Hollow Knight Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/19/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Hollow Knight

Developer: Team Cherry

Publisher: Team Cherry

Genre(s): Metroidvania, Soulslike

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch

Release Date: February 24, 2017

Indie and triple-A video games seem to be coexisting splendidly. Both types of studios in modern gaming are released as frequently throughout the year, both can be purchased on the same number of multiple modern platforms, and the critical accolades between the two budgetary factions seem to be dispersed evenly for those who are deserved, without any bias from any media outlets preferring one to the other. The video game landscape we live in is a flourishing melting pot where any gaming preference can be satiated thanks to the variety we now have at our disposal. Gaming has finally reached the same level of prosperity as the music and film industry, increasing the number of yearly releases from all over the globe as a result. With all of this in mind, however peachy the notion of gaming’s ubiquity is, it’s a wonder that the triple-A titans aren’t more concerned with how indie releases are creeping up on them. The kings of the medium such as Nintendo in the east and EA in the west have earned their thrones due to their significant influence and longevity, a factor that the indie kids can’t compete with due to their comparatively newer presence in the gaming landscape. Also, their more recognizable brands through building their immanence brick by brick over time allows these triple-A developers to spend a more extravagant budget with their release, arguably the most synonymous factor in what defines a triple-A game these days. Still, indie games are quickly moving in on their territory, but they don’t seem a bit perturbed. I guess the triple-A studios can confidently surmise that no matter how popular and acclaimed indie titles tend to be, a developer with a paltry budget can never compete with the length, spectacle, and bevy of content they can produce for one title. Therefore, the triple-A fat cats can rest comfortably knowing that they’ll always have the public in their pockets. However, one grandstanding indie game should have them sleeping with one eye open, and that game is Hollow Knight.

On the surface, Hollow Knight doesn’t seem like the ideal indie title to strike fear in the hearts of big business. Australian developer Team Cherry took their endearing flash game “Hungry Knight” and formulated it into a Metroidvania title upon its fully-fledged final release, along with changing the descriptive H word in the title to the more mystifying “hollow.” What would most likely make the legion of triple-A developers make an obnoxious chorus of *pshaws* upon hearing this description is that Metroidvania games are cheap and simple from a production standpoint. Despite the critical acclaim the genre has received, most Metroidvania titles seemed to have been relegated to the inferior hardware of the portable consoles that merely supplemented their console contemporaries, as the more modest capabilities of these handhelds felt more appropriately designed for the inherently 2D Metroidvania genre. It wasn’t until the eighth generation of gaming in the mid-2010s that the Metroidvania genre had a reinvigoration in the gaming landscape with indie titles like Axiom Verge and Ori and the Blind Forest. Suddenly, games in a genre associated with the limited perspective of yore were sharing the limelight with the grand 3D spectacles.

There are plenty of admirable entries in the new wave of Metroidvania games, but Hollow Knight possesses a specific attribute that these more traditional Metroidvania titles didn’t. What is this killer app that Hollow Knight weaves into the fabric of its gameplay? Dark Souls: the triple-A series that I’ve been touting as the gaming messiah for the 2010’s decade. Even though Dark Souls is produced by a triple-A company with the mechanical and graphical prowess of a game fitting the modern gaming standard, Dark Souls’ influences stem from the then unfashionable Metroidvanias, RPGs, and action-adventure titles of gaming’s yesteryears. This range of influences is most likely why Dark Souls was a crisp breath of fresh air in the triple-A climate that was injecting cinematics into the gameplay like botox fillers. One can infer that Dark Souls’ success contributed to at least a fraction of the revitalized spark of interest for the Metroidvania genre, as it was a triple-A game that infiltrated the mechanically milquetoast triple-A climate with a mix of a Metroidvania design philosophy and its own brand of idiosyncrasies. Because Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania that incorporates a hefty heaping of Dark Souls in its mechanics and world design, the game has a clear advantage over its peers. However, I must disclose that Hollow Knight was not the first title of the Metroidvania Renaissance to feature Soulslike characteristics, for I can hear Salt and Sanctuary clearing its throat to call attention to itself. Unlike Salt and Sanctuary, Hollow Knight isn’t merely a derivative Dark Souls clone with a regressive perspective shift. Hollow Knight’s deeper understanding of what makes Dark Souls an effective, gratifying experience is really what elevates its quality on equal standing with its primary influence.

While Hollow Knight may not feature graphics that rival James Cameron’s Avatar like the standards of modern triple-A titles, only someone who is legally blind wouldn’t describe Hollow Knight’s aesthetic as visually splendorous. Like fellow 2017 indie title Cuphead, Hollow Knight’s art direction is crafted with hand-drawn animation. If you thought illustrating a cartoon frame by frame was an absurdly cumbersome endeavor, imagine doing the same process with layers of overlapping binary code to contend with. For that integration alone, Team Cherry earns my sincerest sense of admiration. In saying that, Hollow Knight’s visuals still ascend past the novelty of simply showcasing this kind of uniquely painstaking artistic achievement. If I had to assign a specific style of Hollow Knight’s overall aesthetic, “twee goth” would be an accurate summation. A dour, defeated sense of melancholy permeates throughout the land of Hollownest. Still, the lurid, light-hearted animation on display sort of negates the garish and brooding aspects of a goth aesthetic while retaining that heightened sense of romanticism. Colors running the gamut of the rainbow are consistently portrayed in deeper hues to uphold that sensation of doom and gloom. This aspect of the visuals is certainly impressive considering the eclectic range of biomes that compose the country of Hollownest. Whether it be the twinkling twilight of the Howling Cliffs, the lush verdure of Greenpath and the Queen’s Gardens, to the ornate architecture of the City of Tears, a sublime beauty encapsulates the setting and leaves the player awe-stricken. Even the rank shithole of the Royal Waterways or the creepy, dark catacombs of Deepnest still exude a sense of wonderment. It could also be that light filter that gives each area an ethereal quality, but I think Hollow Knight’s visual achievements can be attributed to more than this simple implementation. More impressive is the acute attention to detail on display in Hollow Knight’s world. Backgrounds present a widespread scope of what looks like miles of its inhabitable stretches. Crystal Peak is situated between a massive geode of valuable pink gems that protrude from this high-elevation area of Hollownest. The Hive displays a valley of sweet honeycomb glimmering brightly in the distance. Both backgrounds are still illustrations that could fit appropriately in the finest of animated features like the stunning Disney’s Fantasia. In the foregrounds, not one speck of visual detail is compromised. Soil has never looked so rich and loamy in gaming, and one can even marvel at the fine craftsmanship of the manmade decor that comprises the City of Tears. Benches in real life can’t even compete with the detailed design quality of those in Hollow Knight. A less talented developer would’ve meshed the gradience between the foregrounds and backgrounds, but Team Cherry consistently balances the two to create an incredibly decadent, mystical world. Gorgeous doesn’t even begin to describe the graphics that Hollow Knight bestows.

The titular knight in Hollow Knight is also fitting for the charming and whimsical world he resides in. I can imagine the individual design for Hollow Knight’s protagonist being a particularly sensitive matter. In a game whose universe consists of a smattering of insect types, placing the wrong kind of creepy crawly at center stage for the duration of the game could’ve unsettled most players. The Knight, who I can assume is his official title since he does not have a canon name, is a perfect compromise that will not trigger any bug-related phobias. The scrappy little guy’s bug phenotype would confuse even the most experienced of entomologists, and that ambiguity is precisely what makes The Knight so appealing. The Knight’s character design is more akin to an amorphous ghost crudely attempting to take the form of an insect rather than one that exists in the natural world. That diminutive stature, the curved, white horns sticking out of his skeletal cranium, and the vacuous craters intended to be The Knight’s eyes encapsulate its state as a husk creature perfectly. Yet, all of these physical characteristics are also what make The Knight adorably charismatic, like a puppy who stumbles around while it walks. Memorable video game protagonists before the 2000s used to have something of a “mascot potential,” and I could imagine The Knight from Hollow Knight appearing on cereal boxes and as the model for gaming figurines and plushies alongside Mario and Sonic.

More important than his fun-sized stature and pale complexion is how The knight controls. Fortunately, The Knight wonderfully excels in this department. Combat in Hollow Knight is the simple slashing of The Knight’s “nail,” which The Knight unsheathes from his sidearm in a quick flash. Many Souls enthusiasts might decry the fact that The Knight is limited to this insectoid sword substitute as opposed to the bevy of blades at the player’s disposal in that series. Still, I can assure you that this shiny, sharp tool is more than enough for the duration of the game. The player will consistently assess every enemy encounter by the speed and distance of the nail and dodge accordingly until the enemy is dead. Once the dash move is learned, defense maneuvers during combat are made easier. Swiftly juggling attacking and dodging as The Knight is always a smooth process that makes the player feel like a masterful warrior. On top of slashing the nail horizontally, The Knight can also strike upwards and downwards to cover all necessary offensive angles. Performing the downward nail slash mid-air is also a common traversal tactic in tense platforming challenges in which the momentum is difficult to maintain. Perilous sections such as these are littered all over the foregrounds of Hollownest, and the player must use a combination of the dash ability, the adze-like Mantis Claw, and the extra lift of the Monarch Wings to dart through some of the tensest platforming segments seen in the Metroidvania genre. Fortunately, Hollow Knight is on the same scale of fluidity as the precision platformers these sections borrow from, as every mistake can honestly be chalked up to the player’s lack of tact rather than the game's technical incompetence. Roaming around the land and laying waste to its denizens feels so liberating because The Knight is such an acrobatic force of nature.

