239 · The Battle of Olympus

• This is an ancient story. A time when Men and Gods lived together
• NES Longplay
• Introductions
  • Many comparisons offered to Zelda 2 even on our own Patreon feed.
    • the player is a hero with a sword and shield
    • Side Scrolling adventure game where you travel from town to town
    • Rescue a princess
    • A final confrontation with a shadow
• Gameplay
  • It’s an adventure! Given the Greek setting it’s easy to think of it like an Odyssey, how is the grandness of the adventure in this game? Is it a compelling story?
    • Fun storytelling beats like having to crouch in front of Zeus to get him to speak.
  • Follow up, is it exciting to progress?
    • A lot of people tell you things and usually we complain about the validity of what they are saying in these games, but I’d like to focus instead on how interesting that mechanic is. Essentially every secret or progression point in the game is just someone telling you GO or DO X and you will get Y
    • Many locations, suffers a little from the Simons Quest problem of having to walk between every location. Zelda 2 world map solved this, by making the dungeons and towns big, but traversal between them easy.
    • The items aren’t just stronger weapons, it’s fun to see what you’re getting next and seeking out optional items
  • Battle system
    • Look no further than the very beginning of the game to see why I don’t like this kind of combat.
      • Purple Slimes that you can only attack when they jump, but they continue to move towards you constantly so you have to be properly positioned for when they jump since you need to be standing in the correct spot.
  • Secondary items and their use to gatekeep future content
    • These are necessary evils in a story telling adventure like this. This isn’t a metroidvania with sequence skipping and finding hidden paths. It’s about getting a particular item to open a particular door.
  • non-linear and there are some optional side quests that can make the game easier in the long run
    • The first example, saving the kid from Lamia based on a request from his mother.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Game Boy version
    • Europe Only
    • Released much later in 1993
• Development
  • The Battle of Olympus was developed by Infinity, and was the first game from the company.
• EGL
  • A great adventure game filled with mostly fetch quests and some moderate puzzle solving, but the combat keeps it off the list for me. On a more interesting note, this game made me want to revisit Zelda II, because I have a feeling the combat is much better in Zelda 2 and that could push it over the edge and finally onto the EGL.
• Next week - Championship Bowling
• NEStalgia Byte - The Portopia Serial Murder Case

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 The Battle of Olympus. This is an ancient story. A time when men and gods live together.

00:22 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. The Battle of Olympus. Many comparisons have been offered, even on our own Patreon feed, to Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link.

00:44 I guess I could see it. The player is a hero, sword and a shield. It's a side-scrolling adventure game. You're traveling from town to town. You have to rescue a princess. I guess that's up for debate, you know, like, where she stands on, like, Zelda's hierarchy of princesses. But, nevertheless, you have to rescue her. And, believe it or not, a final confrontation with a shadow. Just like in Zelda 2. So, I guess there's a lot of similarities here in this game. Did you guys pick up on that pretty quickly? Yeah, I'd even say that it goes even further. Like, the actual, like, yes, it's a side-scroller. But it also just, like, really feels like Zelda 2.

01:24 Down to just, like, the moment-to-moment. Like, oh, that jump feels like the jump from Zelda 2. That kind of stuff. Yeah, it's that, like, platform-y combat side-scrolling that, like, that Zelda 2 sort of made popular, I guess. You know, or Faxanadu being the other example that we recently played.

01:48 Yeah, and I think with Faxanadu, the difference was the exploration of the map was all, you were always on the same map. And you had to kind of scroll across and stuff like that. Whereas, you know, to a lesser extent, Battle of Olympus, but definitely Zelda 2. They have this larger map where you travel between areas. And in Zelda 2, it's an actual overworld that you walk into the towns on the overhead map. In the Battle of Olympus, it's more like you're zoomed out for a second and you get to see where you are in Greece. And then you're brought back in to the same location.

02:28 Yeah, I mean, it could have also totally worked without that if they had just, like, if they just told you where you were. But it seems like they wanted to have that map of Greece. So I feel like in that sense, it is a little closer to Faxanadu than it is to Legend of Zelda. Where, like, Legend of Zelda, the overworld plays such a big part.

02:49 So the Battle of Olympus poses itself as a very, you know, big adventure on the NES. Similar to other larger RPGs that we've played. Given the Greek setting and the fact that I recently read the Odyssey, I feel like it's good to start there and just think of, you know, the one of the most epic tales. One of the first stories ever told, I guess, in the grand scheme of literature.

