Legend of Kage 2

Visual Novel Community Anime/Otaku Discussions
#1

I know this rant will sound like a review, but it isn’t. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m old… so old, I remember when Legend of Kage first came out in the arcades. It was pure win. I later owned the NES version, but since that was the time when arcade machines out performed the home systems by leaps and bounds, it wasn’t the same. After over two decades, we finally get a sequel of the old school legend… or do we? Legend of Kage 2 is a misleading name. It isn’t a sequel: it’s a retelling of the original game. Not a remake, because they added new stuff (like the three sisters and an actual story). Not a reboot, because nothing contradicts or cancels out the first version. If you remember the original, then you’ll notice how different the gameplay feels. It’s not the same engine - reminds me more of Contra, than anything else. Not that this is bad mind you… but it’s not the same.

The game is way too easy at first, but each time you beat it, you get harder difficulty options unlocked (Hell Mode is damn well impossible). The character animation is 2D heaven - the same level as Castlevania. Fighting the human bosses (the three sisters for example), is full of surprises. There’s tons of hidden animation when they attack or get attacked. Finding them all is part of the fun. The backgrounds however, are disappointing… not ugly mind you, just not as impressive as the characters. While the story is simplistic, if you played the original, its like an epic saga. Now there’s actually a reason why the princess was kidnapped, why Kage wants to save her, who the demons are, where Kage gets that moon jump power, etc. It’s actually kinda emotional too, since the bad guys are just like Kage, and you feel sorry for them in the end. Did I menion Princess Kirihime is uber kawaii? She’s got the hawts for Kage, and she shows it in her facial expressions and body language, makes her cuter than cute. :smiley: Music is average for the most part, but the remixes of tunes from the original version are really bad ass… especially Stage 9 (inside the castle). I came over and over again, just hearing that classic redone. Oh! There’s a new ninja girl the player can take the role of. Her story is different from Kage, so it’s like two games in one.

Did I mention it only costs 20 dollars? 8)

Game has tons of extras, to make it more fun. Ninja magic, ninja skills, and an art gallery of development illustrations. I love the gallery - it has the animation sketch sheets, to see various of sprites the characters.

#2

Found a really cool “fan remake” of the original Legend of Kage… doujin game more or less. Best of all, it’s totally free. :slight_smile:

Not gonna leech this dude’s bandwidth (he’s the creator of it), so you’ll do a bit of looking on his site: http://darthlupi.com/?page_id=4

Go down the page until you see Legend of Shadow. There’s a download link to it, above the title screenshot. It’s not a 100% remake, because he probably wanted to avoid legal issues (or perhaps just being sarcastic with the IP): nonetheless there’s no question what it pays a homage to. 8)

It’s very well done. Was worth the 30 mins I spent on it.

#3

hmm…interesting. So how’s it comepare with the other 2?

Not sure if i like it though. I’ve never been fond of replaying games with no content change other than harder enemies. I’d rather them give me their hardest level straight off. I’d rather have more content unlocked, but not be in such a way that the original game doesn’t make sense without that content. If they did both, harder and more content, i’d go for that. That’s me though and I’m probably the minority.

#4

I never played the original, but the sequel go t good enough reviews I picked it up. Of course, given it’s me we’re talking about, maybe a year later I’ll pop back into this thread telling people how awesome the game is ¬¨_¬¨

#5

Despite Square-Enix best attempts to ruin a genuine legend of arcade history, by releasing it’s updated remake without press fanfare and a pathetic website that a child could make, Legend of Kage 2 seems to be holding pretty well in terms of reviews: most sites give it a score of 8 or B- or 3.5 Stars… what have you. It’s the old school charm that’s really keeping the title afloat - I’m happy to see there are thousands of people out there who remember the original Legend of Kage as I did.

Unfortunately the lack of advertising has hurt sales. In an ironic turn, it would appear that retailers initially only ordered a small number of units, thinking the game would sell poorly (due to the obvious lack of support from Square-Enix). Turns out that for the first two weeks, the title sold fast enough that it wasn’t available on store shelves in certain locations: eventually the third round of restocking was rather modest. I believe the mad rush is now over, and retailers will cease pickup from the warehouse, but it let Square-Enix know there were loyal fans in the shadows.

