Do you think The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time deserves the top spot? How about its sequel Majora’s Mask? Maybe Breath of the Wild rose above all others to claim that special place in your heart? We’ve selected 18 of the best The Legend of Zelda games to “Face-Off” against each other two at a time, and you’ll have to make the tough choice between them to help us crown a winner worthy of the Triforce. Will you choose Skyward Sword over A Link to the Past? Twilight Princess over the original? The choice is yours…
Oh, and there is a very good chance we will bring this Face-Off back after we’ve all had some time to dive deep into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to see how it stacks up against the rest, as it will be fun to compare how the results differ!
(And don't forget, you can pass on a Face-Off round if you don't know a character by just hitting "skip" at the bottom of the page.)
Click here to start voting in The Legend of Zelda Face-Off!
What Is a Face-Off?
Like the name suggests, a Face-Off pits two things against one another and you decide which one is the superior of the two. In this case, you are voting to determine what the best game in The Legend of Zelda series is. It's possible to see certain games multiple times, so you can keep voting for your favorites to ensure they get ranked higher than the rest. IGN's resident team of Zelda experts pre-selected 18 games for you to choose from. These get randomly paired up and each time you pick a winner, it's tracked.
How Is the Winner Determined?
When voting ends on May 11, the day before The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrives, we’ll tally up the total number of "wins" and "losses" each Zelda video game has and create a ranked list based on your choices that will go live on May 12. The game that won the most match-ups will be crowned the "winner," and in the event of a tied number of "wins," the game with the least "losses" will take the top spot. If you continue to keep voting for your favorite game, they'll have a better chance of ranking high on the list. You can vote as many times as you want until the Face-Off closes.
How Do I Know When I’ve Clicked Through Everything?
It's difficult to know when you've seen every Zelda video game included because they are matched randomly, and there are many possible match-ups. Playing until you vote for all your favorites or ensuring that certain games don't get in the winner's circle are different options you can take with a Face-Off. By deciding the winner throughout all these match-ups, you're ensuring that your picks for the best Zelda video game will have a fighting chance to reach the top of the list.
Which The Legend of Zelda Video Games Have You Included?
The list of games from The Legend of Zelda series we’ve chosen all come from the mainline Zelda games we all know and love. This includes everything from the original back in 1986 to 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on all platforms, but it does not include separate entries for remakes/remasters. This means Ocarina of Time for N64 and Ocarina of Time 3D for 3DS are all the same entry, so you can consider all of that when you make your vote! We’ve also not added spin-offs like Age of Calamity: Hyrule Warriors, games where Zelda characters show up like Super Smash Bros., or the hilarious Philips CD-i titles like Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. We wanted to focus this Face-Off on the main series so we can truly see what IGN’s audience believes is the best Zelda of them all.
Click here to start voting in The Legend of Zelda Face-Off!
For more, be sure to check out IGN’s list of the best The Legend of Zelda games of all time, our hands-on preview of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and five reasons why we believe Tears of the Kingdom is more than just a sequel to Breath of the Wild.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
]]>Original story follows.
When The Legend of Zelda was released for the NES back in 1986, it sold at retail for $49.99. A sealed copy of that game today has already broken past $100,000 in an auction that's currently live.
You can view the online auction happening right now at Heritage Auctions where the current bid at the time of this writing is $110,000. That's probably the equivalent of over 1 million Hyrulian rupees for a Wata 9.0 sealed copy of the original Legend of Zelda.
"Truly, the term 'grail' only begins to scratch the surface of describing this game," Heritage Auctions writes in the lot description. "Of all of the games we've offered in our auctions, this sealed early production copy of the first game in the groundbreaking Legend of Zelda series is no doubt the apotheosis of rarity, cultural significance, and collection centerpieces."
Heritage Auctions says none of the copies of The Legend of Zelda it offered in the past can "even attempt to hold a candle to this one due to its incredibly rare variant that holds early production status."
This variant copy of Zelda nicknamed the "NES R" was produced for just a few months in late 1987 before it was replaced by a "Rev-A" variant in 1988, according to Heritage Auctions.
"Only one other variant precedes the offered 'NES R' variant and that is the 'NES TM' variant, which is the true first production run," the description continues. "However, it is widely believed that only a single sealed 'NES TM' example exists, and there is no telling whether or not that copy will ever come to market."
All of that is to say that the copy of The Legend of Zelda in the Heritage Auctions auction is the earliest sealed copy of the game one can actually obtain.
This auction is set to end in two days and only time will tell how high the sale price goes from here.
This copy's auction bid of $110,000 is certainly nothing to scoff at, but elsewhere, Nintendo rarities have sold for much more. The Nintendo PlayStation prototype console sold for $360,000 in an auction held last year while an incredibly rare plastic-sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES sold for $660,000 back in April.
When that copy of Super Mario Bros. sold for over half a million dollars earlier this year, it became the most expensive price ever paid for a video game collectible.
Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. He loves The Legend of Zelda but can think of a lot of other things to spend over $100,000 on. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.