There are indeed simpler parallels between Hollow Knight and Dark Souls that don’t require extensive, borderline pretentious analysis to connect. Hollow Knight’s most applicable commonality with Dark Souls is its stiff penalty for dying. Checkpoints across Hollow Knight’s dense and diverse world are in the form of benches, the equivalent to the bonfires from Dark Souls where the player can contemplatively rest while their health is restored to its maximum capacity. Also like the bonfires, their position as checkpoints is strictly enforced when it comes to the player’s likely numerous deaths. Even if the player has trekked from one point of the map’s prime meridian to the other, if they weren’t observant enough to seek out a new bench or neglected to consider the ramifications of not resting at one, the game will automatically catapult the player back to the last bench miles away from where they were vanquished. Needless to say, it’s a real bitch to retread all that ground to restore one’s lost progress. To make dying seem more like starting from square one, another borrowed aspect from Dark Souls is that the player’s collective experience points materialize as a lost item at the player’s last dying spot to incentivize them to revisit their place of failure. In Hollow Knight, The Knight’s progress takes the form of a floating black spirit with an eerie musical cue indicating its presence. The shadowy effigy will even slash at The Knight like an unruly git, making the player feel especially pathetic when struck by it. Hollow Knight emulates the penalty system from Dark Souls competently, but it doesn’t have the same high stakes. Hollow Knight forgoes the RPG-leveling system from Dark Souls, so the player will retrieve their cumulative amount of Geo, Hollownest’s currency, when they defeat their floating phantom. Considering how vital experience points always are in Dark Souls to surviving the game’s brutal challenges, recovering the Geo needed mostly to purchase a few items in the early sections of the game doesn’t garner the same sense of urgency.

However, the state of being “hollow” in Hollow Knight after being torn asunder from their spirit essence feels like more of a handicap than it is in Dark Souls because the healing potential is halved. Hollow Knight’s healing mechanic is Team Cherry’s own creation, and it is one of the game’s standout mechanical attributes. In the top left corner of the screen situated alongside The Knight’s units of health like a bass clef on a sheet of music is the healing gauge. As The Knight strikes any type of enemy, a modest amount of a milky liquid I’ll just refer to as “bug juice” is stored in the gauge. It’s as if a factor of The Knight’s askew mortal coil gives him vampiric powers that allow him to literally drain the life force of his enemies. After accumulating enough of the translucent substance, The Knight expends the juice in the gauge, restoring a single unit of health by one-third of the gauge’s maximum. Dying will shatter the gauge in half and also make the stored gratuity of the three bonus reserves useless. Comparisons to the Estus Flasks from Dark Souls arise when observing how the healing system is practical in combat. Holding down the heal button in Hollow Knight requires a meditative state of brief stillness that leaves The Knight vulnerable to more damage, interrupting the flow of combat as abruptly, if not even more so, as taking a swig of estus in Dark Souls. Finding an opportunity to heal during a hectic boss encounter is one of the most harrowing occasions in Hollow Knight, and seeking out that narrow window factors into a boss battle as much as the chance to deal damage to it. Having the player’s potion amount coincide with their attack output is brilliant, as performing well in battle will consistently be rewarded with compensation. The underlying trick, however, is when to reap the benefits.

Being confined to one weapon doesn’t mean that there is no gameplay variation in Hollow Knight. The customizable aspect of Hollow Knight’s gameplay takes the form of charms, badges with their own special attributes. Charms are found across Hollownest with the same shimmering glow as any other item, and they can also be purchased from various merchants for a fee, namely from the flamboyant blob Salubra in the eastern corner of the Forgotten Crossroads. Charms can be equipped at any bench, and the player’s selection of charms coincides with the amount of “charm notches'' relating to an arbitrary cost. Increasing the total amount of charm notches can also be done by searching in hidden corners on the map as well as purchasing them from Salubra. However, Salubra will only deem The Knight worthy of possessing more charm notches if the player has a varied mix of them in their arsenal. It makes sense considering that only someone who uses these charms would warrant an addition to their capacity. I don’t know why someone wouldn’t bother with the charms because their aid makes a world of difference. The player can stack a selection of charms to make their nail as long as a rapier or increase The Knight’s rapidity to the point where they’re running circles around foes. One charm build will turn The Knight into a glass cannon, while another build will conversely assure that The Knight will never sustain even a scratch of damage. Mixing and matching the charms is the closest that Hollow Knight gets to a role-playing mechanic, something that certainly made the gameplay of Dark Souls invigorating. Like the myriad of builds correlating with the attributes in Dark Souls, not one combination is inferior to another as long as the player can use them to pave their path to success.

Using charms also comes recommended because Hollow Knight is quite a difficult experience. Comparing Hollow Knight to Dark Souls in every paragraph should have already implied this revelation, so be prepared to grit your teeth and schedule a confession time during Sunday mass to come clean about all of the unholy curses you’ll shout in the struggle. Tense combat combined with sparse checkpoints is one thing, but the third ingredient in the mix that really elicits dread is the intentional blindspots on the map. The crucial aid in excavating the sprawling lands of Hollownest is not something that is automatically generated. Once The Knight stumbles upon (literally) uncharted territory, they must find the map maker Cornifer who will sell The Knight his map of the area at a meager price. Where Cornifer is located in the area is anyone’s guess, which is why digging deeper into a new area without a reference can be daunting. Sometimes, he’s hanging out near an area’s soonest entry point. Still, because each area has so many intersecting pathways, the player will inadvertently unlock the entire map layout before encountering Cornifer. In times when the latter scenario occurred, I’d scramble frantically down every corridor in an attempt to find Cornifer, even if I found a bench that cemented my place here beforehand. Every time I discovered a trail of discarded papers that lead me to hearing Cornifer’s jaunty hum, I was relieved beyond words. Some may argue that forcing the player to roam around in the proverbial dark like this is unfair, but I find the process of finding the map and filling in the blanks after some organic exploration to be invigorating.

On top of scrounging about an individual area, there is still the overarching progression of Hollow Knight that comes with discovering every new area. Again, I must draw comparisons to Dark Souls because of the overlap in their approach to progression. Then again, Dark Souls shows clear inspiration from the Metroidvania genre in this regard, as one could make parallels between the quest to ring the bells and Metroid’s descent down a hellish rabbit hole. Dirtmouth, the tranquil hub of Hollownest, resides at the world’s peak as most areas of interest are located south like the docking grove of Crateria. Forgotten Crossroads and Greenpath are both appropriately more hostile than the respite place that they stem from, yet not enough to distract the player from delving into the game’s doleful tone. One could even compare Greenpath to the Undead Parish for how deceptively pleasant the area seems despite the challenges it poses. It is after defeating the central boss of Greenpath that the player is faced with a trifling dilemma with their intended trajectory. It’s more likely that the player will come across the jellyfish-filled Fog Canyon before the untamed wilds of Fungal Wastes as intended since it borders Greenpath. This area is not meant to be explored this early in the game, but the game judges that the player will come to this moment of clarity without overtly spelling it out for them like when Samus’s health disintegrates in Norfair or being bombarded by skeletons at the graveyard adjacent to the Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls. What tipped me off was the fact that Cornifer was locked behind an impenetrable black border and that the jellyfish cores dealt twice the damage upon exploding. I adore it when Metroidvania games present situations like these because they are indicative of the genre’s nuanced design that flirts with liberal progression confines.

City of Tears is the metropolitan capital of Hollownest The Knight finds next, and I can only assume it got that name from how morose the area looks with perpetual storm clouds constantly showering the area in rainwater. Any cityscape area in a Soulslike game would normally garner parallels to Anor Londo, but the City of Tears is not the pinnacle of The Knight’s first major quest. The City of Tears is easily the largest area of Hollownest, so the developers decided to have the player revisit a whole other district of the capital at any given point in a clever way to still establish that the city is an essential destination point. One could compare the City of Tears to Irithyll of the Boreal Valley because of its contrasting relationship with the Royal Waterways to the latter’s dungeon area, illustrating a dichotomy between fancifulness and filth in close quarters. The claustrophobic dankness of the Royal Waterways along with its neighboring webbed labyrinth of Deepnest definitely showcases that The Knight has profoundly plunged into the bowels of Hollownest. Soon after descending even further, The Knight must leap all the way back up past even the point of Dirtmouth to acquire an ability from Crystal Peak to finish his first quest. Sound familiar? Thank God for the determined stag beetles that The Knight can use as his transit system. They are the true heroes of Hollow Knight. Oh, and the more industrialized tramway that leads to the Resting Grounds where the second main quest is given is useful too, but that's a sensitive topic for the Stags

Once The Knight has sunk to the ground floor of Hollownest, they don’t find grandeur like arriving at Anor Londo. The deepest depths of Hollownest lead The Knight to the Ancient Basin, a sterile place that feels like The Knight has accomplished their arduous journey only because of how still everything is compared to the progressive hostility for every previous area. Beating the Broken Vessel here, an infected knight cut from the same cloth as the protagonist, is the middle point that starts the second half of the game along with arriving at the Resting Grounds. As anticipated, the overlapping quest in Hollow Knight’s second half almost mirrors the second half of Dark Souls. Using a sacred tool called “the dream nail,” The Knight must seek out three significant figures called “the dreamers” who have been locked behind a seal in their eternal cryogenic chambers and penetrate their subconsciousness. These three are located all across creation in Hollownest and can be approached in a non-linear order like the Lord Souls, signifying that the game has become significantly less restricted due to the progress made during the first half. The content of the second quest screams the first Dark Souls, but the resulting action reminds me of the midway point of Bloodborne when the moon takes a dip in a lake of blood. Lore and story are as superfluous to the overall Hollow Knight experience as it is in any FromSoft title, as the setting and atmosphere do enough leg work to immerse the player adequately. Any occurrence and how it pertains to the lore is only given context by the player’s own incentive to delve deeper. Still, it’s hard to ignore the terrible new condition of the Forgotten Crossroads in the second half of the game. The looming force of despair that has rendered Hollownest to its apocalyptic downfall is something called “the infection,” which takes the form of an overwhelming mass of pulpy, bulbous orange matter seen previously in the Broken Vessel fight. No longer is Dirtmouth’s first underground level a moody turnpike but the ghastly sight of a tumorous, tangy breeding ground of disease. The basic thugs and winged grunts that reside here are now more formidable and feral, combusting after being defeated to signify their unnatural state of existence. Thankfully, this infection is contained to Forgotten Crossroads and not the other areas as it would be tiring dodging the explosive impact of every downed enemy. As it is, the disastrous condition of the Forgotten Crossroads effectively illustrates how severe this infection is, making the player concerned for the wellbeing of Hollownest and what is going on behind the veil of vagueness.

