Wingspan

(Yes, I know the results. This week has been horrible. I believe America has made an enormous mistake. I am disgusted that of two options, THIS is what won. But we must all keep moving forwards. Become an activist, make your voice heard, find support groups. Most importantly, do not give up. That’s all I will say on the subject for now. Anyway, good thing today’s game is relaxing. I need that right now. We all need some levity. Do note that most of this article was written before Tuesday. P.S. No more Twitter for me, Bluesky is life. Join me there @hamelnico.bsky.social)

Sometimes you just want to do something chill. Like birdwatching. Or play a game with birds. Anything as long as it’s ornithology.

It's a lot of stuff, but it looks great.

I covered several genres on this blog, but one I’ve seldom discussed is video games based on board games. (We’ve seen it happen a lot the other way around, though – even Black Gate announced a Valheim board game this year.) And I do mean board games specifically, not card games. I think I may have a handful of games like this in my collection. I’ll also freely admit that I’m not super into board games personally – mainly because I tend to lack the social circle to make best use of them. Oh, I do have board games, even bought some over the past few years – and some sit still untouched. I did go to video gaming/board gaming events once or twice, and I got to try a few thanks to it – I recall trying out Marvel United and enjoying it, so there’s that.

Wingspan was the first board game designed by Elizabeth Hargrave to be commercialized, and her subsequent games all share the themes of animals and/or nature, with a focus on relaxing or peaceful topics. Birds, flowers, monarch butterflies, foxes, mushrooms, with one outlier involving pixies. The PC version of the game was developed by Monster Couch and published by them, Stonemaier Games and Indienova.

The "story" in Wingspan feels like it would make for an interesting management simulator, too: The player oversees a nature preserve and is tasked with bringing birds to its habitats. There are specific requirements for each bird, and most cards come with their own effects and abilities. The game is set over four turns, which themselves are divided into rounds, with each major action you can take being equal to a round. Players get one fewer round at every following turn.

The early bird…

The tutorial is very helpful! And the name of the wildlife
preserve guardian delivering the tutorial to you is...
Robin, of course.

There’s a ton of information on a bird’s card. One of the most interesting aspects of Wingspan is the attempt at displaying as many true details about each bird as could fit on the card. You’ll find: The name, of course, but also the habitat(s) it can live in, its diet, its nest type, the average span of its wings, how many eggs it can lay, its worth in feathers, and its effect. Even the effect is meant to replicate some realistic characteristic of that species, whenever possible.

Gonna pick the worm, that way I can summon the barn
swallow in my hand- Did I say "summon"? Sorry, I think
my brain is a bit too geared for Yu-Gi-Oh.

At the very beginning, you pick your starting birds and food, five split among both. To play a species, you need to have its required foods available in your bank. Some ask for a specific food item, others ask for one of a few, some go as far as to ask for three food items. Some birds have a color wheel symbol in the diet part; this means any food will do. If the dice aren’t kind to you and you don’t have what it takes to summon the bird you want, you can convert two other pieces of food into the one you need. You also choose a “bonus” card offering you an additional challenge to take on.

Hyrule Warriors Legends (Part 3)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Yeah, still not done. Honestly, it feels like there’s no end to this thing.

Fairies and collectibles

I haven’t mentioned them much, but true to Legend of Zelda fashion, fairies are an important part of the game. You always select a fairy before entering a battle, and they provide bonuses throughout the battle. You begin with a few, but you can find more. Each fairy has a main element.

The mode has a few options: Dining Room, where you can feed fairies with the foods you occasionally find during battles. They also have personality traits, which influence the spells and abilities you can give them. Each type of food comes in three strengths, and foods influence specific personality traits on a fairy; stronger foods change the traits a lot more. However, these foods can also decrease some traits’ stats. This will also increase the fairy’s Level, and when a fairy hits Level 99, you can choose to revert her back to Level 1 with additional perks.

You can also dress up each fairy using fairy clothing you can find during missions. This will empower them in certain elements. Last but not least, you can change a fairy's passive Rental Skill at the School, where the skills unlocked depend on the personality values you’ve given the fairy. "Party" was an option to connect online with other players, but... yeah. I'm late to the "Party" on that one.

You can't see it too well, but that IS a Skulltulla there
on the floor.