03:15 Is this, you know, meeting that grandness of Greek literature in the compelling story? Let's just start with plot points, not actual gameplay grandness. I mean, no, but hold on. You just recently, on your own accord, like, read the entirety of the Odyssey? I went to Greece, so I thought it was, like, appropriate reading. Oh, yeah. That was, like, the first travel blog for Greece. Yeah, yeah. The Odyssey really rubble. Like, where to go? Did you eat any lotus? Did you take any hallucinogenics?

03:50 I'll tell you one thing, though. I wasn't, when I went on my ferry to get from one island to another, I didn't wind up hearing a siren song and being called to it for ten years, thanks to the book. That's true. That's probably for the best. Yeah. I think about it. I could have been away from the podcast for ten years if I didn't read the Odyssey. So, okay. In terms of the plot of the Battle of Olympus, you play Orpheus, or I guess like a child version of Orpheus, and you're looking for, you know, the classical, mythological love interest of Orpheus, Helen.

04:28 Which is not, not really. It's Eurydice, but it's Helen in this game, and basically you, I guess Aphrodite really likes that you're in love with Helen, and she, like, recruits all of her god friends to help you get to her. And, uh, that's what you do. You sort of, like, knock on, like, you go door to door knocking on the gods' temples and asking for gifts to get to Helen, and you do that. Do we know if, like, we're playing, like, if they just picked Orpheus because it was a name from Greek mythology? Are we playing as, like, the kid? Are we playing as Orpheus from Greek mythology?

05:10 Because I did not think we were actually him, because he's a child, first of all. Yeah, he doesn't seem to have any musical talents. I mean, he has a harp, eventually, and an ocarina. But he doesn't seem to, like, come from that background. He just, like, you know, he had to, like, you know, in order to impress a girl in high school, you might take up guitar and not have that be, like, your defining characteristic. This seems like a half-baked version of Orpheus. Or in order to summon a pegasus to take you to a town over, you take up Ocarina.

05:44 Yeah, the flute. You know, noted example of never use this in a school essay. Wikipedia says that Orpheus is the same Orpheus from Greek mythology. So do with that information what you will. Yeah, it's just wrong. It's just wrong. Right. I also, like, you know, it's not even, nothing in the game implies that other than the harp, I suppose.

06:07 But what I mean is, is, like, they just attached the reference to the other article on Orpheus inside the plot description of the Battle of Olympus. I don't think there's any, like, definitive evidence that links the two together. Well, I mean, everything else does. Why else? I'm saying that the developer of the game wanted it to be Orpheus, but it does not matter because you get to name yourself and your girlfriend. So, you know, you can name him Link.

06:38 Sean, that's a great point. This is one of the first games where you can name your girlfriend. That's true. Usually you only ever get to name, like, the hero character. But this, yeah, you get to name your girlfriend. I mean, I don't even know the first time you, because I, I couldn't get that far in this game. So I never saw my girlfriend's name written out on the screen. But it's funny that they let you do it with how infrequent you'll see it. But you know what? You can't name your character. Orpheus. It doesn't fit.

07:12 So I always named my character my name because I'm boring. But is that, does that mean that, like, if you just don't fill it out, then it defaults to Orpheus? You know, I didn't try. Right. How do we ever find out that this, other than the manual at the back of the box, like, how do we ever find out? It couldn't be spelled if it does do it that way. It couldn't be spelled the way it's spelled in the manual because there's not enough character space.

07:35 Yeah. I don't know. Maybe you're like Orphex or like RFx. That doesn't work. So, Sean, you're beating up the plot a little bit. But now if we could introduce some of the gameplay and let's just talk about exploration here. Being able to travel between multiple, you know, real Greek locations. And yes, it's just a brief look at the overworld map before you're then brought back into the side schooling portion. Being able to travel between, you know, Athens and all the way down to Crete. That's pretty cool.

08:12 Yeah. Like that adds to the scale of like, you know, modern Greek mythology of how it seemed like even all that time ago, those guys just got around. You know, transportation was not an issue for these guys. No, I mean, it seems like you could just go on like a midday stroll and accidentally end up in Peloponnesus. It's strange. Well, you just walk into the wrong door. And then you walk out the other door and now you're in another city.