]]>"Suddenly there were reports Netflix wasn't going to do its Legend of Zelda anymore," Conover recently recalled, speaking on The Serf Times podcast. "I was like 'what happened?' And then I heard from my boss we weren't doing our Star Fox anymore. I was like 'what happened?' He was like, 'someone at Netflix leaked the Legend of Zelda thing.' They weren't supposed to talk about it, Nintendo freaked out… and they pulled the plug on everything, the entire programme to adapt these things."News of the prospective live-action Legend of Zelda series with Netflix hit headlines back in 2015 when "a person familiar with the matter" reportedly told WSJ that the streamer had described the upcoming show as "Game of Thrones for a family audience," with a story that would follow Link's conquest to save Princess Zelda and the land of Hyrule. However, little more was said after that.
In the years since then, video game adaptations have become big business on Netflix as the games market has experienced rapid growth, and interest in gaming has exploded even more so during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Netflix wants to be the service that players turn to when they need to take a break from gaming, and the streamer is making big moves to make it happen.
For more on Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed, and other video game movie and TV projects, check out our slideshow below or click through to our article about why we think Netflix is the best place for video game adaptations.
Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Correction: An original version of this story incorrectly stated that Conover worked on the Star Fox project. Conover clarified that their employer at the time was working on this project, which is how they became aware of it. The story has been edited to highlight this correction and we regret the error. ]]>
- Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse ($19.99 ERP): Available June 1 to 30 on Xbox One
- Coffee Talk ($13.99 ERP): Available June 16 to July 15 on Xbox One
- Destroy All Humans! ($19.99 ERP): Available June 1 to 15 on Xbox One & Xbox 360
- Sine Mora ($9.99 ERP): Available June 16 to 30 on Xbox One & Xbox 360
While THQ Nordic is set to release a Destroy All Humans! remake on July 28, the inclusion above is the originally released Xbox version for those itching to take over humanity and just can't wait for the remake. IGN's original Destroy All Humans! review called the adventure "a very basic box of good and bad free-roaming shooting," which "boasts terrific personality, a great premise and some generally solid action."
Games With Gold will also offer Shantae and the Pirate's Curse for free in June, which originally released in 2014 and was praised in IGN's review as as adventure that "succeeds by building a funny, gorgeous world around its tried and true Metroidvania gameplay."Coffee Talk is the newest game on this month's list of free games, a '90s adventure game-inspired journey that offers "players friendly conversation and late-night warm drinks to the colourful and fantastical inhabitants of alternative-Seattle including elves, aliens, and orcs."
Lastly, Sine Mora is a side-scrolling shooter with time-manipulation gameplay thrown into the mix. IGN's original Sine Mora review earned the game a 9, as we said "With a relatively manageable Story Mode and a ridiculously difficult Arcade Mode, pilots of all skill levels should check out Sine Mora.
Jonathon Dornbush is IGN's Senior News Editor and host of Podcast Beyond! But don't worry, he plays his Xbox plenty thanks to the greatness of Xbox Game Pass. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush. ]]>
“Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is one of the smartest, most charming puzzle games of 2014. I’d also call it one of the best platformers of the year, except these characters can’t jump. It speaks volumes about Treasure Tracker’s wit and environment design that it completely strips us of the mobility powers that we’ve come to expect from a game set in the Super Mario universe and still provides lots of interesting puzzle options.”
Read the full Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker review.
In 2018 on the Nintendo Switch and 3DS, Treasure Tracker remains a rare delight, nabbing iconography from across the core Super Mario series – characters, blocks and power-ups all function exactly as you expect them to – but recontextualising them under a single new ethos: “What if Jumpman couldn’t jump?” There’s still nothing quite like it.
The Switch and 3DS versions don’t add much to the original, but they never really needed to. The Wii U’s failure means there will be a swathe of players who didn’t get a chance to play this the first time round, which makes this re-release as much an act of game preservation as it is an easy stop-gap between truly new first-party releases.
Each of Treasure Tracker’s levels (not counting the bonus remix stages) is a miniature obstacle course with a Star to collect and hidden Gems to uncover, but the pleasure is in how many ways that single thread is spun into different shapes. Some levels are more like optical illusions, twisting in on themselves and asking the player to swing the camera around to find hidden doors or sneaky secrets. Others are more like Rubik’s Cubes, needing to be physically shifted into new positions to let you get around. There are minecart dashes, timed chases, battle arenas. Ideas are introduced and thrown away at crazy pace. If you ever wanted to demonstrate why people talk about Nintendo designers in hushed tones, this might not be the absolute best example, but it’s certainly the most efficient.
Changes from the Wii U original are minimal, on the whole. The levels themselves are only slightly altered: on Switch, there are no platforms that require you to blow into a microphone to move, while 3DS has had the number of enemies reduced in most stages, probably to account for the drop in movement accuracy when moving from analog stick to Circle Pad.
A new two-player mode on Switch is welcome, but probably won’t be of interest to many. With one player controlling the lead character, the other can use a Joy-Con to point at elements in the world and fire turnip projectiles at them – think Super Mario Galaxy’s Star Bit-firing second player. At best it feels a little redundant, and at worst it makes certain combat-focused levels completely pointless, as every threat can be cleared before the person controlling Captain Toad reaches it. It feels like the best solution for co-op play, however – having two entirely separate characters would require many of the existing levels to be redesigned, and that clearly isn’t part of the brief here.