Referencing Dark Souls for the umpteenth time, why should the player care if Hollownest succumbs to the debilitating scourge? Isn’t a heavy sense of nihilism supposed to be conveyed in its lugubrious atmosphere like Dark Souls? Despite the lingering sorrow expressed in Hollow Knight’s atmosphere, it does not stem from a place of futility. Unlike the sullen land of Lordran, we sympathize with Hollownest’s plague instead of treating the matter with contempt as if the land somewhat deserves it. This sympathy stems from Hollow Knight’s cast of NPCs that The Knight encounters on his journey. I’ve already expressed my fondness for the scribe Cornifer, and I’ll express the same for his weary wife Iselda that mans their shop in Deepnest. Sly is another merchant in Dirtmouth who is quite adept in nail combat. The other nail masters are the passionate sort, with the nailsmith requesting that The Knight slay him with the ultimate nail he receives from upgrading it to its fullest potential to feel the effects of the perfect weapon he's waited his whole life to forge. God damn, now that’s passion! The Grubmaster in the northern corner of the Forgotten Crossroads is very grateful for rescuing his cute little grub cubs, who are the game’s long-standing collectible. What he does with them all after The Knight collects them all I dare not spoil, for it’s as hilarious as it is shocking. Other NPCs are more nomadic like the overly eager warrior-wannabe Cloth and the masked pill bug Quirrel. These NPCs will aid The Knight sporadically for one boss fight, so their relationship with The Knight stems from a sense of respect. Then there are the NPCs whose side quest lines revolve around coming to their rescue, specifically the pathetic and ironically named “Zote the Mighty.” He obviously doesn’t see the irony in his name considering how brazenly arrogant the snot-nosed shrimp is. Saving him twice from the dangers of Hollownest only results in him scolding you for “interrupting his triumphant victory.” Batting around this whelp like a ping-pong ball in the Colosseum is pure catharsis. The only person who buys into his ego-fueled drivel is a timid bug girl named Bretta who The Knight saves from the southernmost corner of Fungal Wastes. Still, even the irksome NPCs are brimming with personality and charm. They’re much less cynical and caustic than the NPCs of Dark Souls, and even the exception of Solaire contracted the madness by the end of the game. Every NPC in Hollow Knight is precious and is the reason why Hollownest is worth saving.

Of course, I was going to go the distance to uncover the true source of the infection anyways because, like any solid Soulslike game, I wanted to experience every boss the game offered. Hollow Knight’s selection of bosses is an outstanding approximate of at least thirty. The most significant duel pertaining to the progression of the game’s story is against Hornet in Greenpath as you follow her through the green bramble patches. Hornet is Hollow Knight’s half-sister who is determined to protect the sanctity of Hollownest and test The Knight’s worth in aiding her on her mission. The dreamers themselves aren’t boss battles, but fights like the tanky Watcher Knight guards and the thick and gooey jellyfish Uummuu provide a challenge before the main quest objective can be accomplished. The mimic Nosk in the hidden crevices of Deepnest is downright creepy, and the Soul Master’s fake out leading to a second phase of his fight genuinely caught me off guard. The player’s adrenaline will be pumping during the God Tamer fight as it’s the pinnacle challenge of the exhausting final colosseum enemy gauntlet, and the gank boss dynamic between the man and his beast is as effective as Ornstein and Smough. My personal favorite fights in the game are the Mantis Lords and the Dung Defender for different reasons. The Mantis Lords are arguably the first true “brick wall” challenge of the game as the boss becomes progressively tenser as you memorize the patterns of three formidable mantises attacking you at once. Upon defeating them, you feel as if the newfound respect the mantis colony of the Fungal Wastes gives you for conquering their masters is entirely deserved. As for the Dung Defender, I can’t help but fall in love with the man’s jovial demeanor. I can’t judge him too harshly for his dirty hobby because of the pure, unbridled enthusiasm he expresses for it. In fact, he’s so damn charismatic that he’ll make you want to take a dip with him in the feces for a fun time. I feel remiss for the bosses I had to gloss over, for there isn’t a single dud in the bunch (except for Zote as a joke boss).

If the staggering number of bosses is too overwhelming for you, you’ll be relieved to know that most of them are optional. Now that I think about it, it’s amazing how much of Hollow Knight’s content isn’t consequential to finishing the game. Hollow Knight has the most liberal progression of any Metroidvania game I’ve played, taking the genre’s already loose parameters and making the main game seem bare bones without all those meaty additional objectives. Entire areas such as the Kingdom’s Edge and Queen’s Gardens can be totally omitted, along with tons of boss battles and side quests. I implore everyone to play Hollow Knight to its full extent because the game will not feel satisfyingly finished without it. The cumulative total of Hollow Knight’s full efforts will result in unlocking the game’s final boss and the source of the world’s contagion: The Radiance. If The Knight heads directly to the Temple of the Black Egg after murdering the dreamers in their ethereal headspace, they’ll fight the titular hollow knight. Although he’s important to the lore as a martyr for sealing away the infection, he’s a strangely easy final boss which might perplex some players. Only by fully filling the dream nail with essence and taking it down past the Ancient Basin to The Knight’s otherworldly birthplace known as “The Abyss” will The Knight don the Void Heart key to unveil the Radiance. The true final fight will occur if The Knight uses the dream nail on The Hollow Knight when pinned down by Hornet, and this avian demigod is as formidable as she seems. After absorbing the Radiance essence, the saddest of the multiple endings will occur as Hornet looks back on The Knight’s severed head laying cracked wide open on the ground. In Dark Souls, either ending puts the protagonist in a position of power no matter the outcome. Here, the death of the protagonist is the ultimate sacrifice that needed to occur in order to truly save Hollownest, something that the Pale King failed to realize in his attempts to merely shut the Hollow Knight in with the source. The other endings where The Knight either takes his brother’s place or joins him in his crucifixion-esque chains compound the cyclical nature of the problem instead of solving it. Where in Dark Souls there is no solution, the fact that Hollow Knight offers one at a great price shows the game’s sentimental, optimistic core as opposed to being trapped to endure endless despondency.

It might be irritating to some that I’ve spent every paragraph of this review comparing Hollow Knight to Dark Souls but hey, the writing is written clearly on the wall with graffiti. Despite how much Dark Souls makes up the foundation of Hollow Knight, the game is anything but a flavorless pastiche of Fromsoft’s series. Hollow Knight saw the building blocks made from the giant towers made from both Dark Souls and the Metroidvania games and built the Burj Khalifa out of them. Does this analogy connote that Hollow Knight eclipses its influences, making it the grandest example of its genre? Arguably, yes. Hollow Knight is a pristine experience without the same blemishes that marred its inspirations in every single aspect. Gameplay as rich as cheesecake is implemented in a breathtakingly bountiful world that beguiled me into going the distance to save it from utter destruction, and that world is filled with a bunch of bugs for Christ's sake! The fact that this masterpiece was developed by only a trio of people with a shoestring budget shows that there are gods among us, and they’re held up in a game studio in Australia. Hollow Knight doesn’t competently emulate its influences made by major developers: it blows them out of the water with an atomic bomb. Because of this, Hollow Knight is the Macbeth of indie gaming that could kill the kings of the triple-A industry.

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As if Hollow Knight wasn’t a complete package as is, Team Cherry once again exceeded all expectations of their humble three-person coalition to deliver a whopping four DLC packs to augment their magnum opus. Since I have the Voidheart edition of the game, all of the DLC content is implemented seamlessly with the base game. However, expounding on the DLC content with that of the base game would’ve made my review an unorganized mess. Still, Hollow Knight’s four extensions are worth mentioning as it comprises some of the juiciest nuggets of content the game has to offer.

Hidden Dreams: The first DLC pack involves revisiting the grounds of previously defeated bosses and using the dream nail to fight them once more, including the False Knight, Dung Defender, and Broken Vessel to name a few. A recurring theme in Hollow Knight is the dreamscape and how these nightly mental fabrications represent hope and confidence in one’s state of being. Because the surreal arena gives the person that extra dash of conviction, the dream state versions of these bosses are marginally more difficult than they are in reality. Dueling the likes of a quicker Dung Defender and a False Knight scaled for the end game is cool and all, but this reused content garners nothing but a moderate shrug from me. At least the game provides more alternatives for substantial essence harvesting if the dream bosses in the base game are giving you a hard time or something. The Knight will need a lot of essence to charge the new teleportation move with the dream nail, which I’m certain is going to piss off the Stags.

The shining moment of this DLC pack can only be accessed if The Knight frees Britta and Zote to the point where both of them are hanging out in Dirtmouth. Since Zote has returned to a point of safety, he has evidently had enough time here to take advantage of the fact that Britta has a lack of self-respect. All that pontificating has seeped into her dream realm, where all of Zote’s bullshit has manifested into a borderline offensive abomination called “Grey Prince Zote.” His full title contains about thirteen glowing descriptive words, but I refuse to submit to referring to him as such because he’s the antithesis of every word in it. For all the fellas out there who might be reading this, this boss is why confidence is key when talking to girls. Zote performing his usual routine of bolstering himself beyond his actual capabilities has worked wonders on Britta. Her mental image of him is like if Zote was crossbred with a beefy NFL linebacker, sitting in her luxurious purple chamber watching her knight in shining armor protect her from harm. His truck-like stature mixed with abusing the lack of physics found in the dream world to change the trajectory of his pile driver move actually makes this version of Zote one of the hardest bosses in the game. Of course, this scene is just plain wrong, so it should be sniped out of Britta’s mind for the sake of good taste. Once The Knight does this, I can’t help but guffaw at the minute detail of Britta lowering her eyes to signify that she now can barely stomach that Zote fucker like everyone else as he rambles on and on to her. Priceless.

The Grimm Troupe: Now we’re talking. The Grimm Troupe DLC pack offers a whole new side quest that is totally removed from anything in the base game. A set of strange characters will appear after unearthing a dead bug behind a cracked wall in the Howling Cliffs and igniting a fire in the dead bug’s lingering dreamscape. The leader of this troupe of weirdos is a debonair figure named Grimm, who requests that The Knight help him conduct a ritual in Dirtmouth. Before the ritual can commence, The Knight must charge a tiny Grimmling by defeating Grim Kin located on the map. The little Grimmling acts like a familiar from Symphony of the Night floating around The Knight, and the player beams with joy seeing the Grimmling grow up through the process like a proud parent. Once The Knight stuffs the Grimmling full of flame, Grimm decides to become a poncey stickler and test The Knight’s nail dexterity in a theatrical bout against him before he rewards you. Being the scoundrel he is, he gives The Knight nothing and doubles down by refusing to take his bright red eyesore of a circus tent and leave town.

