[blog] Illusera's Chronicles of Madness

Here's a fun fact, I've never played a single Donkey Kong Country game.



As I was mainly a PlayStation gamer in my youth (other than Game Boy and some NES), there were a lot of titles I missed out on other consoles. This meant I never got to experience old school platformers that took time and effort to clear. I originally picked this game up as it looked like a colorful platformer I might like, not knowing the style it was taking inspiration from. As its store description says it's pretty challenging, even more so if you're aiming for 100%. For story reasons I was aiming for it, so I had my work cut out for me. To 100% a level, you need to collect at least 100 rubies to form a whole ruby, find all gold letters spelling out "KAZE" to form a topaz, and complete 2 bonus stages that would earn you 2 halves of an emerald. When you have collected all emeralds in a world, a bonus level will be unlocked where you will need to collect 100+ rubies for a whole ruby. In summary: 4 worlds that have 7 normal stages, 1 bonus stage, and 1 boss. You need to earn 3 complete gems from each normal stage, except for the boss and the bonus level that has only 1 gem (ruby).

I went through a pretty good chunk of this game on normal difficulty, but it's the final world of the game that really starts flinging stuff at you per the norm. Casual difficulty gives you a few more checkpoints, an opportunity for an extra hit point (3 max), and starts the level off with 2 hit points. Normal difficulty gives you 1-2 checkpoints and you start off with 1 hit point unless you went in with 2 to begin with. Bosses have 3 phases regardless of difficulty. Falling into the abyss/certain waters/toxic waste/etc is instant death, and boss stages will be started at phase 1 if you fail. If you're playing on normal difficulty, you will likely fail many many times (regardless of the level you're in).

After 100%ing all the stages and no small amount of swearing I'd finally made it to the final boss. The multiple phases was expected by now but what I didn't expect that it would exceed this by 4 with different scenarios that had different needs if one wanted to avoid death. When you have more time and can analyze a level at your leisure you're more likely to get through it, but when everything is moving pretty fast and you have to multitask multiple causes of death that are moving at the same time, you don't really have that much time and will likely fail many many times before you figure out what you're doing. With all that, I was pretty frustrated with this boss and really just wanted to be done so I didn't have to toss it into the retired pile because the time I had put into this game needed to mean something.

I've come to learn that some experience the 4 stages of gamer rage, which is as follows:
1 - Anger
2 - Despair
3 - Resignation
4 - Acceptance

I had started out with very colorful commentary of my experiences (my elder sister can vouch for this as she was there and decided not to play this if it was giving me that much grief), but eventually it calmed down as it can get pretty old with enough game overs. I have a stubborn streak that is longer than minimally necessary so instead of giving it a break I kept plugging away at it until nary a peep came out of me (which concerned Sis for some odd reason). Through trial and error I got better, and while I still made some stupid errors I was getting closer to a perfect run. Which I wasn't aiming for at all, this was purely from self preservation. Somehow, after the many odds stacked against me, I did defeat this trial of a boss and I did it without taking a hit. Such a relief! I'd overcome this obstacle and could get the true ending that I had been working so hard for.

Except:


Image modified for illustrative purposes

This made no sense as I had deliberately not moved past a stage without collecting everything first. Surely this was a mistake as I couldn't have missed something?



Nonononononononono



After a speedrun through the (modified) stages of gamer rage:
1 - Confusion
1 2 - Anger
3 - Denial
2 4 - Despair
3 5 - Resignation
4 6 - Acceptance

I headed off to get the missing gem from the skipped unlocked bonus level. As it was from world 3 it didn't take that long. It was really a pity I hadn't done it earlier.

With that out of the way, I headed off to the final boss once again. I guess through all those failures I had managed to "get good" and cleared it on the first try. What do you know?

Post-mortem: Check your homework before you turn it in.

I've been wanting to play this game for some time, I'm just scared that I could start raging to the point where my screams could sound like Shatner overacting or the final boss really stumping me. I do want to try out more traditional 2D platformers. I played Shovel Knight a decade ago. I've mainly dabbled in some Mario, Donkey Kong Country and Ubi Art Rayman since then. I might try out Celeste before this. I also couldn't beat Tropical Freeze if it weren't for Funky Kong. It's always been a genre I respected but it always seems like the stars have to align for me to enjoy them.

I've been wanting to play this game for some time, I'm just scared that I could start raging to the point where my screams could sound like Shatner overacting or the final boss really stumping me. I do want to try out more traditional 2D platformers. I played Shovel Knight a decade ago. I've mainly dabbled in some Mario, Donkey Kong Country and Ubi Art Rayman since then. I might try out Celeste before this. I also couldn't beat Tropical Freeze if it weren't for Funky Kong. It's always been a genre I respected but it always seems like the stars have to align for me to enjoy them.

If I beat it despite not playing many of these, then it’s definitely possible for you if you’ve dabbled before. 😅 It probably would have gone smoother for me if I’d used the casual difficulty earlier on instead of the last few stages. The nice thing about it is that you can toggle it at any time.

Personally I’d say Celeste was a bit harder as you had to figure out the “solution” to the level (which could be a second set of tricky) whereas Kaze is more about anticipating what comes next so you already know what your next move is going to be. Both do have their own kinds of difficulty. The final boss will definitely be tough but I think the thing that helped me out was balancing patience with being fast. Best of luck if/when you get around to it! 🍀