09:05 Yeah. Like how long was the segue between these areas that I've jumped over to entirely different cities? Well, what I took it as maybe I'm maybe I'm just giving them like throwing them a bone here is like that. That what the gameplay is like the stuff where the action is happening. And then when you get to the map, it's like, OK, and then you travel the rest of the way, but nothing. Yeah, I guess you can use that part of the world. That's sort of D&D ask like and then you went the rest of the way. Yeah, I'll buy that. But is it exciting to progress?

09:39 Because, you know, it's one thing to say like, oh, you get to go, you know, fight a lot of different enemies and you get to see a lot of different things. But is the is the adventure scaling proportionally or are you just kind of doing the same thing in new regions? I think what makes it feel like it is more than just doing the same thing in new regions is that there's a good amount of of items and elements that you run into that kind of lean that kind of guide you towards growth.

10:14 So like you'll get better weapons. You get a weapon with a projectile. You get what is it? You get Hermes's sandals, which sounds lame, but it lets you like walk on treetops. And jump higher, which lets you get to do. I mean, you know, that's just classic like Metroidvania stuff. But even like the little power ups and stuff are sort of something that's like driving you throughout.

10:37 At least I felt. And then, you know, we touched on like the story is not. Yeah, it's no Odyssey in any way. But like, I don't know how this translated to kids in 1989. But if you're interested in Greek mythology, it's kind of cool to be like, oh, next I'm going to go to. You know, to find Athena. And then, oh, what's Ares going to have for me? It's like, you know, like, you know that they'll have something that might fit what you know about those about those gods.

11:06 So like that's another thing that sort of like makes that propels me forward a little bit. It's like what's going to be next in this Greek mythology that I'm already aware of. Yeah, there's enough like there's enough actual mythology or at least like the background of a mythology like that. Like if this was your first exposure to it and then you started learning it in social studies or whatever the fuck you might learn about mythology. And you'd be like, oh, yeah, I remember like Prometheus gave me my my fire wand or made my wand go fire. So that makes sense. So that's pretty cool in terms of the scale, though.

11:50 And meeting all these guys and I do I do think that this game feels big for how. So, however, it's actually set up, which is more so like a big like interconnected maze. Yeah. And I would just say, too, they've included some nice touches of gameplay and story like mixing together things that don't necessarily matter, but are elements of just cool style in terms of storytelling.

12:20 I think about every time you want to speak to the gods in normal characters, you just walk up to the characters and you press the B button, which is usually your attack button and can make some awkward looking screens where it looks like you're obviously you can never stab the NPCs, but it looks like you're stabbing them. And that's not nice. So I don't know why they would map the talk button to the stab button, but that can't happen with the gods. They're actually on the altar and you can't like jump up over to them.

12:45 So you try just pressing the talk button and that doesn't work either. You figure out that you have to actually kneel before them to engage them in conversation. And I feel like that is a fun mix of, you know, gameplay and storytelling coming together that we don't usually see. No, that was funny. It's immersion. It was also pretty funny when I thought I got to Zeus or some, you know, it kind of looks like Jesus, but I thought I got to Zeus and immediately is just saying, like, who are you? Get out of here. What are you doing here? And then I didn't know what to do. And I realized that I would like, you know, I, I didn't go to the first place somehow.

13:27 But that was a cool little bit of like environmental storytelling where you just didn't talk to the right guy first. And now no one likes you. Yeah. Cause it's, I did the same thing. because what it is is you're supposed to your first task is to go talk to Zeus which they do, someone does tell you so I give them a pass for that, it is like a little bit of

13:55 a missable thing where you're like what am I supposed to do first? You don't know if that's Zeus or not Zeus it looks like Zeus That's true, I mean I'm sure we'll talk about that too, there's a lot of hints or advice that's given to you that you don't really know how to interpret it because you don't know the rest of the information you need, it'll say like go do this, but you're like what's that? where is that? One guy says I know the whatever MacGuffin thing he's talking about is that way he doesn't point or anything, he just says it's that way like it's in that direction and I'm like okay, I don't know what you're talking about but I did the same thing where I didn't talk to Zeus first I went to the town and

