five worlds filled with puzzles, each employing a unique twist on the basic "time reversal" mechanic. If that sounds a bit sparse it's because it is: Braid can be beaten in probably 3-4 hours on a first run without looking up puzzle solutions on YouTube. What matters, however, is how good those 3-4 hours are.

If you have a nice HDTV, this is a great game to show it off. 

Braid has no filler. Before each world there are a collection of books that fill in the "story" (more on that later), but you can completely breeze by them if you like and get straight to the puzzles. There is little exploration or even traversal, meaning it's essentially going from one puzzle to another until you are finished. No filler, no fluff, no padding. So those 3-4 hours I mentioned above? You will be actively engaged the entire time. Backing time up, slowing time down, all that stuff will quickly become your plaything as you master the mechanics of each world. And just when you have it down perfectly, the world is over and you are given a new toy to play with. It's perfectly paced and painless throughout, making it an excellent game for both "hardcore" gamers as well as the slow-learning "casual" crowd.

Every puzzle in this game is masterfully designed. Like how each level in Super Meat Boy was meticulously created to be perfect, Braid's puzzles are fun, paced well, and offer just enough mental strain to avoid being frustrating. It's that perfect balance Portal had, only as a time-reversing platformer. Great stuff.

Each level has a graphical color scheme to it, making them all the more memorable. 

Now we have the elephant in the room: Braid's story. After its release people went all loony trying to fully decipher it, whether it was a metaphor or meant to be taken literally, or if it was about a princess or the making of the atomic bomb or what the hell what is going on in this story?! Since I've come to the conclusion that overanalyzing this batch of supposed nonsense is just buying in to Jonathan Blow's ambiguous pretentiousness, I'm going to take this story at complete face value because that's what works the best. You are Tim, a dapper looking gentleman who runs around in a full suit and tie (and has red hair! Bonus!). He was apparently in an relationship with the "Princess," and the situation of this relationship isn't fully explored until the very end of the game. During this time, Tim made a mistake, and now he is off trying to recover her (just like our dear friend Mario). He starts oddly enough on World 2 rather than World 1, though without spoiling too much I will say that distinction is pretty damn important since World 1 is actually the last world you unlock in the game.

What the hell does that even mean?

So the whole story is built up that Tim is chasing his Princess, wishing he could somehow reverse time (like he does in the game) to undo his many mistakes that ruined his relationship. Simple, clever incorporation of story into gameplay, I like it. It does take about three times as many words as necessary to get to that point, but whatever; you can purple prose your way around if it means integrating game mechanics into the story, because nobody ever does that and I think it's what makes the medium unique and more people need to do it.

Then you get to that last level.

That beautiful, incredible, insanely clever final level. 

Yes, I'm going to gush, shut up. 

So as I hinted a few paragraphs up there, one of my biggest problem with gaming as a medium is I don't think they are using their potential to its fullest, especially with their stories. You have a medium that does a rare thing: allows for interaction while still being able to present a powerful audio/visual experience. So you can get personal investment with gameplay by sheer fact of interaction, while still guiding that investment via the visual/audio means. And I just now realized what I just said sounds like the wordy pretentious text in Braid, so I'll hurry it up.

The point is, developers treat game stories and gameplay as two very distinct spheres. Story just sort of fills up in-between the gameplay bits, tying it together but never actually interacting. It's a waste (something Nier fixed with its final twist) because they could be doing so much more. You could use a mechanic that quickly becomes so second nature the player almost forgets about how special it is, incorporating it into every aspect of your game and dropping hints about it in your story. Then, when you hit a final reveal, you could use that mechanic in a way to actually tell the ending in a way that involved player interaction and still based it around what they'd learned the entire time. Then you have a seamless integration of gameplay into the story, and you've created a well-knit experience. Like Nier, or the Portal games. 

Braid does this better than any game I've ever seen.

Har, Mario reference. GAMES AS ART. 

Without spoiling much, let's just say the final bit of Braid does everything I said above, and mixes it with a clever twist that actually pieces the whole game together quite nicely. It then tries to completely ruin this with its retarded epilogue (though the final scene, which again I won't spoil, is extremely well done), but it doesn't change the fact that the final World is one of the cleverest fusions of story and gameplay I've ever seen. Yeah, I might be buying into the pretentious bulls*** that is this game's story, but I loved the ending. And even if people love hating this game, I still can't deny that the ending does something few games do, and more games should.

The game has some excellent music. 

Graphically, Braid is beautiful. If you've been looking at the shots you know it's PURDY, but as an added bonus they all look even better in motion. It's like a living watercolor painting, dripping and flowing across your screen. Each world looks unique, and they all look quite fantastic. Kudos to whomever did the visual stuff for this game, because it looks great. 