You don’t only have fairies to collect, though… there’s also Gold Skulltulas. Another LoZ staple, Skulltulas are found in every mission of Legend Mode, with many more in the Adventure Mode. After certain criteria are met, these spiders will appear on the field. Kill one, and it drops a piece of a picture. Every illustration is made of 20 pieces, and there are 13 of those – that makes 260. In every mission where they appear, there’s two. However! You cannot go for both spiders on your first go through Legend Mode, as the second spider can only be found after Legend Mode was beaten once, and hidden on higher difficulties. Like this game isn’t long enough already!

Well, I'm nowhere close to being done.

And if that’s still not enough, you can also try to get every Medal. Those are basic achievements obtained as you play through the game, and some requirements are rough. Let's just say, good luck.

But then, there’s also…

Hyrule Warriors Legends (Part 2)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

The fight is on!

Fight across time

From here, the Story Mode splits into three branches. Forced to deal with all of them at once, the army splits.

Normally, the franchise says not to mess with
Gorons. That they're indestructible. Then, can
you explain why I've knocked out 1346??

Impa and Sheik head into the world of Ocarina of Time, where they look for the Gate of Souls that teleports enemies into their era. Instead, they meet a Kokiri fairy, who directs them to the Gorons and their leader, Darunia, who have captured Princess Ruto of the Zoras, following an odd encounter with Princess Zelda. We don’t get to investigate, as the story evolves to an armed conflict. The Gorons use many tricks to gain an edge on the battlefield, including taking forts equipped with cannons throwing boulders at the allied base. After cornering Darunia in his base, the heroines realize that the Gorons were manipulated by invisible monsters. Even after they’re dealt with, Darunia must still be defeated to regain his senses. When that’s done, Darunia releases Ruto and, irate that he got manipulated, joins the fight.

The Gorons and Zoras were in conflict over the monsters coming out of the Water Temple, where the Gate had opened. And who led them? Princess Zelda. In the following battle, we first open the Water Temple, and then face off against the faker, revealed to be a monster in disguise: A Wizzro. Sheik reveals that she knew, because she was the princess all along. (Since they’ve traveled to a different era, the other Zelda could have been the incarnation of herself from then, so that point is moot, but whatever.)

Yep, Midna has access to Wolf-Link in her fight.
No clue where he is the rest of the time, though.

Lana visits the era of Twilight Princess. Her search for the Gate of Souls is interrupted by Cia’s monsters, who attack a villager: Agitha, the friend to all bugs. After Agitha is rescued, her Goddess Butterfly leads the heroes to the Gate, but they’re intercepted by another army led by an imp with a headpiece. Yep, that’s Midna. She believes that the Hyrulean army is allied to the monsters who have been roaming the land. No misunderstanding that a strategic battle and a good beating cannot resolve.

Midna has a bone to pick with those monsters, so she joins our ranks. The next battle is set in the Palace of Twilight, and it ends in a showdown against Zant and a dragon called an Argorok. Tough fight. Confronting Cia, Midna exclaims that the sorceress is the one who trapped her in this imp form. A scuffle ensues where Cia’s mask falls off, revealing a face like Lana’s. After the villainess escapes, Lana explains that she and Cia once formed a single entity, who split apart into good and evil halves due to Ganondorf's manipulations. That’d have been nice to know in advance!

Yep, that's Agitha summoning a giant beetle to kill a
dragon. Didn't know she had the combat spirit in her.

Hyrule Warriors Legends (Part 1)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

(I had been planning to review this game all year – that I’m posting this review shortly after the release of Echoes of Wisdom is a happy coincidence.)

When I first began this blog, my only goal was to replay through my (at the time) modest collection of 60 or so titles, across a handful of consoles. Then I joined Steam, and Humble Bundle, and things spiraled out of control and now... lemme check... well, right now I have a backlog of over 250 games. What they don’t tell you about becoming a reviewer, Heck, a content creator, is that you quickly start looking for more content to create. In my case, this translated into buying a lot of games, hoping to play and cover them later, on this blog. I’ve probably bitten more than I can chew, but I’m still in the mood to keep trying.

....Actually, my Backloggd says 254.

Yep, mowing down literal hundreds if not thousands of
enemies is pretty much the default in Dynasty Warriors.