14:38 nobody was going to help me because you're supposed to go and kind of like get the task from the gods and then once you go back it's like I mean the, I guess the idea is like oh my god like Zeus sent you? Like yeah, whatever you need you know, it's like that's cool but it's also a little missable yeah, I think that that stuff works nicely into the next thing I wanted to talk about which is that there is an element of non-linear gameplay here even in the sense of you know, we were saying Metroidvania but a lot of times that kind of thing is like oh, you get a new item that allows you to explore a previously

15:14 explored area but with in a new way that you'll unlock new things I don't think this game quite has that but instead what it has going for it is it'll tell you like hey, you're probably not like strong enough for this area I'd advise you to stay out but it doesn't stop you from entering there's a few items that are like gatekeeping you from like hidden cave entrances and stuff like that but for the most part like say you don't go talk to Zeus right away I think you can even get all the way down to like Athens without ever like speaking to any NPC and the game doesn't say like you know, you're going like really far away from where you need to be right now you know, it doesn't hold your hand in that kind of way but that's not really that far

15:56 it's like not much progress it's far like as the crow flies but just going to Athens doesn't mean you've made progress in the actual game yeah, but theoretically you could already do like some side quests and pick up like that

16:12 the staff, right? Is that what you get? The staff of fennel? Yeah, that from that woman yeah, like you could get some of that stuff I'd say that's almost like soft locked behind the shield because of the enemy guarding

16:26 the trigger Yes, and that's why I said theoretically theoretically, you know but I'm saying like the game doesn't like lock this content behind particular items being unlocked or, you know they're just triggered by you going to those areas and those areas aren't gatekept by items so I feel like I don't know I thought that was a nice touch that you can you can you can explore and do wrong in this game

16:50 Yeah It's not confusing though I guess you know it's not for me I never felt like I don't know where the hell I am or what I'm supposed to do I don't agree with that but I'm sure we'll get there and I guess I'm not being entirely like truthful there too because with a game of this scale I played with a guide so Okay that's why I could understand yeah I could understand that if you're yeah if you're not playing

17:14 with a guide or at least with some kind of map it is a little tricky to figure out especially given that entrances to new areas are also the same as entrances to like people's houses and such it's not it's not really well communicated when you're moving on because sometimes when you move on you're just progressing to the next section of the same area in another screen by just going to the right and then you kind of hit these dead ends dead ends don't necessarily lead to doors that will take you to the next area you might have missed that door a while back and just not known about it yeah the navigation in this game is also one of the reasons why I wouldn't call it a Metroidvania not so much even like the

18:01 gatekeeping item portion of it it's because the way that a Metroidvania sets up its stuff it it's a lot easier to get a lay of the land and you'll because it's all in the same plane like it's all over 2D space but you don't ever go into a door that puts you in another layer of the game that it's gonna like wormhole back into the primary layer in some other weird portal it's just all there and one of my main problems with playing this game was just I did not have a sense of direction and yeah I know I could have used a

18:45 walkthrough just to have like oh walk through the second weird door to your right and then it's just more so like following instructions than actually like knowing where you are and I I just couldn't get beyond that in some senses yeah I was like torn because at first when I first played it or when I first started I was like wow compared to you know compared to Zelda 2 and Faxanadu the

19:16 the like information you get from NPCs is even better is like has really like makes me feel like oh maybe I don't need a guide for this game because they are really telling me a lot of things like they're telling me a lot of information that like you know maybe this really does like kind of feel more like a like an RPG that I'm more used to have a more modern type of game where it's like oh I can do this without a guide because it's all there in the game but like I said a lot of that information is not like complete or like doesn't

19:51 actually guide you to what to do next it says like this is what you need to get next and I'm like okay well I have no idea where that is like and yes you can just explore until you find it but that's that feels like it does sometimes miss the purpose of having those NPCs telling you what to do next because if you tell me this is what I need next that's the same as me not knowing what I need next if I don't know where like have a hint as to where I need to go like if you just say you need this

20:14 thing and it's like just explore until you find it if you didn't tell me that I would have just explored until I found the next thing so like that that element of it like kind of made me like of two minds like at first I was like they did a lot well about making this feel like you're not like aimless but then there are like I also used a guide and there were like a lot of parts in the guide where it was like