Sadly I believe the game is being rated as a commercial failure, and it may be another 20 years (yea… it took them that long) until we see a Legend of Kage 3. Given how cheap a new copy is, I’m not sure if stores will bargain bin it much lower. Maybe $15 or $10 after Xmas. Yet given that the number circulating in stores is pretty low, it might become one of the “overpriced Ebay” things as time marches on. I suggest if you’re interested, to grab a copy before mid-2009. In Japan the title didn’t so well: there won’t be a soundtrack CD for it. :frowning:

Only decent recording I could find on Youtube, showcasing the first few levels. Dude is a scrub though: used cheats, lowest difficulty level, didn’t bother exploring the stages for items, rom’ed it… etc. Had no choice though: even the official site lacks a video display of the game itself. :roll:

#6

Yea… LoK fans are still around. 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlPvk-BCGOw

Although I have no idea why they picked those video segments: nothing to do with LoK. :?

#7

Hmmm… if someone else here has beaten this game with both ninja, there’s something I wanted to share notes with…

[spoiler]What is the deal with Hanzo? First he’s evidently immortal. Second he has the ever classical “evil grin” whenever he takes off his mask. Third he wants to kill a god? During both endings he tries to kill the Princess. In Kage’s he gets beat down, only to resurrect again. In Chihiro’s he lets the sisters go after the Princess explains she has no power left.

Also why do I get this feeling that Hanzo let himself lose? He has instant recovery power… he could have beaten Yukinosuke and Kage/Chihiro.

I assume if a LoK3 is made, the story canon will have Kage beating Yukinosuke and Chihiro beating the Three Sisters. It seems obvious who was the rival to who. Chihiro is a matchstick… lol… :lol:[/spoiler]

Did I miss something?

Also the music played during the credits after beating Expert Mode is awesome. I never noticed the new LoK2 theme song was composed to be harmonic with the original LoK theme. I knew they sound alike, but didn’t notice the duality. It be damn cool if it was performed by a full orchestra.

#8

Cool!!!

If you live in United States, then you should get DS’s Legend of Kage 2 for $10 new from Gamestop. I bought it, last month. I am sorry that I keep forgotten to post the message. :oops:

#9

I saw this in stores when I was looking at DS games today and saw this title and was all “I remember seeing reviews on otakuism!” so i picked up a copy, this game is totally full of win, even if I haven’t played the original :smiley:

Feels like Mystical ninja meets Contra, who then has a baby, who is in turn full of win. After which they splice the genes of said baby with ninja gaiden to produce ultra-win

#10

Yea… it’s a real pity this game is such a sleeper. It deserves so much more attention. On a sidenote, Square-Enix is now letting it go into OOP status. 6 to 8 months from now, the game will be overcharged on Ebay, so get it soon if you’re interested and haven’t ($10 is pretty cheap for such a great title). 8)

Once you beat the game once, it unlocks a Hard Mode. The thing is like a totally new beast, as enemies perform new moves they didn’t on Normal. Expert Mode is actually easier than Hard Mode: they have higher HP and do more damage, but fall into easy to memorize AI patterns.

#11

Yeah I find the main reason I die is because I expect Mega Man X type behavior from boss AI but they have much better AI than I expected at first so I find myself going “Oh shit, I didn’t know they could do that” as I die a painful death while thinking in the back of my mind "Dammit, I forgot I can do [insert move here]

The ninjitsu system is really cool too, makes me wonder how many different types/moves there are available.

Since I’m on the topic, do those shadow clones of myself actually hit the monster and do damage? I couldn’t really tell if the bosses health went down an extra .01% or not :lol:

I’m looking forward to hard mode too~

Is there any other games like this you can recommend for me? (By that I mean sleepers that rock or just killer games in general, english and japanese language included~) I swear all this game is missing is some wonderful wonderful twincest~ :twisted: :lol:

edit: I lucked out if it’s going into OOP status, games in OOP status are like non existant in my area from over demand,

#12

The only other games I could recommend like this on DS (i.e. outstanding sprite 2D platformers), are Contra 4 and the various Castlevania’s (Portrait of Ruin has twincest in it… oh yes it does). There’s also Mega Man ZX… however I think the four GBA Mega Man Z titles are better than the DS spinoff (and they tell an epic story when played one after another). You should be able to find those at Gamestop and Ebay for a good price.

Heh… well ya know… I thought Chihiro and Kirihime were twins at first… they look so alike. Of course they’re sisters, but it wouldn’t have shocked me if they said they were twins.

#13

I would agree that MMZ 2 and 3 are awesome, but I wouldn’t say that about MMZ or MMZ4. 2 and 3 used the EX skill gimmick well, but 4 tried to “change it up” but instead they broke it.

But “epic story”? … Were you playing the Japanese versions? Because the story might have worked better in the Japanese – but that totally doesn’t jive with what I remember. I remember they definitely tried for epic, but it ended up being more of an epic flail. Even when they tried to make a good story, they just couldn’t make it work.