Before giving him a piece of your mind, be forewarned that in order to make him skedaddle, you’ll have to fight the dream version of the previous fight aptly named Nightmare King Grimm. There are some boss fights across several kinds of video games that caused me so much grief, pain, and suffering that I believe I have a kind of gaming PTSD that makes me break out in a nervous sweat when someone mentions them. Laurence the First Vicar from Bloodborne, the Spider Guardian from Metroid Prime 2, and The Grim Reaper from the first Castlevania are just a few examples. If I had to choose a fourth herculean foe to erect a Mt. Rushmore of unrelenting bastard boss fights in gaming, Nightmare King Grimm would fit comfortably in Abraham Lincoln’s spot on the far right. Remember when I said that any charm build could potentially lead the player to victory? Well, that was total bullshit. Swell The Knight’s total health as much as humanly possible because Nightmare King Grimm will be damned if he lets you heal. Hell, he’ll hardly give the player any room to breathe. He's so goddamn fast that your eye can barely keep up with him. Yet, where I feel every boss from the other games I’ve mentioned can be criticized for design flaws, Nightmare King Grimm is still as bonafide as any other boss and a solid penultimate fight as the game’s challenge addendum. After three to four hours of avoiding his flames and spiky pillars, finally kicking his ass to the curb and ridding Dirtmouth of his presence made me feel more ecstatic than anything from the base game.

Lifeblood: Apparently, Hive Knight was not a boss in the base game and was added to the Hive area to spruce up an area that already (and unfortunately because it oozes wasted potential) felt like an afterthought from the developers. Hive Knight is a fine boss even if he sometimes feels like Hornet’s second fight with extra steps. Defeating him will reward The Knight with the defensive, regenerative Hiveblood charm, which was a lifesaver while trying to zip around the sawblades in the White Palace. Neato!

Godmaster: Team Cherry ostensibly felt sorry for the Royal Waterways in that there was barely any reason to return to it after reaching the Ancient Basin from it for the first time. Hence, why they gave The Knight a sacred key to open the realm of the Godmaster located on the western outskirts of the City of Tear’s sewer. If you thought the Colossum was the peak of endurance tests in Hollow Knight, the fourth and final DLC pack will make you forget about it in seconds. The golden, regal throne of the Godmaster involves The Knight fighting a gauntlet of the game’s bosses from both the base game and other DLC packs. There is a range of difficulty tiers like those seen in the Colosseum, and the collection of bosses coincides with their relative range of formidability (ie. the first one includes the Mosscharger and Venegefly King). The Knight is provided a hot spring with a bench before the gauntlet begins, but can only heal manually with their juice supply between bouts. The Nail Masters are pleasantly surprising as the final fights of each gauntlet, so Godmaster actually provides more than enough new content to entice the player. Godmaster was a fun challenge until the third or fourth gauntlet where Nightmare King Grimm was grouped with Grey Prince Zote AND an advanced version of the final boss called “Absolute Radiance” who is a mercilessly fast as NKG is. In the mortal words of Three Six Mafia, fuck that shit. I am content with being a mere mortal man and do not wish to entertain this charade that seems to be convinced that I’m some kind of divine being.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/14/2023)

[Image from wikipedia.org]

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Developer: Retro Studios

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): First-Person Shooter, Action-Adventure

Platforms: GCN

Release Date: November 15, 2004

Rejoice, fellow Metroid fans; for once Metroid Prime was released to mark Metroid’s debut in the third dimension, and the franchise didn’t crawl back under its dark, damp rock for another decade of hibernation. At least, this was the case for a while until Metroid once again upheld its reputation as the Snorlax of Nintendo’s franchises: massively conspicuous, yet disappointingly dormant. Nowadays, it’s uncertain whether or not Nintendo will follow up on Metroid’s third wind after another ten-year interval of silence, a worrisome state for Metroid fans everywhere. Back in the 2000s, however, it was a fantastic time to be a Metroid fan, as the tidal wave of Metroid Prime’s success reverberated for the duration of almost two whole gaming generations. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was the direct successor to the first game’s newfound glory, and the game was released in the time of a standard sequel as opposed to a whole life’s worth of events passing by the time Samus reappears. Metroid Prime 2 was also as exemplary a 3D Metroid title as the first, advancing what is typically a 2D game one polygonal space beyond itself and doing so masterfully. Yet, Metroid Prime 2 wasn’t met with the same level of awe-stricken delight, as the public merely deduced it as a sequel that fulfilled all of the expectations that the first game established. I suppose Metroid Prime 2 had an inherent disadvantage. People were no longer catastrophizing over the troubling notion of Metroid Prime’s American developers and their ambitions murdering the franchise in cold blood, but anything in Metroid Prime 2 couldn’t have been as astonishing as the first game since we had seen the template the developer referenced to craft it. Also, this was the first Metroid sequel on the same console as its predecessor, so both look and feel wildly similar to one another. Still, Metroid Prime 2’s sequel status meant that the game could relax and use the comparatively less pressured development period to do what a sequel does best: grease the loose screws from the first game that are still wobbly.

Because Metroid Prime is a direct sequel to the first game, the game’s events take place after the final resolution of the first game instead of flirting with their sequential releases in a Zelda-esque nonlinear timeline as the first Prime title did. However, most people who played the first Metroid Prime wouldn’t be able to even guess the opening conflict of the second game, as the sequel’s main antagonist was only revealed to those who had meticulously taken the effort to scrounge up every missile upgrade and scan an encyclopedia’s worth of Tallon IV lore. For those of you who felt content facing the final boss with a marginally less capable Samus, a being formed from the dark antimatter Phazon called “Dark Samus” rises from the wreckage of Metroid Prime’s demise. This shadowy apparition isn’t only referred to as “Dark Samus” due to her (it’s?) uncanny resemblance to the bounty hunter and dark complexion. The Phazon-fueled phantom is malevolence incarnate, with a mission of desecrating all natural life and causing Samus a lot of grief in the process. Dark Samus plans to enact a terrible catastrophe on the distant planet Aether, a place where Samus must trace the signal of a distress call. Aether used to be the thriving civilization of the human-moth hybrid creatures called the Luminoth, but have suffered an apocalyptic fate similar to the crumbled society on Tallon IV. The noxious threat to Aether is the Ing, tar-black bullies with parasitic natures so pernicious that it spells doom for any planet they come across. If the harrowing sequence displaying the Ing slaughtering an entire fleet of space mercenaries is any indication, the threat that they pose is tremendous. The Ing have all but wiped out the Luminoth people, except for one of their spiritual leaders named U-Mos who resides at the helm of Aether’s Great Temple. He instructs Samus to connect the other energy controllers located across Aether’s three other districts, for this unification will restore the planet’s vital energy source. While the premise of Metroid Prime 2 is eerily similar to that of the first Prime game, the Ing are a more tangible presence that makes them a more interesting force of great evil.

In order to cross the four invigorating streams of light in Aether, Samus must first find three keys that open the door to the dark version of that area’s temple. The Ing have usurped the energy from these temples, and Samus must retrieve the energy to the light world counterpart to the rightful Luminoth owners. This consistent collection process is a perfect segway to discuss Metroid Prime 2’s main improvement over the previous game, and that’s its level design and sense of progression. Backtracking is often perceived as a negative aspect of the Metroidvania genre and in gaming in general. While I’m often a staunch defender of backtracking, especially in the Metroidvania genre due to its specific design philosophy, roaming around creation in the first Metroid Prime admittedly did become rather tedious. Objectives were jotted on the map via signal transmission, and they usually led to retrieving one of Samus’s misplaced suit upgrades. The player had the freedom to meet this objective at their own pace, but the game often inhibited other paths of progression until the main one was met. Traversing to this plotted point on the map would often force the player to take the Bataan death march across Tallon IV’s five districts just to immediately make the same grueling journey back to where they were when given this objective to use the new upgrade. This frequent escapade is why the area of Magmoor Caverns became especially tiresome, acting as Tallon IV’s molten mezzanine. In Metroid Prime 2, individual objectives are endemic to the current area Samus finds herself, whether they be obtaining a gadget or finding the three keys to unlock the door where the dark energy controller is located. This is the standard level progression for each area, and the comparatively contained design makes the pinnacle objective feel more climactic with a satisfying sense of completion. All the while, each area is stacked with those rich Metroidvania elements that make the genre so enticing. Aether’s world map is also constructed like a pyramid, which means that each area has an elevator that conveniently leads to the others in the rare instances of backtracking. Samus will still receive notifications to guide her on where the next point of progression is, but they happen much less frequently, only when the game feels as if the player is hopelessly lost after straying from the intended route for some time. No longer does it seem like Navi has intercepted a satellite transmission that beams into Samus’s suit.

In addition to triumphing over the first Metroid Prime’s areas in terms of progression and overall design, Aether’s districts are also superior in their aesthetic merits. Each area of Tallon IV was visually stunning, especially for being the first three-dimensional rendering of a Metroid world. However, anyone who played Super Metroid will notice some eerie similarities between Metroid Prime’s areas and those of the franchise's then-last 2D outing. The Tallon IV overworld was another watery grove as Crateria where Samus felt comfortable using the area as the docking bay for her ship in assuming that the only force of nature attacking the spacecraft is the inclement weather. Magmoor Caverns almost proves that Metroid cannot refrain from implementing a claustrophobic area revolving around dodging pools of lava similar to the classic example of Norfair. Metroid Prime 2 proves that the franchise isn’t a one-trick pony in crafting areas in outer space that are appropriately tense and imposing. Right off the bat, it’s difficult to describe the topographical layout of the Temple Grounds. The perimeter outside of the Great Temple that intersects every other area at different angles is an arid canyon composed of some borderline expressionist architecture caked in layers of insect webbing and eggs. The atmosphere the aesthetic conveys is not the same as the long period of decay since prosperity like in the Chozo Ruins. Rather, it feels like Samus has found herself in the beating heart of some extraterrestrial insect hive. It’s difficult to discern whether or not the area looks this way from the Luminoth’s initial design, or whether this is now the breeding grounds of the lesser creatures that inhabit the area because of how barren it has become. It’s a far cry from the placid wetlands where Samus usually keeps her vessel in and if I were her, I’d worry about returning to it entangled in a ball of web the size of a boulder.