20:37 okay go through the first door after this and then go through the third door after that and then two doors to the right of that one and then one door to the right of this and I'm like maybe there was some way I could have solved that with the information in the game that wasn't just guess and check but like so like if I if I play this game a lot more and I find out like oh wait I was just missing things then I'll take this back but I don't think that is the case I think that that it's just another one of those games that you really need a guide which isn't hasn't been necessarily the kiss of death for other games that I've needed a guide that I still really loved but it was not a point in its favor Joe you're talking about the NPC

21:16 dialogue on a lot of on a lot of like you know they tell you to go to this thing right usually with NPCs in these kinds of games both in Simon's Quest and in in Zelda 2 in some regards we've been upset with the localization and just the truth of what they're saying and and the validity of the statements they're making you know this isn't this that's what we usually complain about it's not necessarily the case here but I think that you know this is a very boring example of like what could happen if if it was all correct anyway because it

21:51 winds up being something where even if you could understand you know with with hindsight like having maybe right it would just be vague it's just go go or do X and you will get Y and you know seeing it now with with a game that actually got it all right it seems like wow it actually isn't a very interesting mechanic and obviously modern NPCs have figured this out a lot better but for a game that's setting itself up to be this grand story I feel like they could have added more color to these NPCs than just flat out saying go to X and get Y yeah like one

22:29 example of it was still very simple dialogue but at least felt like you were having an impact on this world and it wasn't just a bunch of trivia knowledge keepers that were in all of these towns was when you know you you you're actually kind of just it's not really a side quest because you you do need the staff but when you go through the town that's next to Athens that I don't remember the name of you're talking

23:00 to this woman it's like oh my my child has been kidnapped by a witch or a harpy or whatever she is and then the father is like hey my daughter lost her kid can you go find it then you go and you fight this like mini boss and then you go into the cave and you find the kid and then you bring word back that you found the kid it might still be playing in the in the cave for some reason you don't see him leave but

23:33 then you talk to the mother and she's like oh thank you here's the thing my dad knows more about the thing you should talk to him and then you go and talk to him and he's like oh prometheus he's got the you know he knows how to use this thing I I liked that it felt like you know

23:53 conversations more so than you know this guy Hephaestus makes really great swords just wanted to let you know that yeah it felt like you exist in this world yeah right the follow-up is good on those things too the fact that the NPC first leads you to a

24:13 boss fight if you will and then you complete the boss fight and then that same NPC then leads you to the next thing like that feels a lot better than when you first what town are you in when you first start the game Arcadia yes okay yeah when you're in Arcadia there's a bunch of NPCs that you could talk to but unless you're like have a notepad out and are writing these things down you're gonna have to go like check back in with them at some point for what they what kind of clues they gave you because it's not stuff that's immediately happening and there is no oh go follow back up with my brother in Arcadia

24:50 he lives in the first house to the left like that would be stupid but like you know how else would they tell you I guess you know there's not a lot of that in this game yeah it was just a very memorable example

25:02 of the few times it does that many locations in this game but I feel like it suffers a little from that Simon's quest problem where you have to walk between every location so if you ever you know in a game that tells you like first you go here and then you go there and then you go back there there is a lot of backtracking in this game a little more than even for Xanadu had but this game is large so if you want

25:28 to for whatever reason go all the way back to Arcadia at some point it's a lot of backtracking and walking through and dealing with you know enemies are always kind of just a nuisance at any level uh you know the nicer your sword is does it mean that the kind of bats that fly around or um that even those blue slimes that you start off with in the game like those things are still going to be

25:52 something that you're gonna have to either dodge to make sure that you don't die from my point just being that Zelda 2's world map uh solved all of this by just making like the overworld something that's very quick to move between town to town and then like the dungeons and towns are really big once you get inside of them it feels weird in in um in Battle of Olympus where if you're three towns away from

26:18 where you need to be it's like guess I just gotta go all the way back the way I already came uh even though I don't think I'm gonna discover anything new and that could have been solved with some metrovania like elements but as Sean's already discussed that doesn't quite happen in this game yeah on paper I I think that I like I agree with that like that that when you say it I'm like yeah that

26:41 that's poorly designed but something about these games I mean because fix and a dude did sort of a similar thing like you said and I feel like sometimes the right amount of backtracking if it's not if it's not too much like doesn't hurt with like the immersiveness and like I guess the fact that this game doesn't feel quite so like it feels big because there's all these different locations and stuff but really when you think about it it's not each location is not that