On the plus side, it has encouraged me to check out games and franchises I might not have tried otherwise – Trauma Center, Prince of Persia, Punch-Out!, South Park... and so on. This ties into today’s game in that, although I’m already well acquainted with the Legend of Zelda franchise – having now reviewed three of its games – I’ve never played anything from Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors series, which this Zelda spinoff is most like. These consist of hack’n’slash gameplay, and from what little I know of them, they all play somewhat similarly to each other. Since I’ve never played any Dynasty Warriors, I can’t really compare with Hyrule Warriors, originally released on the Wii U in 2014, with today’s game being a port for the Nintendo 3DS released in North America on March 25th, 2016. (This entry would get another remake for the Switch in 2018, as well.)

As a result, today’s game isn’t part of the famed Zelda Timeline, the one that branches off into three paths based on the events of Ocarina of Time. The Hyrule Warriors games are considered a spin-off and, therefore, don’t have any impact on the continuity of the classic series. This has an advantage: They can freely pick bits and pieces from the games released over the franchise’s then 30 years of existence without worry, and even add their own spin to the events presented. And damn, do they take full advantage of this.

This being a port, the story follows the same beats as it did in the original Wii U version, however we’re getting a handful of new characters and arcs to follow as well. And on top of the main quest, titled Legend Mode, we even have an entire additional Adventure Mode built on top of the map from the original The Legend of Zelda from 1986! But hey, I might be burning steps. Let’s start with the controls, then we’ll jump into the story.

Fighting Options

I played in Dynasty Warriors mode, but the playthrough
I'm pulling images from uses the Zelda mode.
(By the way, my screenshots come from a playthrough
by Squish Gaming. Go check it out!)

Every character in Hyrule Warriors has a large number of options that belong to them specifically; at least when it comes to weapons, upgrades, special attacks and gauges, gimmicks, and the like. However, at the core, all of them play similarly. Most buttons on the 3DS end up used. (When you first boot up the game, you're offered to control schemes: One more based on Dynasty Warriors, one more based on the Zelda series. I personally describe the Dynasty Warriors controls here, as those are the ones I used.) First, the circle pad to move, of course. Characters evade with B, do a basic attack with Y, and can do a stronger attack with X. As the game progresses, you unlock new combos to make, opening with a basic attack (or multiple in sequence) and throwing in a stronger attack at the end of a sequence (or, to be clear, anything from Y-X to Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-X). The A button is used for a very powerful move that can be unleashed only after a gauge has filled up over time from landing hits on enemies.

Oh, Princess Ruto has entered Focus Spirit.
She's about to Surf a monster army to death.

The D-pad has its uses as well: Press Up to target onto an enemy, and Left/Right to switch to a different target or move the camera. When you pick up magic dropped by enemies or found in broken pots, another gauge fills up; when it’s full, you can press Down to activate Focus Spirit, which will cause your attacks to increase in power and give a few additional bonuses like revealing a major enemy’s weak point. You can also empty the magic gauge in one go by pressing A, unleashing another powerful move.

Not a ton of items, but still enough to have
a few puzzle-based bosses in there.

The L button can be used to guard from attacks, and can also re-focus the camera behind your character. R is a special case; much like in classic Legend of Zelda fare, over time you’ll find items that help on your quest, some of which are even mandatory to defeat specific enemies. Bow and arrows, hookshot, boomerang, ocarina. You know, the classics. Using the bottom screen, you can open the item menu and select which item to use, and then use it with R.

And the touch screen has many uses. You can use it to read the mission map a little more closely, switch between characters (as several missions will see you playing as up to four characters spread out across the battlefield), or use the magic of the Fairy you've equipped before starting the mission. It's also where you can open the item menu and use potions, provided you've unlocked them for your current character, or swap between tools (bombs, bow and arrows, hookshot, etc.).

Hyrule Castle Down

He was easy to spot, he's the only one without
a helmet, the fool.

Princess Zelda is suffering from a recurring nightmare in which a mass of darkness attacks her in a field. She confides in Impa, who takes this as an omen of approaching dark times; therefore, they must find the Hero of Legend. Sure enough, there’s a distinctly Link-shaped soldier training on the castle grounds, and he’s already great in combat. Well! That was easy. The reunion has no time to happen, however, as an army of monsters is seen marching towards Hyrule Castle. Already listening to his Courage, Link runs into action alongside the Princess and her guard. He quickly rescues a fairy that joins his side (and will speak on the mute's behalf).