The rate of deviation Temple Grounds makes from Metroid area tropes may seem compromised by the following Agon Wastes and Torvus Bog, seeing as they share strong similarities to the areas from the previous Metroid Prime. However, this is merely a surface-level observation. At first glance, Agon Wastes recalls the sandy remains of the Chozo Ruins, with Aether’s own new line of scavengers taking advantage of their desolate ecosystem. Torvus Bog is yet another Metroid wetland situated in the far west region of Aether, making us all wonder why Samus didn’t choose to rest her spacecraft here as usual. Upon exploring these districts of Aether, the initial comparisons stemming from their aesthetics will shift to comparing both of them to Phendrana Drifts. The snowy peak of Tallon IV showcased a particular design in which the frost that covered the organic, breathtaking outside contrasted with the hazardously dim corridors of the Space Pirate Laboratory, and both sections of the area were of relatively equal space. Entering Agon Wastes from the Temple Grounds presents the vast desert wasteland which seems even more sterile than the former Chozo metropolis. After excavating through the land’s rocky cliffs and strangely translucent, holographic foliage, the good ol’ Space Pirates have made their presence known by erecting another laboratory on Aether that houses the same breed of metroids found on Tallon IV. Persistent bastards, aren’t they? Agon Wastes chooses the best-designed area from the previous Prime title to introduce another dune-oriented district instead of replicating the one we were already acquainted with, along with improving on its inspiration by making the area more navigable with a more circular layout. That, and we can all be grateful that the laboratory here never loses its power source, so Samus doesn’t have to wander skittishly through the dark. Underneath the marshy surface of Torvus Bog is the area’s hydrochamber, a pumping station submerged almost entirely in the brackish backwash of the bog’s constant drizzle. While the parallels between how Torvus Bog borrows from Phendrana’s design are less obvious than Agon’s, the contained industrialized section of the hydrochamber still rivals the perimeter presence of the overworld. Also, the Grenchlers are more viscous versions of the Sheegoths in a temperate climate. The one area in Metroid Prime 2 that draws no direct comparisons is Sanctuary Fortress, and its sheer originality makes it the stand-out area of Aether. This cybernetic city in the sky is arguably the most futuristic section of any Metroid game. An electric, neon aura permeates through its abstract aesthetic, and its architecture with wide chasms and a series of elevators makes its overall design just as convoluted. Even though looking out on the lights below the area contradicts its placement with the rest of Aether, it only heightens its intended magnificence. Aether’s muted color tone also gives it more character and aids in the cohesiveness of the world as opposed to the varied level tropes seen across Tallon IV’s districts.

Of course, the most essential dichotomy illustrated in Metroid Prime 2 is the one between Aether’s light and the dark realms. Not since A Link to the Past has Nintendo implemented this dynamic as a method of dividing a game’s world and narrative with this classic contrast. Unlike A Link to the Past, Metroid Prime 2’s dark world does not comprise the harder second half of the game, and the surreal weight of this otherworldly dimension does not transform Samus into her fursona either. In fact, Samus must consistently work with both the light and dark realms in conjunction with one another after she finds the first portal in the Agon Wastes early in the game. Shifting the light and dark worlds throughout the game highlights a layered relationship between both realms. For example, a bridge in Torvus Bog is inconveniently facing the direction opposite the door needed to progress through the area. Only by warping over to the dark world and activating the switch with a power bomb will the bridge turn to the optimal direction. A similar progression sequence occurs in the hydrochamber when Samus must change the trajectory of a laser in the dark world to erode the earthy rock obscuring a passageway. Dead ends in the light world will often be exceeded via visiting the dark world and its slightly deviated map, and the dark world possesses just as many hidden items and upgrades with its indigo-hued map. The developers put in the extra effort to present a deeper connection with the two opposites of Aether besides lazily making the dark world an exact replica but with an aesthetic of being baked alive in an antimatter pressure cooker.

Given that the dark world connotes a sense of evil dissidence, it should be evident that Aether’s dark side is more difficult to traverse than its realistic counterpart. Retro Studios has paved Metroid Prime’s difficulty curve after the first title hit a gaping pothole in the Phazon Mines. Every subsequent area encountered in Aether is reasonably more challenging than the previous one, even if there are some interspersed sections that will still cause some ire. The dark world, on the other hand, manages to have a waning difficulty curve opposite of the standard one in the light. At first, the insalubrious air of the dark world will corrode Samus’s health as quickly as if she slipped and fell into the lava of Magmoor Caverns. Fortunately, the developers decided to aid the player in this brutal atmosphere by implementing domes of light that cover a limited radius of the ground that steadily restores Samus’s health. Whether or not the source of light is a fleeting burst or supported by a crystal with constant illumination, Samus will be forced to shelter herself from the elements of Aether’s bizarro realm in order to survive. While I appreciate the consideration of this safety net by the developers, I’m sure every player nursed the dark world’s health pools like charging a phone’s battery. If the opportunity to fully replenish one’s health is readily available, then I’m going to relish that advantage, even if I embarrassingly realized that the reason why I felt these spots of respite were tedious was because of my insistence on abusing them instead of any real gameplay fallacies. Still, the need to use these enclosed light bubbles as umbrellas become less necessary as the game progresses because adapting to the pernicious environment is often an automatic reward. Samus’s suit upgrades will grant her more durability, as her health will deplete at a more leisurely pace. At the end of the game, U-Mos will grant Samus total invulnerability to the dark world’s poisonous air quality, a satisfying conclusion to the game’s central difficulty arc. Still, couldn’t he have made Samus impenetrable at the beginning, which would’ve been more practical for his dire situation? Is that Glinda the Good Witch in a moth costume?

The dichotomy between light and dark in Metroid Prime 2 is such a pertinent theme that the game even weaponizes it. Gone are the elemental beams accompanying Samus’s standard blaster on the C-Stick from the first game. Instead, Samus uses two separate beams that expunge dark and light energy respectively, with the late game “annihilator beam” combining the two like a chocolate-vanilla swirl. As to be expected, the light beam is super effective against enemies that reside in the dark world, and the same goes for the dark beam in the light. These two beams aren't as balanced as they might seem, however. The primary reason for this is due to both beams having ammunition as opposed to the inexhaustible power of the beams in the previous Prime game. Replenishing ammo is made uncomplicated by simply using the opposite beam on an enemy or cache, but my main grievance with the new beams stems from their utility of them. Naturally, the light beam will be used in most circumstances in the dark world as the Ing’s kryptonite because these enemies here are far more formidable in an environment that is already draining Samus’s health just by standing around in it. In the light world where the enemies are less daunting and the base environment leaves Samus intact, why would anyone expend their dark beam ammo when the regular blaster works just fine? Using the dark beam only comes recommended in the tensest of circumstances. I can’t help but be amused at the irony of how unbalanced the intended yin-yang relationship is between these two beams. Later in the game, color-coordinated enemies are introduced to force the player to use the beams equally, but it feels very shoehorned. It’s also irritating that I’m forced to use ammo to open the light and dark blast doors. Again, ammo is plentiful, but I must gripe about the unfairness of it like an old man seeing a tax on his bills that wasn’t there before.

Fortunately, the alternate beams from the first Metroid Prime are the only weapons that have been replaced. Every one of Samus’s gadgets such as the missiles, power bombs, and grapple beam make their return after they proved to be functional in the third dimension. Showcasing all of Samus’s handy tools in the first Metroid Prime was rather impressive seeing them in a whole new dimension, but that initial wonder diminished upon seeing them again here. Lest we forget the tools in Samus’s inventory that were omitted in the first Prime game, for the developers figured they would’ve been too obtuse to translate. I’m happy to report that Retro Studios took another chance at those items and have now rendered them successfully. The most glaring omission from Metroid’s leap to 3D was the absence of the Screwattack, Samus’s end-game whirlwind weapon that weaponizes Samus’s somersaulting while defying the laws of gravity. This upgrade’s utility in Metroid Prime 2 is mostly used for traversal rather than combat, as the perspective shifts like it does when Samus is in ball form as Samus can glide for five energetic long jumps. While the Screwattack here does not make Samus into a force of pure destruction, soaring over chasms with some expertly timed jumps still exudes that feeling of power. The often wonky wall-jump mechanic coincides directly with the Screwattack as the same precision is needed to hop from side to side in only a couple of scenarios. I’m just happy that they managed to implement these competently to achieve the rounded Metroid experience in 3D.

Metroid Prime 2 also adds plenty of new items and upgrades besides the dueling beams. Samus’s missiles have always been able to be fired in bulk with the Super Missile, yet they’ve never had the rapid-fire power of Samus’s standard beam. That is, until Metroid Prime 2 introduced the Seeker Launcher, which uses the 3D targeting system to lock on up to five missiles at multiple targets. Because the action in Metroid Prime is quick, standing still in order to lock onto multiple enemies is completely impractical, so the Seeker Launcher is disappointingly intended mostly for opening a few special doors. The Gravity Boost upgrade that allows Samus to move flexibly underwater without the liquid weight now comes with the added perk of a jet pack of sorts that boosts Samus upward for a short time, something greatly appreciated in Torvus Bog’s hydrochamber. The Thermal Visor has been replaced with the Dark Visor which reveals hidden platforms and enemies. It’s quite nifty when dealing with the frequent encounters with the Dark Pirate Commandos, infected Space Pirates who serve as the equivalents to the Chozo Ghosts who are arguably more irritating due to their increased durability. The Echo Visor is interesting enough, but I still scratch my head at its contradictory simple, and complicated uses in unlocking doors. Metroid Prime 2’s upgrades are a mixed bag of improvements and odd implementations that should’ve been considered a bit better.