27:12 big and it never felt to me like a slog to have to go through it it felt like I was getting familiar with the world and I it kind of felt cool to me after a little while when it's like when I was like oh I gotta you know go back to Attica like I know how to get there from here I remember this here's our little journey you know that's kind of maybe made the like farming that I needed to do later for money a little more tolerable because I was already doing it while I'm like traveling and then also the fact that

27:39 I'd say less than halfway through the game I'm guessing I can't remember but like you get this fast travel option which is not a perfect fast travel option as far as player convenience but it makes it um

27:55 it usually seems to be designed in a way where like it'll take you to where you probably want to go next wait can you describe this because I don't think I got there yeah so what it is is you get uh the harp and if you go to I'm trying to remember what they are it's like these statues that are in each area if you go to it and play the harp the pegasus will come down and take you to another town but you don't choose the town each one has like a fixed place you go to from that town okay so it's like kind of weird but like if you're in what like what is it peloponnesus that was called yep uh you you know I think it takes you

28:33 back to arcadia so each town like wherever the pegasus is like it it will only bring you to one other town it's not like a yeah like from there it'll only ever take you to arcadia but then like from arcadia I you know I actually didn't test if it just will take you back to peloponnesus I think it takes you somewhere else but I think it's designed where it's probably where you want to go next okay because so because I never had a problem with like oh shit how do I get there it was always like oh perfect it's exactly where I want to go but it feels like also if you really wanted to get I mean maybe it's just a little bit of a tedious

29:09 prototype for a fast travel system but it feels like if I really wanted to get to one I could just fly to one this isn't where I want to go fly again this isn't where I want to go fly again okay here I am so like kind of uncool but but but it still feels like a reward because it takes a it takes away the like weight of having to long travel everywhere it feels like progress yeah maybe a little clumsy in execution but definitely better than I don't think Simon's Quest ever offered anything in the idea of fast travel so I you know could be better but we'll take it and you're right actually the harp of Apollo I wouldn't even say like mid game I think you I think

29:49 you get that fairly early fairly early on not like right away well I didn't get it I'd say a third of the game there you go third of the game in everybody knows where the third of the game mark is it says it on the screen right it says you've now made it one third of the way through once you collect the harp actually like after the like just after the Hydra boy I mean I got I guess it's a yeah it's a yeah the Hydra boy yeah I think it is actually the next thing after the Hydra boy right wow whoops it could be or somewhere close to there let's talk about the items in the game and not just the harp and the ocarina and stuff like that but also your weaponry because that upgrades

30:42 you know it's not just you're you got from club to sword and and your strength went up like plus one there there are like some cool items that you can either you know miss or collect or or you know they they give you like a new ability I think in terms of you know comparing it to Zelda again I feel like there was some exciting items in this game that kept me on my toes in terms of like what I was about to receive yeah definitely I mean

31:14 there are the ones that we talked about that are like sort of just making it so you've unlocked things like there's the the one that's like the the the eye that lets you see hidden doors like that one is just like okay this is just for here for progress but a bunch of them are like yeah they feel like tools that can be used in different ways even like you said the weapons you get the club and you get the sword like yeah that

31:39 that's just a strength boost but then there's like the staff that does the same thing as the sword but then you also have a projectile you can shoot out of it like it's not just like they they made there's some intention to each like upgrade to your items as well this is what I've been asking for for like since we started this podcast was like a

32:03 like when your upgrades aren't just a like a step up in terms of damage scale or just another way to make something a key like it's actually you can use this in different ways like Apollo you know you can jump higher and that I got it I thought that's all it did but then you can stand on the ceiling and I was just like oh that's cool I didn't think that would have like a secondary effect and it's the same

32:33 with the staffs like okay yeah it's a little bit more damage at first and then you finally talk to Prometheus and it gives you the projectile so I really like the way they did the upgrades in this game yeah and again that's another great story element to of like you don't just get the staff and it shoots fire you have to speak to Prometheus in order to theoretically have been trained to learn how to do

32:57 that thing some people might say that's tedious I don't know I think in this kind of game where they're trying to talk about like you know a hero on his journey learning how to take down Hades like that's pretty cool that they took that extra step there because you're right like the staff by itself is more powerful than the club so it's already got like some kind of boost to it interestingly enough they also put some trade-offs at least in the staff where the you know those salamanders are fire resistant so when you're down in the salamander cave you can't just shoot flames at them to deal with them you have to hit them still with the staff is fine but you have to hit them you can't just spam fire at them and collect olives non-stop from them yeah