Some of the original’s little problems persist. There’s a little too much reliance on the touchscreen, which becomes annoying when your own fat hand blocks your view of a threat. Playing docked on Switch with motion controls should solve that problem, but a giant cursor hovers over the screen at all times, which is hardly the most elegant solution. These new versions have at least removed the maddening decision to map camera control to the Wii U GamePad’s shaky internal gyrosensor, meaning you don’t have to stay stock-still to play anymore.
But it’s Nintendo’s borderline magical work with its proprietary engine that makes this remaster shine. Like Mario Kart 8 before it, the Switch version’s sharpened 1080p docked output reveals a game that genuinely ranks among the year’s prettiest, despite being almost 4 years old. Every level hides something gorgeous, whether that’s the particle effects bursting from magically extending minarets in Double Cherry Spires, the gleaming, giant pinball table that makes up Razzle-Dazzle Slider, or Captain Toad’s shivering idle animation on any Boo Mansion level.
3DS is a different beast; it understandably looks worse than the original version on such dinky hardware, but it feels frankly miraculous that it works at all. In its more spectacular moments, this is among the best-looking games in the console’s history. Better, in a game entirely about space, angles and perception, the 3D effect isn’t just impressive, but useful. Many of Treasure Tracker’s more fiddly puzzles feel a tad more readable on the less powerful platform, particularly with the New 3DS’ eye-tracking to keep the effect stable.
But perhaps the most interesting effect of returning to Treasure Tracker is in realising how influential this little spin-off became within Nintendo. Another game loudly drew on the principles of hakoniwa after Treasure Tracker came out – Super Mario Odyssey. The scales might vary, but both present intricate, self-contained environments, where attention to detail is prized over sheer size. Both place the pleasure of curiosity above and beyond anything else, rewarding players for prodding at and messing with their gorgeous worlds. And both make those rewards for curiosity the only way to progress: Treasure Tracker with Super Gems and Odyssey with Power Moons. It quickly becomes clear that Nintendo’s best platformer of recent years is perhaps more in debt to Captain Toad than it is to 3D World.
The line’s never more clearly drawn than when Treasure Tracker drops 4 Odyssey-themed levels into the mix towards the end. Recreating Odyssey’s Kingdoms as Captain Toad-friendly challenges feels weirdly natural. Not only do they look the part, but they act it, too. If you’ve covered the length and breadth of New Donk City already, the miniaturised version of it isn’t just smart, it’s familiar. Well, unless you’re playing the levels on 3DS, where it feels astoundingly odd – it’s always amazing to see how flexible Nintendo’s game engine seems to be. My only complaints here are selfish ones – why can’t there be more of these, and why did the original Super Mario 3D World bonus levels have to be cut to fit them in?
Verdict
Treasure Tracker still feels close to unique, and gains new life on both of Nintendo’s current systems. Switch is very much the better choice, but 3DS is by no means a bad option. Still smart, prettier than ever and, in retrospect, genuinely important as part of Nintendo’s modern history, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is a rare example of a game that actually feels better for being a few years old.
]]>“It’s a shame that in order to appreciate their design I had to consciously remind myself to look at the center of the screen when not solving a puzzle or in battle. Severed’s first-person perspective makes it difficult to focus on walking. I mostly watched the minimap in the top corner of the screen to find which direction I need to go – not exactly the most fun way to play a game. Looking at the center screen and moving between rooms too quickly made me feel nauseous because of a weird fade transition. This made backtracking for secrets and collectibles a little tiring as I ran through cleared temples.
Swipe Strategically
One of my favorite moments in Severed was when, while trying to get a collectible, I pulled a switch and fell through the floor into a pit of about six fungi coral monsters. I was constantly turning and damaging them to keep them from growing their spores that’d blow up in my face if ignored, and it took me a few seconds to figure out my plan of attack.
Severed steadily becomes more challenging as you encounter more enemies in a single battle and new enemies with different defenses and attacks. It was exciting to learn the attack patterns and discover weaknesses. Some enemies charge their attacks, while others are passive until they’re attacked or randomly decide to strike. Managing the new information can be hard at first, but is easy to learn.The manic slashing approach can have significant repercussions in combat.
“Thankfully, taking the Fruit Ninja-style manic slashing approach has significant repercussions in most situations. Severed requires you to be tactical with the touch-based slashing combat. Enemies do a ton of damage, and blocking their attacks is the key to surviving fights. Attack monsters as they block and Sasha is briefly stunned. This sometimes gives enemies the opportunity to get a hit in, and when you're dealing with three or four enemies, that one mistake can cost you the battle. Time management is key, and it was satisfying to harvest my foes’ body parts for crafting when I was victorious.
Battles usually last no more than a minute or two, and Severed is better off that way because longer fights are both tedious and physically difficult to play. The second boss fight in particular seemed to drag on forever, and while that’s usually not a problem with most games, having to constantly swipe is tiring. I actually had to pause and take a short break because of the discomfort of furiously rubbing the Vita screen.