Whether or not the item at hand is old or new, they are all locked behind a boss battle. The full extent of the Ing’s thievery sets up this game’s premise of Samus suddenly being deprived of all her fancy gadgets, this time recollecting them with a vengeance. The developers evidently thought that even though they mitigated the backtracking from the first game, the player still had to earn these upgrades somehow while simultaneously compensating for the paltry number of bosses in the first Prime game. Unfortunately, the smattering of bosses on display here reinstates a warped difficulty curve that the levels managed to avoid and is the true source of frustration with Metroid Prime 2. The first egregiously stiff boss battle in the game is the Boost Guardian, a standard Ing enemy who uses Samus’s ball accelerator to erratically ricochet around the arena. The most challenging factor of this fight is that there are no light pools to heal Samus anywhere, leaving her uncomfortably vulnerable. The dominant Alpha Bogg at the core of the hydrochamber provides the slimmest window of opportunity to damage him, charging Samus with violent impact and punishing the player severely for trying to correct their mistakes by dodging. The Spider Guardian is a boss situated entirely in a series of ball-form tracks, and the unfair precision and time needed to zap the rolling bug are what makes this fight a fucking nightmare. I’d like to put the Spider Guardian in a tube and shove it up the ass of the developer responsible for this fuckness and see how he likes the boss battle playing out in his intestinal tract. It doesn’t help that failing on the two previously mentioned bosses sends Samus back to a save room miles away from the encounter to add insult to injury. Yet, The Power Bomb Guardian boss after the Spider Guardian is insultingly easy. The bosses that have snatched up Samus’s upgrades might be a sign that the quality bosses of the first game were more adequate than the quantity of them seen here. Fortunately, Metroid Prime 2 still provides top-notch bosses with the penultimate area bosses guarding the dark energy controllers, with the arachnid android Quadraxis providing an engaging level of deep circuity that makes his fight delightful.

Still, each boss in Metroid Prime 2 is inherently lower in precedence compared to Dark Samus. She’s a looming shadow over our protagonist in a deeper sense than just her supernatural state of existence, and the game conveys this throughout the game. Samus first fights her enigmatic doppelganger as early as Agon Wastes, where her stature is relatively equal to Samus with a few unique tricks to throw the player for a loop. At the Sanctuary Fortress, Dark Samus becomes more daunting as she’s much more difficult to take down. It’s interesting to see that Samus’s rival is gradually getting stronger in tandem with the player’s progression with Samus. Still, the slight unpredictability she puts on display in her encounters implies that Dark Samus still has one slight leg up on Samus, retaining that sense of dread with seeing her. After another tedious excursion of obtaining nine keys to open the door to the final boss in a quest that mirrors the one from the first game, Dark Samus even eclipses Emperor Ing as the game’s final challenge, and the grand poobah of the sludgy pests will make the player splurge all of their dark and light ammunition. Unlike the colored signals that signify Emperor Ing’s points of vulnerability, Dark Samus is so unpredictable that she’ll leave the player in a state of panic as her weapons do middling damage to her at best. That, and the classic Metroid escape timer has been reinstituted and is counting down rapidly during the fight, putting an insane amount of pressure on the player like no Metroid game has ever done before. Even when the player figures out how to damage Dark Samus, good luck trying to absorb all of her Phazon blasts without damaging Samus in the process. This frenzied fight is a perfect way to cap off the powerful rivalry between the two Samuses, and the only appropriately difficult final duel for the most difficult Metroid game.

My last statement might introduce a new argument to the table that needs addressing: is Metroid Prime 2 the hardest Metroid title. Was its elevated difficulty intentional on the part of the developers, and is that what gives it the clear advantage as the quintessential 3D Metroid game? I can’t definitely answer the first question, but I must state a clear nay to the latter. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is on equal standing with the first game on its own merits, which stems from both positives and negatives. Retro Studios improved upon so much from the previous game but steered too far from a few aspects that were so strong in the first Metroid Prime. When I gripe about the world design and the steep arch that is the Phazon Mines, I start to commend the second game for making its world design more accessible and building a more accommodating difficulty curve around it. At the same time, being slaughtered by an unfair boss battle and using ammunition to open a door makes me yearn to return to the simpler times on Tallon IV. Debating whether or not Metroid Prime 2 surpasses its revolutionary predecessor always reaches an impasse. Still, the fact that Retro Studios could replicate their enormous achievement in gaming again while also making it indiscernible from their last game is extraordinary in itself.

Gato Roboto Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/12/2023)

[Image from igdb.com]

Gato Roboto

Developer: doinksoft

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Genre(s): Metroidvania

Platforms: PC, Switch, Xbox One

Release Date: May 30, 2019

What seems to be the key ingredient to succeeding with any new intellectual property? Put a fluffy little animal front and center. It could be a dog, rabbit, or even an alpaca to cater to that niche audience of irreverent hipsters and or the vital Latin-American demographic. But really, it’s best to stick with a domesticated creature, and which fluffy animal seems to have tapped into the collective consciousness the most efficiently? Cats. The little buggers have persisted as the dominant pet in the entertainment landscape. Also, there seems to be a prevailing trend of interest in putting furry animals in mechanical marvels like mech suits. Is it the dichotomy between the size of the cat and the mech that grasps people’s interests, or is it the pairing of something cute, organic, and mostly harmless with something horrifyingly cold and destructive? Whatever the core appeal is, indie Metroidvania title Gato Roboto shamelessly taps into this phenomenon by placing a cute little kitty in the most futuristic of kinetic death machines (and the clever wordplay in the title also grips that bankable Latin-American demographic as well. Nicely done). The question that remains is if Gato Roboto can still craft something of substance while showcasing this arguably cheap gimmick as the crux of its foundation.

Surprisingly, a cat piloting a mech suit as the premise for a game is an inspired decision. That is, it would be a downright laughable one if it were the premise of a game in any genre other than Metroidvania. It’s been well documented that Metroid’s primary influence is the iconic 1979 science-fiction horror film, Alien, hence the female protagonist persisting through the darkest crevices of a hostile space environment with indescribably terrifying creatures galore to contend with. While Ridley was an obvious case of main character syndrome in her respective horror film, she wasn’t the sole survivor from that mission like the annals of pop culture have often wrongfully noted. Lest we forget that an adorable orange tabby cat named Jones (nicknamed “Jonesy”) used his small size and his advanced cat-like nimbleness to evade the Xenomorph and escape with Ripley. Given that this cat managed to cross the proverbial finish line of survival with the movie’s only notable human character, I’d say that cats have proven themselves to be competent space warriors. Kiki, the eponymous “gato,” crashes her master Gary’s spacecraft on an alien planet after he receives a distress signal. As either a punishment for wrecking his ship and or an excuse to sit on his lazy ass and cheer from the sidelines, he tasks Kiki with trekking out to find the source of the dissonance.

Gato Roboto’s visual style presents an interesting idea. Many Metroidvania titles obviously ape the core design philosophy of Nintendo’s flagship science-fiction series, but Gato Roboto almost begs the question: “what if the Metroid series began with the first game’s protagonist as a mirror of Jones instead of Ripley?” Gato Roboto delves into this deep hypothetical with its intentionally minimalistic aesthetic. Most Metroidvania games are inspired by Super Metroid rather than its NES predecessor because the latter was so primitive that it would be more appropriate to refer to it as a treatment for the genre rather than a rough draft. Yet, one saving grace from the first Metroid game was that its rudimentary minimalism exuded the sparse eeriness of space effectively, even if it was inadvertent on the developer’s part. Before Gato Roboto, I had never played another Metroidvania game that tapped into this deferred aspect of Metroid’s makeup. However, Gato Roboto decided to approach this minimalistic factor from Metroid with black and white pixels, since 8-bit graphics had become kitsch in the years before its release. Nothing is prominently defined here on this space station Kiki finds herself, and the prevailing darkness of the background with the ghost-white properties of the foreground evokes that same sense of isolation and confusion as the first Metroid did.

Gato Roboto doesn’t only borrow assets from the first Metroid game. It seems that Gato Roboto has taken a helping from the underrated GBA title Metroid Fusion in how the game approaches its level progression. Similar to that game, the hub of the facility branches down to five distinctive areas: the aqueducts, the heater, the ventilation, and the incubator. The final path will take Kiki to the laboratory, but a sentient supercomputer will lock this area from Kiki until she completes the missions in the other ones. Each area is distinctive enough, but I remember criticizing Metroid Fusion for using this type of progression. I think that Gato Roboto can get away with this form of streamlined progression because it's a new IP, and it doesn’t have to meet the colossal standards that a pioneering icon like Metroid does. That, and the game never explicitly points to a direct objective on the map, spoon-feeding progress at every waking moment. Gato Roboto still respects the player’s intelligence and allows them to become acclimated to the Metroidvania staple of using the map as a consistent point of reference. If the game insisted on not having a map as a call back to the first Metroid game not having one, that would be a differently dreadful story. Also, like with any competent Metroidvania, exploration will also reward Kiki with health upgrades and cassette tapes that not only grant the player additional color pallets for the game’s graphics but a certain number of them can be traded for weapon upgrades.

Blaster Master, another NES contemporary to Metroid whose place as an early Metroidvania title is more contentiously disputed, is also an evident influence on Gato Roboto. Simply put, Kiki can exit the mech and roam around the grounds with her own gameplay mechanics like the protagonist of that game. Although Kiki might need to exit the mech to crawl through the tight spaces of ventilation shafts or prove that cats can swim if they are coaxed into it out of a desperate situation, leaving the suit behind comes with a severe caveat. Kiki’s naked state will render her completely vulnerable to enemy harm, and she’ll be decimated in one hit which sends the player back to the nearest save room. This dynamic between all three gameplay modes in Gato Roboto is a constant that shakes up the Metroidvania gameplay. The mech suit is the only one of these granted with consistent upgrades, but its capabilities never superseded the use of Kiki or the submarine mech used for underwater combat. Gato Roboto’s variation between the three modes is somewhat refreshing in a genre where one character gradually becomes the almighty being of power and traversal by the end with all upgrades on hand. Even with this dynamic dividing the aptness of the modes, Gato Roboto is still on the easier side of the spectrum thanks to save rooms being littered all over the facility.