Playing MMZ4 is what made me decide I was thru with Mega Man games.

#14

Compared to what? The original Mega Man’s “evil doctor breaks out of jail and steals robots masters?” Then in Mega Man X it’s a lame “computer virus makes us all go evil.” Mega Man Legends makes absolutely no sense in the continuity, and things that do connect to it, were forcefully thrown in there because people began to notice there was no connection.

MMZ actually provides a moral dilemma because if you look at the grand scheme, Zero was a terrorist who caused the downfall of humanity. Copy X was in the right: everything he did in MMZ1 was for the improvement of mankind. Then Zero comes along and causes chaos to crash it all down. MMZ2 continued the morality question, as well as showed the corruption of what Zero had done to Neo Arcadia (the generals were more concerned at getting revenge than helping humanity), as well as the cancer in the Resistance. MMZ3 was when things fell apart… the whole “mad scientist” thing again. MMZ4 brought it all to final end. MMZX is really just a cash cow spin off. The entire MM story was supposed to end at MMZ4.

Another cool faucet is that many of the Reploid Masters that Zero killed, were tragic figures themselves. As an example: Sol Titanion (from MMZ4) had a twin sister who was murdered before her eyes. After witnessing that, she went all yandere on everyone. All of Weil’s Numbers were once honorable judges who served Original X faithfully and truthfully. Then we have the drama CD collection and Official Complete Works that nicely round out everything.

Yea… it’s no Xenosaga or Baldur’s Gate, but MMZ is Mega Man at its most epic level in story and background. It’s more cohesive than Castlevania and Contra. 8)

#15

I saw the Mega Man XZ in the stores, while I am a big fan of pretty much all the mega mans up to X3, I played some 3d piece of trash for the PS1, then I saw whatever comes after that in the production list and it didn’t even look like an conventional mega man, even mega man looked like “Captain Funky Butt” or something equally as stupid. As for the GBA versions I will have to look into those since nintendo kicks ass and lets you play GBA on your DS 8)

I haven’t played the GBA versions at all, but since DS is more of a retro system I would imagine/hope it follows closer to it’s roots. I couldn’t be sure and since I blindly bought fallout 3 under the assumption that it had the same name thus must be the same game, I am way more apprehensive when it comes to buying games with familiar names these days without looking into them first :evil:

I also saw castlevania on the shelves and I seriously have loved that series since the original, they have stayed pretty true to the original for the ones I’ve played on the PS2, but as mentioned above I like to look into these things. If it stays close to the originals AND has twincest (With the crazy eyes I love) then someone seriously has their shit together at Konami :lol:

Haha, when I first made that comment I really wasn’t very far into the game. Then noticed that shortly after I posted and would have to agree with that statement :smiley:

Would this be similar/identical to Contra 3 for SNES? If so I big like.

What did they change about MMZ4 from 3 that broke it?

#16

Not having to have A or S rank to get the skills means there’s no reason to bother about your ranking. This makes the game a cakewalk.

#17

Compared to Dune. Compared to Star Wars (all three films). Compared to Evangelion.

They tried. They really did. And I give them a good deal of credit for trying – because you’re right, in the very old days, story didn’t matter. But they just … didn’t succeed. The original Mega Man was fine in the 80’s ("OMG, robots! Cool!), but it’s clouded everything that’s come after. Just because MMZ has a better story than the rest of the series, does not mean the games are somehow “epic”. When compared to things that really ARE epic … they’re not.

I liked MMZ2’s story a lot more before Elpizo got infected by the Sigma Viru–I mean, the Dark Elf. (The game even explicitly says in one of the data discs that Sigma was one of the first Cyber Elves.) It was actually succeeding at the whole moral ambiguity thing. But MMZ was no moral dilemma at all, considering that the situation is more or less directly analogous to the various reasons used historically to justify slavery.

But then, the entire story of Mega Man Zero is idiotic. The X design was made by Dr. Light before his death, and was discovered some few decades afterward by Dr. Cain. It was heavily copied, leading to armies of repoids being manufactured in a very short time. However, the design was flawed, and the reploids occasionally wig out and go batshit insane and kill people.

Okay, fine. But when MMZ takes place, we’re supposed to believe that hundreds of years later nobody has analyzed the design and fixed the flaw? Then why do people continue to manufacture reploids at all?

Then maybe they should have included this information in the damn game?

See, I can agree with this :slight_smile: But not with the unqualified statement of “it’s epic!”

#18

[double post deleted]