Unsatisfying Challenge
After defeating the second boss, you gain a cool ability to steal status effects from enemies, though due to its high mana cost, you can only use it once or twice in a fight. Monster can get faster attack timers, more defense, higher attack, magic resistance, and health regeneration from a skull monster that, after charging for a short period, emits a random buff that’s shared with all of its allies. The skull monster provided another dimension to fights as it doesn’t attack, but it’s existence stopped mattering once enemies started appearing with buffs, with or without the skull monster.
By the end I was facing three or four enemies with multiple buffs. I’d enter the fight with a sigh, and end it with a sigh. Severed leans too heavily on buffs to make fights more difficult instead of utilizing its untapped strengths: traps, environmental dangers and enemy variety. Occasional rooms filled with poison or blinding crystals had potential, and though most of the late-game enemies are variations on early ones, they still introduce new tactics that make them feel refreshed. Their varied attacks and defenses felt played down as the buffs stole the focus of late-game battles.
Verdict
Severed is at its best when it features short, tactical fights in its eerily beautiful dungeons, but those battles largely lose their appeal by the second half. Combat becomes tedious due to boring buffs instead of introducing new ideas in order to make battles more challenging. That blow to the combat’s longevity wouldn’t have felt so bad if exploring the bizarre world weren’t so tedious.
]]>I realized how amazing Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright is during a particularly nerve-wracking moment: My samurai had been cut off from the rest of my war party and was alone, with half health, against a much stronger enemy paladin. With permadeath turned on, there was a very good chance I could lose him forever. Things looked bad, but I couldn’t give up.
Holding my breath, I first moved my swordsman to a square of terrain that gave him extra speed and health, equipped a duel katana that would nullify the knight’s more powerful spear, and sprang into action. It was a gamble, but I was betting on my samurai’s Vantage skill, an ability that allows him to strike the enemy first, even when attacked. My bet paid off: the paladin fell in one swift stroke, and my samurai lived to fight another day.It’s these jump-for-joy, shake-with-relief moments that make Birthright such a fantastic experience, and its more welcoming difficulty (relative to its also-excellent, veteran-focused counterpart, Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest – reviewed here) makes it a great entry point for the series. It’s a clever turn-based tactical RPG that constantly rewards you for smart decisions, and every move, every piece of equipment, and every relationship you foster serves a purpose. Combine that with robust customization and a gut-wrenching story, and you have something that achieves greatness.
Family Ties
Birthright’s heart-rending, 30-hour story takes place in the peaceful nation of Hoshido, which looks like something straight out of ancient Japan thanks to its beautiful, blossom-swept pagodas and lush bamboo forests. There, the army is desperately trying to hold back the advancement of the neighboring kingdom of Nohr, whose blood-thirsty king Garon will not stop until his enemies are crushed under his boot. As a prince or princess of Nohr, you’re forced to take up arms against your own family in order to win peace and stop your father’s evil ambitions.I often teared up as sibling accused each other of treason
“It’s an emotional and engaging journey, one where I often teared up as siblings accused each other of treason and challenged one another to mortal combat. This sad tale is elevated by excellent art direction that uses sweeping angles and well-timed close-ups on characters’ expressive faces to convey pain, regret, or hope as the two warring factions fight for supremacy. The graphics are an improvement over Fire Emblem: Awakening, especially notable in the way characters and buildings look more detailed, and your heroes actually have proper feet instead of weird stubs.
In the background, the musical score does heavy lifting with hard-hitting percussions and soaring brass instruments to capture the martial spirit of Nohr, while haunting wind instruments and delicately plucked strings echo the tranquility of Hoshido. Even when I wasn’t playing, I kept my game on just so I could enjoy the music.
Fight for Your (Birth)Right
The story, music, and visuals are great, but the battle over Hoshido is even better. Combat in Fire Emblem can get pretty difficult so it’s great that Birthright is so accessible to beginners by default. A sliding difficulty setting means you can ease into the experience by turning on Phoenix Mode in Normal setting, which will revive fallen units on the battlefield at the start of each phase. Or, if you want to dive right into the fire, you can turn on permadeath in Lunatic Mode, where every decision on the battlefield counts and just one wrong move can wipe out your entire party forever. Hard Mode is a variation of both, with the choice of turning permadeath on or off, which I prefer because it lets you adjust the difficulty setting precisely to fit your comfort level.Turn what once was safe, benign space into harmful terrain
“It's a good idea to start on a lower difficulty level, because there’s a lot going on on these tactical maps For instance, there’s a clever new feature called Dragon Veins that can help you get a leg up in combat: when a member of a royal house stands on one of these special map tiles, they can turn what was once a safe, benign space on the battlefield into harmful terrain, like a spikey bamboo trap that depletes enemy health. Royals can also create a wellspring of health that will cure party members standing directly under the healing tiles. Additionally, helpful villagers living in houses dotting the map will offer you useful items when you visit them. Both are locations where you’ll have to make smart moves in order to control before the enemy does.