Enemies in Gato Roboto are easily dealt with because they are all animals with weak defenses against laser blasts and rocket launches. However, there is one rat whose various machines serve as the game’s more formidable bosses. He appears with a new deadly device for each area, and his encounters are the only source of challenge the game provides. As the story progresses, the player becomes privy to how this mouse has the supernatural ability to talk and where his persistent vindictiveness for Kiki stems from, for it’s actually not just a cheeky point of subversion of predator and prey. Throughout the game, Kiki finds audio logs like Bioshock where a mad scientist details the struggle of preserving the life of his sick dog. Apparently, the beacon that sent Gary’s ship crashing down was a ruse from the mad scientist to enact his evil plan of swapping bodies with Gary, for his consciousness is currently trapped in the rat. After he succeeds with Gary, the mad scientist also has plans to swap his dog’s consciousness for Kikis. He fails in one epic final duel with Kiki, but Gary’s body is never recovered. Who knew a game starring a cat in a mech suit could also have an interesting plot with a sympathetic villain?

To conclude my thesis that wondered if Gato Roboto was more than the sum of its parts, the answer is a clear yes. Gato Roboto is an excitingly fun Metroidvania that harkens back to the genre’s minimal roots while presenting enough deviation from the genre’s tropes to craft something refreshing. Some may decry it’s too short and easier than most Metroidvanias, but I think the compact experience is more short and sweet than fleeting. It’s a game with a cat in a mech suit, for god’s sake. Lighten up and live a little.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/5/2023)

[Image from igdb.com]

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): Adventure, Visual Novel

Platforms: GBA

Release Date: October 11, 2001

There’s an old joke about video games that mostly older generations make about the potential of what could be a video game. It’s not a wondrous speculation that stems from genuine interest. Rather, it’s to point out the ridiculous notion of gamifying anything under the sun and producing it as something to stimulate children (or adult gamers, but many of these people believe that video games are solely for children). An example of this that springs to my mind is the one from a season five episode of The Simpsons where chubby poindexter Martin Prince is playing an arcade adaptation of Louis Malle’s 1981 film My Dinner With Andre, and he’s so enamored by it that he vocalizes the “tell me more” option as he triggers it in response to the game’s dialogue. If you don’t get the joke, the entirety of the film is two urbane middle-aged men having a conversation without leaving their restaurant table, which would seem like a boring premise for a video game. I didn’t understand this joke as a kid, but it garners a fair chuckle from me as an adult. Still, the baby boomers on The Simpsons' writing staff thirty years ago pose an interesting question, even if their intention was to make a glib jab at the expense of the medium. Is there anything too mundane to mold into a video game? Shouldn’t they all have at least a modicum of physical activity to hold the player’s attention? Certainly, not all video games feature kooky adventures, platform-hopping, and buckets of blood gushing from the necks of monsters and aliens. In 2001, Nintendo gamified menial labor to great acclaim in Animal Crossing and in that same year, Capcom did the same for the court processions with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

What exactly is the appeal behind Ace Attorney? If C-SPAN is any indication, what goes on behind the giant swinging, ivory doors of a courtroom on a daily basis can serve as a makeshift substitute for Nyquil. Not every legal case is as electrifying as something like the OJ Simpson trial. Then again, simply prying into the machinations of a particular vocation might not be exhilarating in real life, but that doesn’t mean that our media hasn't embellished it to the point of sheer entertainment. Television legal dramas like Law and Order and Boston Legal have persisted on the airwaves because the writers have sensationalized a facet of court cases: the mystery behind the crime. Typically, the outcome of most court cases is fairly cut and dry. If they aren’t, the media will have a field day covering it on a national scale to distract us from our uneventful lives, and these usually come around once every five years. In the world of legal fiction, every case that bursts through the courtroom is rife with conspiracy and fraud, and the true culprit lurks in the shadows while the detectives try to unweave the web they’ve made that the innocent defendant is stuck in. Ace Attorney revels in dissecting the thick layers of a legal case seen on these television shows and the dramatic tension that permeates every scene, and the game is consistently engrossing because of it.

The first entry in the Ace Attorney series also introduces the former two words in the
title before the colon. The honorable Mr. Nick “Phoenix” Wright is the main protagonist of the first three Ace Attorney games, and his role as such in the series' debut title has made him the de facto central figure for the franchise, even if Capcom has shelved him in favor of giving other up-and-coming defense lawyers their time in the spotlight. For the time being, the player’s first time vicariously playing a lawyer is also Phoenix’s courtroom debut. Here, he’s a fresh-faced rookie straight out of law school’s birth canal, ready to show the legal world his capabilities. Behind that snazzy ocean-blue suit and his striking hairdo with enough gel coated in it to make it rival a porcupine's quills, he’s a ball of nerves with a dearth of self-confidence due to his lack of experience. Because of his amateurish proclivities, the first Ace Attorney title is somewhat of a coming-of-age story. It’s the origin of how this plucky, dedicated young man became a respected man of the law. Putting the game’s protagonist at the same beginner level as the player in finding those juicy contradictions in the court fosters a perfect growth curve.

This is precisely what the player will be doing from the start of Ace Attorney. It was a wise move from the developers not to have rookie lawyer Phoenix Wright slumming it in divorce court for his first trial and working his way up the ranks. The first case of the series starts Phoenix Wright on his legal career with a murder trial defending his idiotic, unfortunately-named childhood friend Larry Butz (I’m sure the correct pronunciation is Byootz) from the accusation that he bludgeoned his girlfriend with a clock modeled like a statue. The first case sets a precedent for the rest of the game as every case is a spicy murder mystery, something to hold the player’s attention as firmly as a legal drama show (sans any rape cases because the game isn’t allowed to be too graphic). However, the first murder case dials down its spice level to acclimate the player to the court process. The real murderer, the accuser Mr. Sahwit, is seen committing the crime before the court case to give the player a clearer perspective on how to engage the trial. Not to mention, Sahwit would look guilty of something even if you saw him walking around the block minding his own business, sweating profusely enough to melt the glue holding the toupee on his head. Mia, Phoenix’s sensei in the defense department, is also holding Phoenix’s hand throughout the entire trial to direct the player on the right path. The first case is essentially a glorified tutorial, easing the player into the game’s mechanics with a case easier to probe than a cow abducted from a crop circle.

What exactly is the key to success in proving the innocence of the accused? Evidence, and lots of it. The first case will provide all of the relevant pieces of interest pertaining to the case for your perusal. After that, Ace Attorney introduces the other half of its gameplay that has as much precedence as the court hearings: procuring the evidence. Every time a murder occurs, Phoenix Wright will spend the day walking on the town trying to find potential clues to gain an advantage in the next trial. Considering this job is usually the responsibility of a detective, is this legal scavenger hunt ethical for an attorney? There’s nothing explicitly stated in the rulebook that he can’t take it upon himself to scrounge up evidence, so being thorough is what gives Mr. Wright the edge over his opponent in court. Every day begins at his office, and the natural course of action afterward is to visit his current client down at the Detention Center for some questioning. Depending on the information given by the culprit in holding, Phoenix will head to the crime scene, and the player will use the “examine” option in the menu to summon a magnifying glass. Anytime the player skims over a relevant clue at the scene, the magnifying glass will turn gold to signify that the particular object might be important. If it is, Phoenix will store the object in his inventory and whip it out during the next trial if the opportunity strikes. Even when Phoenix has seemingly cleared out every possible trace of suspicion to use at his disposal, his job isn’t done after his meticulous effort. Evidence also has to be obtained by talking to suspects, supposed witnesses, and fellow legal peers through conversing with them. Sometimes, presenting evidence to them is the only method of making these various NPCs cooperate, so it’s important to pay attention to the sequence of events. However, as the day progresses, the evidence-gathering process gets a bit cumbersome. By the end of the day, Phoenix is probably a haggard mess, sprinting back and forth between ten to twenty different locations and speaking to a cast of NPCs to stringently progress through the day. To make the player seem like they are straining themselves by walking all over creation, the list of notable locations is not organized very conspicuously in the “move” menu. The correct destination will at times be buried in layers of another as each room gets its own designation. While adhering to a direct course of progression between all these jumbled areas can get hectic, I ultimately believe this is the best course of action because it ensures that the player will receive every last inch of evidence for the trial. The game will be fair to any unobservant mistakes the player might make by impeding the next step until everything before it is accounted for. This way, the player can be comfortable knowing that they’ll be fully prepared for anything the next day.

Ultimately, scrounging up evidence is a necessary evil in supporting the superior half that Ace Attorney is the trial portion. Like court proceedings in real life, the judge will introduce both Phoenix and the prosecuting lawyer on the opposing side and briefly summarize the stakes of the case. Once a witness or another person of significant relativity to the case is called to the stand, it’s the player’s time to prove how much they’ve been paying attention. Phoenix’s job as the defendant is to snipe out any contradictions in the witness's statement, dividing every sentence of their testimony with their own individual claim of the incident. Once the player finds a contradiction in one of the sentences, Phoenix will refute the witness's claim with hard facts from the evidence. Of course, these contradictions are never obvious. After the first case where the real culprit’s lies are so easy to trace that even Lionel Hutz could suss out, correlating a person’s testimony to a piece of evidence becomes quite tricky. Ace Attorney can even feel like playing Minesweeper during the later cases when multiple pieces of evidence pile up to fill two entire pages with up to five statements. Maybe I’ve drawn this comparison because a fifth of the meter in the top right corner of the screen explodes if Phoenix makes an incorrect correlation, with the judge disapprovingly shaking his head wondering how Phoenix passed the bar. If the entire meter explodes after five wrong accusations, the judge will pass a guilty sentence on Phoenix’s client and the player will get a “game over.” This thin margin of error is why everyone should press the witness on everything they say, even if it irritates the judge and the prosecutor. It’s better than having a faulty accusation literally blow up in your face. Oftentimes, the witness's testimony is so vague that pressing them on their minced words is the only way in forcing them to reveal their full account, and then their revised statement will be ripe for slamming with a contradiction. Because correlating someone’s lies and wishy-washy half-truths is never obvious and could fit a number of pieces of evidence as proof to the contrary, the player must make a concerted effort to pay close attention to every detail. As nerve-wracking as carefully peering over the evidence and how it coincides with a certain statement can be, making the connection successfully feels so gratifying. Phoenix pointing his finger and yelping one of his trademark “objections!” is a cathartic reward for being scrupulous. The tense process of matching evidence with a contradictory statement and watching everyone around Phoenix drop their jaws in utter shock as the revelations unravel more of the truth makes every step of the proceeding truly gripping. The game’s presentation also aids in achieving this effect, with an animated comic-book liveliness that makes every reaction pop.

