Review - Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS)

"There's always room for one more!"

Kid Icarus is one of the older series from Nintendo, yet it remained relatively unknown to

the majority of gamers. Well, the first game was released on good old NES/Famicom in 1987,

which IS quite long ago, and only received one sequel in 1991 for the GameBoy.

But now the young angel Pit makes his glorious return . . . IN 3D!

-GAMEPLAY-

The game consists of fast-paced 3rd-person action in both the single player campaign and

online-supporting multiplayer. But let's just kick in on single player for now.

The "Solo Mode" is a mission-based story of the light goddess Palutena who sends Pit out to

fight the underworld army. Sounds simple, right? Well, never judge a book by its cover.

Before even starting a mission, you can adjust the difficulty level to your needs. But this

feature goes deeper than it seems. The difficulty levels range between 0.0 and 9.0, which

effectively gives you 90 difficulty levels to choose between. Except for 2.0, every

difficulty will cost you hearts - the valid currency of the game (without any healing effects).

By playing on higher levels, you will earn more hearts from defeated enemies to buy new weapons

or play on even higher difficulties. Lowering the difficulty makes most levels a walk in the

park, but you'll have a hard time collecting enough hearts to balance out the costs.

After picking the difficulty level, the mission starts off as a rail-shooter. Enemies come

at you from all directions and attack. You use the Touch Screen to aim, the Analog Pad for

moving and the L Button for shooting to survive the level. Those rail-shooter parts normally

last for about five minutes. And following it comes a ground battle part.

Upon landing, you'll find yourself in a third-person brawler where you can still shoot, but

also take down enemies in close combat. Now you have to make your way to the boss of the mission,

and take it down.The boss battle is the last part of each mission, where you simply have to use anything at yourdisposal to defeat it.

At the end of a mission, you'll get the hearts and items you collected. But if you lose all your

health, some of your loot gets dumped as well as some of the hearts paid for the difficulty. In

exchange you can restart the mission from the last (invisible) checkpoint at a lower difficulty.

So far, that's only about the missions. There's tons of other stuff to get your hands on. Nine

different types of weapons with individual stats, a wide range of abilities to equip, challenges

from Palutena to finish a mission under certain conditions (and more), figures of all characters,

enemies, weapons and items, and so on . . . it takes a lot of time to get everything.

The multiplayer modes are either a 3-on-3 team battle or Everyone Vs. Everyone with different

rules, but the same setting as land battles in Solo Mode. You can win weapons, abilities and

hearts online to use in Solo Mode or in other matches.

In short: the gameplay is really good. The wide range of difficulty levels challenges both newbies

and pro gamers while giving both enough space to improve. The levels are simple, but not easy. But

there's a problem some people keep complaining about: the controls lack in terms of precision.

While most players can handle Touch Screen aiming, it's still not too easy to coordinate the camera

in battles. And even though the game even provides Dual Control (Analog stick to run, ABXY to aim),

it doesn't make anything better, but rather worse. Half of the time you're getting hit on ground

battles, you could barely see the attack coming at first. Like it or not, but that sure leaves room

for improvements.

Rating: 76/100%

-STORY-

The story of Kid Icarus: Uprising takes place about 25 years after the first game. Medusa is back -

and she's pissed. So Palutena sends out Pit to stop Medusa and her subordinates. But soon Pit and

Palutena will realize that there's more to it than only Medusa's war against Skyworld and the humans.

The plot is told by conversations between the characters during the missions, making it a little hard

to follow at times.

I know, I know . . . that part is short. But mentioning anything else qualifies as a spoiler, so I

have to leave it at that - it should be enough to get an idea of the story.

But don't jump to conclusions. The plot has quite some twists scattered here and there, and although

most of it still isn't very original, it serves its purpose very well. It also introduces a whole

load of characters you didn't even hear about in the previous games, expanding the full cast of the

game significantly.

While the story is by far not the best, some twists will surpirse you anyway. The conversations between the cast ranges from delightful small-talk over fourth wall jokes to serious topics. Many times, everyone is simply arguing over nonsense, but those talks are among the most entertaining ones. It really stands out with mockery, trolling and questioning weird stuff, but never overdoes it.

Rating: 84/100%

-GRAPHICS-

Despite the hardware limitations of the 3DS, the game looks really great.

The character animations look smooth and dynamic, the facial expressions are very detailed,

and the effects are a great sight. The only downside are the maps for ground battles: they look considerably bland. Though the settings have high variety, the textures are disappointingly

simple and lack some depth. Still, it looks great overall, and even better in 3D.

Rating: 86/100%

-SOUND-

There's not too much to say about sounds: the quality is good, the sound effects are fitting and add

to the atmosphere when it's neccessary. The music is a tad bit unimpressive with it's arrangements of

original parts from the first Kid Icarus game and is also not loud enough to really stand out.

But there's one point where Nintendo outdid themselves: the voice cast. The VA's are far above the

usual voicing from Nintendo games. Though especially Pit lacks a bit of emotion, most of the other

characters sound great and come with a lot of personality in their voices.

Rating: 81/100%

-CONCLUSION-

Kid Icarus: Uprising really is a good reason to get a 3DS. The game is fun, addictive and challenging.

It's well designed gameplay really adds up as you delve deeper into the ins and outs of everything.

And even though the controls are wacky, it doesn't frustrate - not even in online matches. With the

community growing continously, you can also look forward to some awesome action against the rest of the world. With this game, Pit established himself a place high up in the coolness ranking.

OVERALL RATING: 88/100%

by Kaze