Birthright also reintroduces the awesome Pair Up and Dual Systems from Awakening, now under the names Attack Stance and Guard Stance. This clever mechanic lets you pair up allies on the battlefield to temporarily buff their stats, dual-attack the enemy, or parry their offense. This is extra important because, as with all Fire Emblem games, as allies fight side by side, their support rank goes up and their assists improve whenever they’re near each other. Since different classes offer different types of support, it’s fun to mix and match pairs to get the most effective results: I liked to keep Sakura, my lower-level healer, near Scarlet, my stronger Wyvern Lord, so the former could benefit from the latter’s Rally Defense skill, which generates four points of extra defense. That doesn’t mean combat is a walk in the park, however.Like in previous Fire Emblems, you have to juggle a number of combat variables, including learning to defeat the type of weapons enemies use with its rock-paper-scissors style counter, observing what their stats and buffs are, making note of whether they’re paired up (a new feature that lets enemies attack and defend just as effectively as allied troops) and taking into account how close they are. Wisely, Birthright makes it easy to manage all of this with an intuitive interface on the lower screen. Take the series’ Weapon Triangle for example: swords and tomes beat arrows and clubs, clubs and arrows trump spears and hidden weapons, spears and hidden weapons beat swords and magic. That might seem a bit confusing to the uninitiated, but a handy color-coded schematic makes it easy to understand. Meanwhile the Combat Forecast lets you view enemy and ally stats side by side, with buffs and debuffs clearly marked blue and red respectively. (Any stats that are maxed out are shown in green.) It’s a simple system that makes determining the outcome of a fight hassle-free.
If there’s one thing that disappoints me about Birthright, it’s the lack of diverse mission objectives. While the maps have a nice variation of frosty villages, slippery ship decks and poisonous bogs, your goal almost always comes down to one of two things: route the enemy or defeat the boss. There were only a couple of missions where I had to do something unique, such as escape or conquer an enemy fort, which makes it difficult to recommend this version of Fates to veteran fans yearning for a campaign that’ll show them something new. Birthright might be aimed at newcomers, but there’s no reason not to throw a curveball every once in awhile just to spice things up a bit.
The Ties That Bind
One of my favorite features in Fire Emblem is the Support system, and I’m happy to report it’s just as much of a highlight as ever. Not only does teaming up allies make them more effective in combat, but it unlocks engaging story vignettes off the battlefield. I laughed out loud during my conversations with the grumpy ninja Saizo, and smiled as I talked with the always-sunny fox-man Kaden. Each character feels like a real person with unique personality quirks and a distinctive look. It’s easy to fall in love with them – which you can actually do. Pairing up constantly and attaining an S rank (the highest available) with a character of the opposite gender not only unlocks deliciously sugary romantic dialogue, but will result in having children who will inherit their parents skills and abilities, adding another useful member to your team.By the end, my archer was sniping distant enemies in a single shot
“Speaking of which, jobs, classes, and character modification are another strong point. New troop types like fast-moving ninjas and hard-hitting Oni Savages are basically just tweaked versions of previous Fire Emblem classes, but being able to modify occupations along with their associated weapons is where the robust customization really shines. Special seals let you level up a unit’s base class and gain extra perks and abilities, or change their class to something better suited to your style. It’s a feature worth experimenting with: I used a Heart Seal on my villager Mozu to change an underpowered spear-wielder into a fearless archer. I also powered up her bow by using special ore harvested in my hub fortress. By the end of the campaign, Mozu was sniping distant enemies in a single shot, making her one of my favorite soldiers. It’s this type of modification that makes building an army fun and rewarding.Adding to your army and improving your ranks is important, because even when you start on the low difficulty, there’s a pretty steep difficulty curve to overcome by the end of the lengthy story campaign. Unlike Conquest however, Birthright lets you off the hook if you find yourself underleveled and up against a seemingly insurmountable foe: you can return to previously visited areas of the map so you can repeat some battles (against randomized opponents) to toughen up your troops, increase your Support ranks, and experiment with different strategies.
Duel Personalities
Off the battlefield, Fire Emblem Fates offers a base-building mode called My Castle, and for the most part it’s a pretty decent addition to the flow of Fire Emblem’s traditional gameplay. I liked designing the layout of my fortress and filling it with useful architecture that reflects the beauty and aesthetic of ancient Japanese temples and castles. It’s not purely cosmetic, though, because each building feels purposeful: a lottery shop gives you access to one free item a day (you might get a Duel Yumi bow one day or a handful of beans the next) while inside the battle arena your troops will spar to win you precious items like pearls and jade that can be used in a smithy to strengthen weapons. One of my favorite buildings is the Mess Hall, where a daily rotation of troops will whip up delicious, stat-boosting meals like crips simmered beans that will raise strength and resistance in the next battle. (There’s no way of knowing what buffs you’ll receive or which of your troops will receive them until you do some experimentation however, but that’s what’s so fun about it.) Some places are built for comedy: things got pretty silly when my heroine walked into the hot spring while the boys were using it. That might not seem useful, but taking a dip in hot water can lead to more character interactions.Buildings also double as additional defense against online players during multiplayer. Online battles are pretty fun: you can pit five of your best troops against five of you friends’ best troops, locally or online, to see who gets bragging rights. Buildable artillery units, like turrets and ballistas, are a nice way to stop invading Street Passers in their tracks.There's no real way to add personal flair to your castle to make it truly unique
“One minor annoyance, though, was the clunky interface in the online portion. A crystal ball near the throne area of your fortress organizes your multiplayer options into neat little menu tabs, but it’s sometimes easy to accidentally log out entirely once you’re finished flipping through them. There’s also no real way to add personal flair to your castle to make it truly unique, outside of designing the layout. That said, you can dress your troops in cute little accessories like a pink beret or a dirty kerchief that will lessen damage while invading a castle, so that’s cool. I also like that you can use StreetPass to summon someone else’s troops into battle. That in itself is a nice incentive to hop online.