The music is also awesome, a fantastic mellow mix that consists of only about four or five tracks, but still provides the right evocative atmosphere. The song during the final level is also perfect, though I won't spoil the reasons as to why. 

This game looks astoundingly good. 

So anyway, that's Braid. An excellent puzzle platformer (albeit only 3-4 hours long, at most) with beautiful graphics and music, and a story that is good if you don't think too hard about it, but do think about that ending level because it is good. This game is like $10 on XBLA and probably loads cheaper on Steam (it goes on sale like every other week), so you have no excuse to not pick it up. If you enjoyed Portal, you'll enjoy Braid. If you enjoy platformers, you'll enjoy Braid. And if you enjoy sipping espressos from china cups while writing poetry on your Macbook and wearing a beret and tsking about how games are ART, then you'll enjoy Braid.

My point is you should at least play this game once, so get to it. And if you want to be pretentious about it you can, and if you want to just enjoy the puzzles you can, but as it stands its still one of my favorite games ever and that's the point. 

Five out of five stars. 

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

The Short


Pros
- Enchanting, hilarious story set in the Super Mario world
- Combines turn based battles with an active attack system that makes them more engaging
- Fantastic soundtrack
- Did I mention this game is funny? It's wit goes a long way.
- Sits at about exactly the right length to provide an engaging experience the entire time
- Tons of minigames and side stuff to do
- Enemies are actually in the game world so you can dodge them rather than fight them
- Doesn't require the usual grindfest of normal JRPGs

Cons
- Graphics, which looked great in the SNES days, look a bit dated now
- Battle song will forever be embedded in my brain
- Despite not needing to grind, this is "fixed" by having tons of enemies on the field
- Has a maximum level cap, inventory space, and coins. I hate it when games do that.
- Characters like Geno and Mallow are owned by Square, and will never be seen again

Time to take the train to nostalgia town

The Long

It's May 1996. Everybody in the US is freaking out because we all knew the N64 was coming out by the end of the year. Most people have packed up their SNES systems in preparation for this new polygonal behemoth, promising full 3D graphics and a new collection of Mario and Zelda games. That is probably why Super Mario RPG was overlooked when it was released at that time. Essentially the swan song of the SNES, Super Mario RPG was a weird hybrid of two of the biggest companies in gaming at the time: Squaresoft and Nintendo. Essentially an "RPG Lite," Super Mario RPG took Nintendo's star mascot and planted him firmly in turn-based battles, an "epic" and "enthralling" storyline, and a battle to save the entire world and everybody's wishes. Did it work?

You bet it did.

ADVENTURE!

Super Mario RPG's story is silly nonsense. When Mario once again has to go save Princess Peach from the clutches of Bowser (an event that, even in 1996, the characters in the game joke about it being so routine), just as he about to deliver the final blow a giant sword from space or something rams into Bowser's castle, sending everybody flying across the land. You later find that the titular Seven Stars have been taken, and without them all wishes will cease to exist. Heaven forbid!

Since Mario is drawn to stars like flies to dog poo, he sets off on a magical quest to retrieve them all. On the way you'll encounter some of the weirdest characters ever to grace a Mario game (and then never to grace them again, thanks to Square and Nintendo fighting over copyrights), journey across the Mushroom Kingdom (which never seems to have any consistency in its layout), and meet old friend and enemies. It's an extremely simple story, but there are a few things that really make it shine.

Oh yeah, stupid Birdo is in this game. I almost forgot. 

First off is that it's just...really, really charming. I know that, in a world where having a viewpoint character nuked and chainsawing guys in half is standard gaming fare, this might not be considered a plus by a few people. But, despite the fact that Mario never says anything and most of the game is a load of nonsense, nearly every character of this game is endearing. The pace does fluctuate a bit, with some dead time between the Seaside Town and the Cloud...place, but as a whole the game constantly has funny cutscenes and entertaining dialogue that keeps the flow.

Something it does really well is "emote." You know what I'm saying: they mad a big deal about it in Final Fantasy VI when characters winked, laughed, shook their heads, etc. Mario RPG does this to an overexaggurated sense, adding some character to Mario even though he never speaks. All the characters also have distinct personalities (except Geno, who I have never seen why he's the fan favorite when he only exists to spout expository dialogue) which are in turn overemphasized, making this a silly, juvenile yarn that existed when "juvenile" just meant "silly for children" rather than "body excrement jokes."

There's a lot to love here. 

So what do you actually do in Mario RPG? Well, at it's core its a simplified turn based JRPG, with some minor twists. You take turns to execute attacks based on the speed stat, either attacking or casting magic spells. You'll gain XP and Coins and level up and buy new weapons and armor. Very basic stuff.