Phoenix will also have to consider his choices in the courtroom carefully because his guardian angel on his right shoulder during the first trial literally becomes an angel after the first case. Mia’s position as Phoenix’s mentor gives the player the impression that she’ll be a central secondary character in the series. However, the developers interestingly pull a bait-and-switch tactic on the player by making Mia’s murder the subject of the second case. Mia’s poor, helpless little sister Maya is fingered as a suspect, so Phoenix is forced to leave the guiding light his superior used to provide to defend the life of an innocent girl who has obviously been set up to take the fall. Not only is the suspect far from being the real perpetrator for obvious reasons, but the game also allows the player to get a brief glimpse at the real perpetrator again while he’s in the act. Mia’s tragic absence has ousted Phoenix’s guiding light, yet he has not lost his sense of sight. The player will still know that the real culprit and his pink, bimbo witness transplant accomplice are scheming their way out of being delivered to justice for their heinous crime. The second case will make the player emotionally invested in bringing these two to justice because of how personal the case seems to Phoenix and because they’ve despicably put a girl’s life at stake. That, and the gaudy con-man behind the crime, Redd White, is the textbook definition of a douchebag, murdering women in cold blood withstanding. The player can’t wait to convince the judge to throw the book at this guy for his crimes against humanity and lack of general tastefulness, and the case swerves so far off the rails that it nearly careens off the track. When this case eventually seems hopelessly swayed in White’s favor due to his exercising his oppressive social status, the resolution to winning this case must be derived via supernatural means. The explanation for Maya’s purple hippy garb she wears is that it's uniform for her familial clan of spiritual mediums that conjure up the dead. When using her powers, the deceased Mia can return to the realm of the living by taking the space of Maya’s physical form, which is Mia in the revealing purple gown. Because Mia is present at the very end, she gives Phoenix a vital last piece of evidence that incriminates White, a buzzer-beater if there ever was one. I find the resolution of the second case to be a bit contrived. If the game is going to resort to using otherworldly elements in a game mostly confined to reality, they should’ve saved something like that for the climatic scope of the final case.

While the second case unceremoniously removes Mia as a central figure in the Ace Attorney series, it also introduces a slew of characters that will retain their status as series mainstays. Once Maya’s prosecution case is finished, Phoenix Wright takes her into his custody as his assistant, “adopting” her in lieu of no longer having a legal guardian. Maya will continue to offer her own insight while Phoenix looks for clues and deciphers those shoddy statements during the trials. I can’t definitively say that her presence is as useful as her sister’s, but following around Phoenix during the evidence-gathering process is made less tedious with their conversations. They have a brother-sister dynamic with one another if her pension of referring to Phoenix by his Christian name “Nick” wasn’t indicative of that. She makes him look like an old man by comparison. Also during the evidence process, district detective Dick Gumshoe will always be on the case to inspect the crime scene for the police department. This man is the reason why Phoenix cannot sit back and let the local authorities scrounge up the essential clues to fill the holes in people’s faulty statements. Gumshoe is passionate and well-meaning, yet I have the feeling that this big lug didn’t graduate among the top percentile in his class. His salary is constantly being deducted due to his constant carelessness and it’s a wonder how he isn’t trying to bum a dollar off of Phoenix at every encounter. Actually, the transactions between Gumshoe and Phoenix are in the favor of the latter as Gumshoe’s position allows him to access vital pieces of information like the victim’s autopsy reports. Of course, Gumshoe can’t be TOO helpful with this information due to his unrequited hard-on with the opposing prosecutor with the most consecutive appearances: Miles Edgeworth. Considering their contrasting attorney positions, their suit colors, and their general disposition, Edgeworth is Phoenix’s rival through and through. While Phoenix is optimistic, honest, and light-hearted, Edgeworth is cynical, intense, and willing to descend to any desperate lengths in order to twist the verdict in his favor. Penetrating through his cheap logical fabrications during the trials is especially satisfying just to see that smug grin of his disappear.

However, Edgeworth is not the game’s main antagonist, and that revelation becomes apparent near the end of the game. Unfortunately, another case is wedged between the meat of the game’s prevalent arc revolving around Edgeworth’s relationship with Phoenix. The game’s third case involves two actors who play the main hero and villain characters respectively on a popular children’s TV show, and the hero actor has slain his villainous television nemesis by impaling him with his prop katana. It’s like if Christian Bale murdered Heath Ledger on set. Many say that this is by far the weakest case of the game because it doesn’t congeal with the other cases in terms of any overarching themes or character relationships, and the first case gets a pass for having to serve as the game’s tutorial. While Edgeworth is the prosecutor in this case as always, the content of the case has nothing to do with his relationship with Phoenix. However, I’d argue that this case is a pivotal point in the game’s difficulty arc because it’s the first instance where the player doesn’t get a peek at who the true culprit is before the first trial. Even Phoenix is heavily doubting his client’s innocence with all of the circumventing evidence seemingly stacked against him. Because of that, the third case is still relevant, plus the studio crew is an entertaining bunch.

If this game’s substance stems from the growing dynamic between Phoenix and his foppish, blouse-wearing rival in red, then the fourth and final* case of this game certainly completes their symbiotic arc. What better way to make the two get along with one another than by putting Edgeworth in the hot seat with a murder charge and having to resort to swallowing his pride and hiring his career foil to defend his life? Like with the previous case, the game deems the player experienced enough to withhold information from them at the start, almost as if the game wants the player to fail and put the smarmy Edgeworth behind bars out of spite. However, Phoenix seems to be the only lawyer with an ounce of integrity in this district and the last case should’ve been a lesson that all of Phoenix’s clients could be innocent, even if they are smarmy fucks who usually scowl and smirk at Phoenix’s expense. Since Edgeworth is situated in the defendant's seat for now, who will Phoenix be swatting interjections back and forth at like a tennis match? Manfred von Karma will take the stand as the prosecutor, and he’s never lost a case in his forty-year career, so no pressure. The intimidating, draconian man who dresses as gallantly as Count Dracula from Castlevania liberally uses objections at the snap of his fingers, and the judge doesn’t even bat an eye. Is this due to his impressive, unparalleled tenure in the court system, or is he abusing the fact that the judge seems to be terrified of him? Either or, the man will constantly interrupt the witness and Phoenix as a tactical strategy to obscure information. Once Phoenix manages to get a word in, it’s revealed that the real culprit of the murder on a fateful foggy night out on the lake is tied to a fifteen-year conspiracy briefly mentioned in the second case called the “D-16 Incident.” Not only did this case involve the Fey family, but the circumstances of the case haunt Edgeworth because his father was supposedly murdered by the man who framed him in this present-day case. Edgeworth seems to believe that he was the one who murdered his father by accident and tries to confess his vague suspicion in court. However, after prodding into the nitty gritty of the evidence, it turns out that von Karma vindictively murdered Edgeworth’s father on that day after he put a blemish on von Karma’s spotless record. Once this juicy nugget of truth comes to light, the mighty von Karma falls from the heavens of his glory, and good riddance. Through this whole charade, Phoenix and Edgeworth reveal a mutual respect for each other and Edgeworth has a moment of clarity about his role as a prosecutor. His sense of honor and optimism was crushed in the D-16 incident and envies that Wright is what he originally strived to be. It’s beautiful, really. Also, a parrot takes the stand to testify against his owner. It’s certainly a highlight.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is quite a pleasant surprise for the video game medium. It turns out that a game with the premise of court case trials, presented in the visual novel format nonetheless, makes for an entertaining video game. In saying that, the extent of how entertaining Ace Attorney is can only be believed if you experience it. The game is brimming with style stemming from its presentation, and it's also substantial thanks to its impeccable character writing, the progression of each case, and the nail-biting process of picking a piece of evidence to match a statement during the trials. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a unique entry in gaming that kept me consistently on the edge of my seat, waiting to reveal every revelation every step of the way like any court drama on television. I’d object to most high-octane war shooters with constant action in favor of this game any day.

...

*” Turnabout Goodbyes” is the last case of the base game released in the 2001 Japan-exclusive version released in 2001, at least. Us Westerners are far more familiar with the DS remaster/port released in 2005. While the Western world would’ve been satisfied with simply shipping the game overseas, Capcom ostensibly needed to add some additional content for the native Japanese players, a dessert after several hearty helpings of the same court cases on an advanced console. The treat that capped off the first Ace Attorney game is “Rise from the Ashes,” the epic fifth case at the end of the game. While the case is entirely removed from the overarching “D-16” case from the base game, “Rise from the Ashes” is still a doozy. After the fourth case, Maya leaves on a train to hone her skills as a spirit medium after experiencing symptoms of imposter syndrome. In Maya’s absence, another quirky teenage girl named Ema requests that Phoenix defend her much older sister after she’s accused of the severe offense of murdering a detective (not Gumshoe). It doesn’t help her case that her sister is readily fessing up to her crime without impunity. The older sister, Lana, is also the leading prosecutor in the district, adding another layer of uncanniness to the Maya and Mia parallel. Phoenix has got his work cut out here as the final case is easily the most difficult. Evidence stacks up to filling three whole pages by the end, heavily increasing the likelihood of mismatching evidence in court. Because this extra court case is on an advanced piece of hardware, it adds new mechanics into the mix, which mostly involves putting a broken vase back together and pointing out a contradiction with video evidence. The duration of the fifth case is also as long as the entire base game, so let that factor into your decision to extend your playtime. Despite all of the excruciating elements of the case, I still recommend diving into it after the first set of credits ends the base game. Being patient with the hours of content on display here unveils an enthralling case that eventually overlaps with another old conspiracy that strikes at the heart of the police department. If you thought that von Karma was the final boss of imposing legal figures, he’s got no sway compared to the irredeemable scumbag at the core of this case. He’s such a seemingly impenetrable force that Phoenix and Edgeworth end up double-teaming him with an onslaught of objections to take him down. Whether or not “Rise from the Ashes” is compensation for those Japanese players buying the game again or a pre-DLC addendum for amateur Westerners, this goliath of an Ace Attorney chapter still comes highly recommended, even if it is almost totally removed from the base game.