More Fire Emblem Fates
Feb 23, 2016Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation ReviewFeb 23, 2016 – This is one Fire Emblem worth reveling in.
Feb 17, 2016Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright ReviewFeb 17, 2016 – An amazing introduction into the fantastic tactical world of Fire Emblem.
Feb 17, 2016Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest ReviewFeb 17, 2016 – Love and war collide in Conquest’s tough-as-nails campaign.
Verdict
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright is a fantastic balance of tactical challenge and accessibility. Even after I finished the story, I found myself returning to the battlefield again and again to unlock more conversations between friends and test my army’s might against Nohr’s finest. I’m addicted to Fire Emblem Fates, and that’s fine by me.
]]>Some of the most heart-pounding, high-stakes moments in Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest come from pivotal decisions in the heat of turn-based tactical combat, but it’s the resulting consequences that kept me hooked for well over 40 hours. Whether I was watching my soldiers establish and grow their relationships as warriors, or watching in horror as another one permanently fell to an enemy blade, I loved every moment of it. The stiff challenge, tailored to Fire Emblem veterans, and visually striking colorful style is complemented by wonderful mission variety and some deep customization.
Conquest is the tougher half of the Fire Emblem Fates package – for the other, check out our review of Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright, which is sold and reviewed separately.
Conquest’s tense decisionmaking on a grid-based battlefield is part of an intricate and addictive turn-based tactics loop.
“
Fire Emblem Fates’ beautiful anime graphics and superb audio are on par with 2013’s excellent Fire Emblem Awakening. The distinctly European flavor of the glory-seeking Nohr kingdom contrasts with the spiritual Japanese vibe of the peaceful Hoshido Clan for great looking, visually distinct battles and characters. The two feuding families kick off a tumultuous and gut-wrenching campaign full of tough battles. In Conquest, you play the role of Corrin, a young noble born to the Hoshidos but raised by the Nohr who chooses to fight for his adopted brothers and sisters to find an end to the conflict.
Conquest’s tense decisionmaking on a grid-based battlefield is part of an intricate and addictive turn-based tactics loop. Attacks are based around chance-to-hit percentages and hidden dice rolls, with a simple rock-paper-scissors ruleset to keep melee weapons and projectile attacks balanced: Swords and magic beat axes and bows, which are beaten by lances and hidden weapons, which are in turn vulnerable to swords and magic. Each choice made on the battlefield plays a critical role in winning a skirmish, but your actions can also have a larger impact on how units develop. Decisions include choosing which soldiers to deploy, their weapons and loadout, and the right time to attack or run from enemies.
Experience from combat naturally rewards you with level-ups and increased stats but, as is a defining and beloved characteristic of Fire Emblem games, your soldiers also get stronger based on bonds and relationships that develop as they fight side by side. Additionally, building up relationships opens up new story content in the form of support conversations, which add personality quirks and depth to their character, often revealing more about their motivations or silly personal imperfections. Felicia, for instance, is a hardworking maid you meet early on who also happens to be a total clutz, while Xander is the conflicted but dutiful crown prince of Nohr who diligently fights for the kingdom despite not always agreeing with his father’s decisions.
The personalities and stat bonuses add incredible depth to Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest’s carefully balanced battle system.
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The personalities and stat bonuses add incredible depth to Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest’s carefully balanced battle system, because attack percentages and damage is affected by range, enemy class, and what allied characters are nearby. And while each class has a specific role in a fight, you can unlock additional perks as your classes evolve, with some surprising effects. For example, once Corrin has upgraded his class Nohr Prince to a Nohr Noble, his Draconic Hex spell can follow up standard attacks and add a bonus effect that significantly reduces an enemy’s stats, softening them up for a killing blow. Or Silas’ high-risk, high-reward Vow of Friendship power, which adds additional damage dealt and taken if he’s near another main character who has 50% or less health. These complex abilities can really turn a fight in your favor when used wisely on the right soldier and in the right situation. Building strong relationships draw new, more powerful soldiers to join your ranks and the loop starts over as you develop those recruits.