What Mario RPG does well is add little things to keep you engaged in the battle. When every character attacks, you have the option of hitting the A button at just the right moment to initiate a chain (an idea Legend of Dragoon stole and then ramped up to the 9th power) which does bonus damage and can't miss. Eventually you get so good at these you can do them in your sleep, but at least you can't just mash the A button through every fight.

The same goes for magic. Weirdly enough, everybody shares "Flower Points" (MP), meaning I hardly ever used magic except with my main casters (sorry, Bowser). But each of these spells often requires something as well, be it holding a button or mashing one, or just tapping the "magic" button again at the right time for similar bonus damage. It isn't much, but it goes a long way to keeping the battles from becoming boring.

The only good Geno is a dead Geno, hur hur hur. 

If anything, Mario RPG could be criticized for being too easy. Aside from an extremely difficult optional boss that basically requires you to get cheater items to beat, 90% of this game is a total cakewalk. If you've ever played any JRPGs before (or most video games, to be honest) than you'll probably have an easy enough time. Money is plentiful, and the ability to both do bonus damage and block damage means you can breeze through battles. Killing enemies can frequently drop bonuses like "Full HP" and the like, making the game even easier, and since it requires almost no level grinding (yay!) if you do happen to accidentally overlevel the game will become a total cakewalk.

Outside of battles the game keeps you engaged as well. Set on an isometric view (aka the hardest view to control anything in ever), Mario still has his signature jumping ability, which is used for some mild platforming puzzles and item collection. You can see enemies on the field to avoid them, which is nice, though jumping on them doesn't earn you any kind of bonus (unlike the future Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi games). It keeps things interesting and in the vein of the Mario games, which means it works.

Dodge 'dem barrels! And I just now noticed the sword in Bowser's castle is in the background. That's a nice touch. 

The game also has a load of minigames, most of which it requires you to do once as part of the plot, opening it up later for multiple replays. There's also a secret casino that requires a bit of guessing to get to, but there's enough side crap here to keep you entertained for a long while, even if you don't decipher it's mysteries.

This game draws from the Mario well quite frequently.

Graphically, it's hard for me to decide. It has that "pseudo-3D" thing that Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct did, though Mario RPG look a lot cleaner than those two games. It's weird though...I have two TVs in the house (yeah, I know, M. C. Moneybags here), an LCD HDTV and a flat screen tube TV for my retro games. On the HDTV this game looked like absolute garbage, and yes I made it so it wasn't stretching to widescreen, duh. The game looked really pixelated and grainy and just straight up bad. On my tube TV, however, I thought the game looked fine (as did the rest of my pixel-centric games). So I guess it looks good if you put it on a crappy TV? Who knows.

The art design is excellent throughout, with the new characters fitting in well to Mario's world, and the game constantly keeps pushing you forward to new, exotic locations. It has a fire level (of course) and a sewer (of course) though no ice level, so it gets points for that I guess. It does have a water level, though. Well, whatever, I think this game's art design is great and it looks fine (on my tube TV).

This game has some great music

The soundtrack certainly lives up to both Nintendo and Square's SNES reputation, with nearly every song being memorable and fantastic (except that main battle song, which I have heard so many times I kind of want to erase it from my brain forever). The song above, "Beware the Forest Mushrooms" has been my phone ringtone for almost four years. I keep trying to change it and it weasels its way back in somehow. It's just an awesome song. All the songs are awesome songs. This game has a really killer soundtrack, that compliments the whimsical style of the game well. 

More music, because it's all so good. 

So. The big question of this review might be: Has Mario RPG actually aged well, especially after Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi did the whole "Mario is in an RPG" thing to critical acclaim? Well...yeah, it has. Unlike many older games, this one holds up well because it was a really good game when it was released. But what I really think helps it work is the fact that it doesn't take itself seriously at all, focusing more on humor over telling some epic, earth-rending story. Melodrama, the staple of most JRPGs, quickly becomes seen for what it is after several years (which is why replaying any Final Fantasy game after VI is a chore), but whimsy and wit tend to persevere. Even if the RPG mechanics would be considered dated by a modern crowd, Mario RPG does well enough sticking to its gun for both its story and presentation to still be endearing, even so many years later. It's why people still love Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle and other games where the gameplay has since been outdated: because there's still a soul in there. Mario RPG is a game with a lot of heart (if you'll forgive the cornyness of that statement), and I think that makes it work, even now. 

Also because Mario's house is awesome. 

You can get this game for the almost offensively low price of $10 from the Wii's Virtual Console. If you want to snag the SNES cart you'll be looking at a bit more ($50-$80, depending on condition), but since they're exactly the same game it doesn't really matter. If you haven't played this game and you have any fondness for either Mario or Squaresoft (back when they actually made good games) you are a horrible fan and you need to get this game right now. Trust me. It's held up.

Seven out of five stars. Hey, it was in the game's title, so that means my joke is hilarious.

You and me both, Wishing Star. You and me both.