Away game special: What makes it "Epic"

Maybe I'm not great at holding a Wiimote steady. Maybe my sense of what's flat doesn't jive with the Wii's. Maybe Kirby's Epic Yarn just has levels where the difficulty spikes.

Considering that the rest of the game sets the difficulty bar pretty low, it's probably that last one.

Having just played through the level in Cake Land where you need to be train Kirby/Fluff, this so-called easy game has taken on a new face.

The level in question (Cocoa Station) doesn't have a lot of enemies or pitfalls. If it did it would be all the more infuriating. Why? Because you control train Kirby/Fluff by drawing tracks with the Wiimote.

These tracks technically don't have to be perfectly flat, but make them too rocky and train Kirby/Fluff will fall right off. This is especially enraging when you're trying to reach a platform or get to a speed boost on the way to a yarn wall. Thankfully, the game shows a small mercy in the "B" button. Pressing it flips you around.

Truth be told, at this point in the game (halfway through), every world has one challenging level. This level is always one unlocked after beating a world's boss, as is to be expected. But the challenge never lies in getting to the level's goal. Instead, if lies in getting enough beads to earn a shiny gold medal.

Such a completionist concern might seem a strange reason to deem a level challenging. However, any old school hardcore gamer will be able to appreciate a game that ratchets up the difficulty every now and then; it's a quality that made Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country classics.

Moving Forward down a Broad Hallway

It took some time to rev up to it, but finally - finally - Radiant Historia seems to be properly underway.

Stocke, Sonja and Rosch have escaped from Alistel and are holed up in the Satyros village of Celestia. This kind of shift in place really makes me wish that this game had an open overworld. Though, setting up the proper fences to keep players around where they need to be would be tough. And coming up with enough material to furnish interactions for any timeline or any point thereon would be exhausting.

So the game's system of timeline and a Super Mario World-style overworld gives a manageable kind of freedom. At least from the development side of things. Radiant Historia's a fun game, sure, but it's not something you can expect absolute freedom from. It makes me glad I'm not playing Xenoblade Chronicles in tandem with it - Radiant Historia's practically an interactive choose-your-own-adventure novel compared to that game.

Marching Forward

Taking the brunt of enemy assaults is merely tedious in Radiant Historia. Without a quick way to clear out monsters and the like, every battle becomes a strategic conflict in miniature.

Where can I push or pull enemies on their grid to take off the most health of the most units?

How can I shift my turn order around to get the best line up of attacks?

It's neat in the ways that it's different from traditional turn-based RPGs, but it really makes me miss the slash and burn tactics that other games allow for.

Anyway, taking the northern path and heading to the sand fortress was definitely the better choice. To the west lay "Cygnus (danger)," and I think that the bracketed word is really just a translation, not a suggestion. The Sand Fortress has no such word attached to it, and the exclamation mark over it suggests that it's where I should go next.

I must admit, though, for a game with an overworld map like Super Mario World, Radiant Historia gives you quite a bit of free reign (thanks, time travel), so we'll see just how right the Sand Fortress is soon.