Yet even with a perfect soldier pairing, a 95% attack chance is no guarantee. That works out to the same as rolling a 20-sided die and landing on one – it’s not very likely, but definitely a possibility you have to account for. Sometimes bad luck can steal away the most carefully planned approaches, and part of the drama of this story is how you deal with those losses. The fear of a character’s permanent death is what makes Fire Emblem’s choices feel difficult and significant, because all of that progress and their associated relationships can be lost if you choose poorly. Note that you can disable permadeath if you want a low-pressure way to witness the great story between the feuding Hoshido and the Nohr kingdoms, but you’d ultimately miss out since the fear of losing a valuable team member raises the stakes, turning mundane moment-to-moment choices into life-or-death decisions.
What’s disappointing in a game about forming strong relationships is that the story isn’t able to acknowledge the loss of teammates in a significant way.
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What’s disappointing in a game about forming strong relationships is that the story isn’t able to acknowledge the loss of teammates in a significant way. Unless a specific death is part of the campaign’s plot, the characters just go on with their lives and never mention the loss, even if they’d been joined at the hip for many battles.
While the counterpart game, Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright, has the same great tactical mechanics, Conquest’s tougher campaign uses an impressive amount of variety to force you to put these skills to their best use. It really ramps up a third of the way through, as missions throw curveball after curveball to constantly keep you off guard, with unique objectives that turn up the pressure on the battlefield. In one mission, you have to survive for 11 turns against huge waves of enemies; In another, you have to uncover the identity of a pirate thief hidden in the middle of a larger skirmish before he steals all your gold.
This is a bonafide master-level quest edition that feels tuned to challenge veteran Fire Emblem players, which might make Birthright the better starting point for new players, but Conquest is the deeper, more elaborate of the two. One of the biggest distinctions is that Conquest gives you such limited opportunities to develop your troops before taking on a new, more challenging mission, since you can’t grind and play additional side battles at will the way you would in Birthright. While that might sound intimidating, Conquest plays fair. Each map presents clear rules and allows lots of room for strategy. In one example, I could manipulate randomly appearing vortexes via switches to push enemy soldiers five units to the north or south. If I didn’t, the wind would push my units at the end of the next turn. Many maps have a unique spin like this, which kept me thinking of new approaches instead of simply repeating the strategy that worked last time.
This is a bonafide master-level quest edition that feels tuned to challenge veteran Fire Emblem players.
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Conquest’s only slight fumble comes from its new base-building mode called My Castle. In it, you build shops, monuments, and arenas that double as additional defenses if you’re invaded by other players in StreetPass multiplayer. The shops themselves are useful, since you can unlock new gear and resources. However, since there are only a handful of themes to pick from, the buildings all end up looking and feeling the same. My Castle offers a few fun ideas that reward smart investment of resources with new weapon types and special buffs that damage enemy invaders, but it also suffers from a sluggish online interface. You have to navigate a lot of menus to find a list of town to visit, and you’re immediately sent back to your own castle after the visit to redo the process all over again.
More Fire Emblem Fates
Feb 23, 2016Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation ReviewFeb 23, 2016 – This is one Fire Emblem worth reveling in.Feb 17, 2016Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright ReviewFeb 17, 2016 – An amazing introduction into the fantastic tactical world of Fire Emblem.Feb 17, 2016Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest ReviewFeb 17, 2016 – Love and war collide in Conquest’s tough-as-nails campaign.
Verdict
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest is a rewarding and deep turn-based tactical game with a grand story and characters I liked enough that losing them in combat really stings. The intense difficulty is squarely aimed at veteran Fire Emblem players, and its satisfying campaign is full of variety and challenge. And even though a win or loss can down to sheer luck, I walked away either satisfied or eager to give it another shot.
]]>Weapon Shop de Omasse played a kind of trick on my attention span, giving me just enough real-time feedback to keep my mind flitting around without ever really entertaining me. Between weapon forging, the mindless act of polishing weapons (rubbing the stylus on the screen to raise a bar), and reading about your clients’ adventures, there’s always something to do, even if none of it is much fun on its own. It kept me in a low-level compulsion loop.
The playful tone is presumably attributable to the writer and game director, Yoshiyuki Hirai, who is a Japanese comedian. It’s part of Level-5’s Guild series of experimental downloads, along with Attack of the Friday Monsters, The Starship Damrey, and others. Chats between your customers, your character (an apprentice called Yuhan) and the master blacksmith Oyaji are soundtracked by laughter, applause, and booing, which I found irritating at first but which quickly faded into the background. (For a master blacksmith, incidentally, Oyaji doesn’t seem to do much. It’s Yuhan who makes and sells all the weapons.)
The story revolves around the return of the Dark Lord, Generic Big Bad Guy, and from the start there are predictable jibes at RPG conventions (“I’m training to become a damage sponge for low-level companion quests,” says one of your clients). Amongst the uniform assortment of “NPC” customers that come by looking for a club to smash goblins with, there are several “regulars” with more fleshed-out comedy personas. Some of them are quite likeable – a downtrodden samurai, a pair of bickering sisters – but none are really memorable, and some, like the French knight with an obsession with Japanese superhero comics, were irritating enough to make me skip right through their dialogue.