Yeah, we're not close to conquering everything here.

Every mission of Legend Mode is set on a large combat field with fortresses scattered about. Your team's owned fortresses are highlighted in blue on the touch screen, while the opponent's are in red (or, if three armies are fighting for dominance, the third group is in yellow). As either of the characters you can play in that mission, you can move towards a red fortress and defeat waves of enemies that appear in it, causing the current fortress leader to show up; beat that leader, and you conquer that fortress for your team. However, armies of enemies scour the map, and those will also attempt to take over the heroes’ fortresses, on top of reclaiming those they’ve lost. It can get tricky to take over new fortresses, while keeping those you've conquered.

Each mission has one main objective as well as additional ones that unlock depending on how the situation evolves; some further the plot, while others are side quests that can provide bonuses in this specific battle. However, each mission also comes with an instant defeat condition for the heroes. It usually, but not always, involves the characters' main fortress start in being taken. Alternately, it can also be a major character fleeing the battlefield after being defeated. Victory and defeat conditions often change on a whim, so always be aware of them.

In the first mission? Damn, they don't mess around.

When you conquer a fortress, a treasure chest may appear, with a reward for the character that opens it. However, enemies can reclaim fortresses, and you may have to reclaim a fortress you’ve claimed earlier. Plot beats are all about fighting for the upper hand. Near the end of a mission, a boss (or many) may show up. It can be a regular enemy without specific strengths and weaknesses, or it can be a Legend of Zelda type of boss that’s impervious to all attacks until you use a specific tool to expose their weak point.

Its gauge is almost empty! It's gonna get a 

That's the case of King Dodongo, a well-known boss of Ocarina of Time, who appears on the battlefield at the end of the first mission. It is fought just as it was in its home game: Toss a bomb into its mouth to reveal its weak point gauge, then slash away. Otherwise, your sword won’t even scratch it. It's not the only boss to work that way, as there's a handful of others.

After this first mission, Princess Zelda is reported missing; Impa asks for Link’s help, and hands him the green tunic... updated with knightly gear. We also get the ever-present explanation about the Triforce, but we also learn what happened this time: An evil spirit (Ganon, of course) took it long ago, but the Hero of Legend managed to beat the spirit and split its soul into four fragments, all sealed across time and space.

The witch and the fragments

And of course, the higher the badge, the rarer
the crafting materials for it.

In-between battles, you can pass by the Bazaar. You pick a character, and then you can:

-Use materials found on the battlefield to craft badges, which offer passive attack, defense and assist bonuses. For a same badge, the crafting materials can be different from a warrior to another, and later badges require materials that are difficult to gather;

-Level your unlocked characters up at the Training Dojo, with a cost in Rupees. However, you cannot level a hero up higher than the highest level you’ve reached with a character;

-Craft potions at the Apothecary using materials. These offer bonuses like finding more weapons on the field, or finding better weapons;

-Combine weapons together at the Blacksmith, to transfer special abilities from a weapon to another, destroying the material weapon in the process.

Some of those fields are a pain to run through.

The next mission is set at the Eldin Caves, where we fight an army of skeletons. Those are aided by Big Poes and led by a Wizzro. While exploring, Link and Impa encounter Sheik, who joins the fight with a harp as weapon. Impa is also a Sheikah, so she’s doubtful of Sheik, but lets (him? Her? Them?) join on the quest to find Princess Zelda. Oh, the irony. A mission later, we meet the new villain: Cia, a witch of the forest whose task was to maintain the balance of the Triforce. She has the power to look into other ages of Hyrule, and got infatuated with Link due to his status, also growing jealous of Zelda over her closeness with the Hero of Legend. This allowed a fragment of Ganondorf's soul to manipulate her into doing his bidding. That is, collect the other fragments and revive him.

Thankfully, against these evil forces, while exploring the Faron Woods, the Hyrulean Army recruits a new ally: Lana, a sorceress from the same clan as Cia, who promises to help. Meanwhile, we get our hands on a bow and arrows, and we use them to kill a Gohma. You know, the spider thing with a giant eye? That one.

You also learn that bosses are easier to take down if you
bring all of the playable characters to it.