The Grindcast – that’s the real-time text feed of adventures – is peppered with hashtag gags (“#needacure, #highlevelonly?, #LOLOLOL) and random overheard snippets from around town, but it mainly consists of bite-sized updates on your clients’ progress through their quests, along with their thoughts on what’s going down. The best comedy here, for me, came from the amusing disparity between some customers’ real-life behaviour and their Grindcast personas, which is Weapon Shop de Omasse’s one genuinely perceptive joke. Gibbering NPCs shitting themselves at the sight of a goblin is mildly funny the first time, but by three hours in it’s worn rather thin.
You’re nominally supposed to match up customers with their perfect weapon, judging by the quest at hand and their preferences which shiny piece of steel is right for them. I soon discovered, though, that it barely matters. Right up until the final stages of the game you can equip them with almost anything and they’ll still succeed 95% of the time. It’s as if Level-5 came up with the design for a rewarding and fairly complex weapon-rental system, then abandoned it.
Weapon forging itself, meanwhile, is also disappointingly shallow. Once you’ve forged two or three, you’ve seen it all: tap along with one of three pieces of music, and hope that the stat bonuses go up nicely. There’s a frustratingly inconsistent relationship between how well you perform in this minigame and the quality of the resulting weapon – tapping in perfect rhythm with no misses sometimes results in a decent weapon, sometimes only an average one.
It doesn’t really matter, as customers almost always seem to win their quests regardless, but for me making great weapons became a strange matter of personal pride, and it was extremely annoying to use all my best stat-buffing materials and hammer a spear out perfectly only to fall victim to random chance and come out with a weapon that’s the same as all the others. Customers sometimes come back with ores and other items that you can supposedly use in the forge for a stat boost, but I experimented liberally with these and they often made no difference. Of the three times I succeeded in creating a “masterpiece”, twice I wasn’t using ANY of them.
The problem with Weapon Shop de Omasse as a comedy game is that it’s not particularly funny. Indeed, some of its jokes are clangingly unfunny: one of the regulars is a giant lumbering man in an ill-fitting dress, the “joke” being that he’s a bit gay and is wearing a dress. The “aren’t JRPGs silly?” schtick lasts maybe an hour or two before it starts getting old. There are small mechanical irritations, too, like how long it takes to scroll through 94 different weapons looking for something specific to forge, and the way that you’re pulled straight out of the menus when someone walks into the shop, even if you were right in the middle of something.
Despite all of this, though. I felt compelled to play through the whole thing, all eight hours of it. And then I spent another hour getting all the different endings. I just wouldn’t really recommend that you do the same.
Verdict
Weapon Shop de Omasse is a comedy game that isn’t particularly good or even particularly funny, but it’s weirdly compulsive nonetheless. Part social-media pastiche, part menial-labour simulator and part interactive fiction delivered in bitesize chunks, none of its elements are much good on their own, but together they form an addictive cycle. It’s certainly different, but it’s also throwaway.
]]>That’s not to say that Revelations has suddenly become a bad game, as everything that’s good about it is still here. It’s still a return to the classic formula from the first several games in the series, and the stranded and brooding ship Queen Zenobia is still one of the best settings in a Resident Evil since the Arklay mansion. The cramped hallways in the depths of the ship aid the slow-paced suspense, with every corner a potential hiding spot for an Ooze monster.
The story doesn’t make much sense, but it’s baffling in that charming way that the series is beloved for. There’s over-the-top dialogue, absurd political conspiracy theories, and flashbacks to moments that rarely feel more than tacked on. That is, until they’re explained away in hilariously awful, yet somehow charming tie-ins near the end. (Read our original Resident Evil: Revelations review for more on that.)
This HD version shares all the problems its predecessor has, including noticeably limited enemy variety and weak allied AI that can't hit the broad side of a barn. Ironically, what actually makes this version feel inferior is the very thing it claims to improve upon. The graphics, which look stunning on that tiny 3DS screen, mostly look dated when blown up. Character models are the exception – they look great – but the environments are are full of flat, grainy textures to match the jagged, craggy geometry. And somehow, despite superior hardware, framerate issues still pop up in some of the more intense segments or when new areas are loading, across all platforms.
Surprisingly, it also suffers when played with an Xbox 360 gamepad, both on the Xbox version and when plugged into the PC version. Where Resident Evils 5 and 6 feel like modern shooters, Revelations' aiming simply doesn’t feel smooth with a gamepad stick. I found my aiming reticle frequently jerking around the screen in a series of overcompensating movements. That's a problem I never had with the 3DS's Circle Pad Pro. Played with the mouse, however, it handles surprisingly well.
Original Resident Evil: Revelations Video Review
Of course, even when controls are precise, the constant movement of the ship makes the cursor bounce all over the place, occasionally causing you to miss what was sure to be a clear shot. That uncertainty there gives a great sense of tension without feeling outright unfair, and that comes across just as well. Thus, I still found myself enjoying Revelations HD quite a bit, as all of the creepy atmosphere and quality scares aboard the Queen Zenobia are completely intact – and that's what I play Resident Evil games for.
Verdict
With its welcome return to classic-style horror action, Resident Evil: Revelations is very much worth playing in its HD form for its atmosphere and scares alone. However, if you’ve got the choice between the remake and the original, stick with the one you can carry in your pocket – this one feels a bit uncomfortable in its own skin.
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