This leads to a confrontation in the Valley of Seers against Cia and her forces, with the Hyruleans seeking to close the gate from which these monsters are pouring out. We do the hero thing, finding a boomerang and using it to deal with an annoying plant boss called Manhandla. I swear, if even one of those mouths starts singing "Feed me Seymour"... After which, the heroes confront Cia, but she manages to steal the Triforce pieces from Link and Sheik (the latter to everyone's surprise) and unite them to the Triforce of Power she already wielded. This massive power lets her open gates to other eras of the world’s timeline, where the other fragments of Ganondorf were hidden. If they want to stop her plan, the Hyrulean forces must go through these portals, explore these different versions of Hyrule, and prevent her from accessing the fragments.

Who needs swords, when you've got
*taps crossbows* these babies and an endless
reserve of projectiles?

But that's not all! There’s an alternate storyline happening concurrently, one that shows a young blonde girl who also believes to be the Hero of Legend. She has to be, her grandma told her so! She has her own trinket, a compass handed down to her by the same grandma. When trouble arises, Linkle puts on her own version of the Hero’s tunic, and heads out to Hyrule Castle to help. This takes her into the woods, where she meets and battles none other than Skull Kid, from Majora’s Mask. Then she keeps running to the Castle… in the wrong direction. Linkle’s gameplay is very different from Link’s, focusing a lot more on using crossbows and various projectiles like bombs against opponents. This helps set her apart a fair bit from Link. (According to many websites, early in development she was implied to be a distant unknown sister of Link's, but the idea was scrapped. I think she's better as a separate character.) She also has a funny relationship with Cuccos, with the chickens featured prominently in more than just one of her missions.

Despite being disconnected from the main plot, Linkle’s story ends up following it. We’ll have more examples of that in Part 2.

Gaming Memories: Starfox

Haven't done one of those in a while... (I'm doing doing this one because the game I'm planning to cover next is taking me longer than I expected.) Anyway!

Starfox

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

March 1993

The Super Nintendo was an impressive console on its own for the time, home to many technological advances. With the gift of hindsight, it feels like where the greatest updates happened. Most distinctly, the in-between from an all-2D to an all-3D. Most games on the SNES were still pretty clearly 16-bit, 2D entries. Some games played around; Donkey Kong Country is not any less impressive nowadays when you take into consideration its release date, but the trickery of turning all 3D assets into 2D sprites to create the perfect illusion was genius. Super Mario Kart had 3D tracks, but the racers were still obviously 2D. And then, we had the first actual 3D games.

And in that field, Starfox was a pioneer. Like a glimpse into the future. Its hardware had to be tailor-made for it, too, requiring an extra processing chip in the cartridge to make these graphics run right. And do they? Well... We do have true polygonal 3D on the screen, but everything is cut down to allow the console to run it; lowered framerate and resolution, and the models are about as simple as can get, but IT WORKS. The more demanding parts of the game cut on those elements even furtther.

Starfox is the story of the Lylat System's Fox McCloud, who is sent on a mission with his colleagues Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare and Slippy Toad (the latter of whom keeps getting into trouble and we hate him for it). The task is to deal with the ominous Dr. Andross, who has his sights on multi-planetary conquest. The gameplay involves shooting at threats by aiming at their red-and-yellow weak points. The boss battles are fairly impressive considering the technology.

The structure of the game is also quite odd, split into three routes of differing difficulty, letting you have a tailor-made experience based on what you think you can do. (Did I ever play any other set of levels than on Easy? Maybe I did try them, failed pitifully, and stayed in my lane. I was young, after all.) Top this off with two bonus levels, and you get something special. It always ends in a fight with Andross, and that pristine white polygonal face with bright eyes, spitting white bricks at your Arwing, is still to this day one of the most iconic sights in the franchise. I did defeat this guy.

Starfox secured a spot for itself in fans' hearts, and would only grow from there, though later entries in the franchise would experiment more with genre and tech (...not always to the best results, as the Starfix game on the Wii U can attest). We even recently got Starfox 2, finally "released" first on the Super NES Classic Edition, then later on the Switch. For what it's worth, I keep fond memories of that one, and it's one of those games I grew up with that I'd happily go back in a heartbeat to see if I can fare better... if I didn't already have a backlog of 230+ games to get through, that is...