33:44 but to that point you don't feel like okay I've got the next step up in weapons so I'll never go back to the other weapon there are reasons to switch I think that the sword actually has better I could be wrong as better attack power than the staff if you're just hitting things that is true like that so that would make it like beneficial like okay I'm gonna fight a bunch of salamanders I'm gonna switch to the sword and then eventually you get that the whatever the super powerful sword is after the staff the master the divine sword yeah the master sword and then you get the divine sword and that has that's more powerful than the staff and has a projectile but the projectile drains like one half point

34:27 of your health every time you use it so it's like it's better but like you might want to switch like I found myself switching back to the staff sometimes too like it was never like okay well that's worthless now because I got the next thing it was always there was always decisions to be made as to like except for the club you never go back to the club well that feels like a good segue into the battle system which is a whole other part of this game so far we have been focusing just on the exploration and story elements of this game but it now feels like a good time to talk about the battle system since we've talked about some of the items you'll unlock you know I think we I think we talked about

35:08 like in Zelda 2 it's really cool how fight scenes are brought down like duels on the overworld like you just you run into an enemy and then it just brings you into a screen and it's almost like a sword fighting matchup a 1v1 where you're trying to take control of the screen this is more like fazanadu in that regard where enemies are always just on the side schooling part of it and you only ever fight them that way I'll just start with the very beginning of the game to see why I don't really like this kind of combat it's not my preferred way it's not like it's not the worst thing in the world but those blue slimes that you can only attack when they jump but they fall from the ceiling

35:53 and you know that's just be mindful or whatever but then they continue to move towards you constantly at this like sluggish sluggish pace and you can try to crouch but you still can't hit them and keep in mind is the very first enemy in the game so you have to be properly positioned for when they jump since you need to be standing in the correct spot at the same time I suppose you could just keep your distance and try to lunge forward at them with a sword jump to time when when they jump in the air and yeah these guys don't do a ton of damage and it's not the end of the world or anything but for this to be the first experience with the battle system it showed me the limitations

36:35 of you know like of this kind of fighting that like that it does take some precision striking and that the enemies are more powerful and in some regards less vulnerable than the player yeah I that the anything that's too short is incredibly frustrating and you don't have to be standing in a specific spot to hit those little slimes like if you just crouch and just spam the sword while it approaches you it will eventually jump into your sword but

37:13 regardless the the kind of philosophy that seems to have gone into enemy placement in this game is sort of all over the place like in some places the enemies seem to be very specifically placed that you like have to like bait them out and like jump over on the or bait them out and fight them normally or like it's it's intentional and then there's times where it just feels like let's just cram them as much stuff as we can on the screen and well they'll they'll get hit like three times in a row and eventually fall down a hole that's sort of how it felt like there wasn't any it didn't feel across

37:55 the board like they were trying to do the same thing I had sort of like an interesting relationship with the battle system here because to start I really liked it yes the the slime thing kind of kind of weird that you that the first enemy is too low to the ground for you to hit I think there is only one other enemy that does that though towards the end is the caterpillar as far as I can remember so

38:22 like that's definitely weird like especially that's the first enemy I never felt like they were like cramming too much on the screen ever like I always felt like it was it always felt pretty intentional yeah there were some that would like respawn when you kill them like we've seen in some other games but it was never to that like really annoying like karate kid level

38:41 where it really bothered me that much but the thing is when I first started I really liked it and there was something about it that I was like this feels better than I was used to from what I remember it's been a while but from Zelda 2 or Vaxanadu and I couldn't put my finger on what it was about it was like oh like this combat feels really good and it feels really like responsive and whatnot as the game went on I could not put my finger on it like I was just getting really bored of the combat like it was hard and sometimes and whatnot but like by the end I was like something about it was just like not holding my attention and I think what I realized was that what I had mistaken for like really good one-to-one input

39:29 recognition really also kind of amounted to like just there's no cool down to your attack so like Sean like you said if you just you rapid fire that button above the slime and it'll jump into your sword as long as you're hitting it quickly enough there are some enemies where like it would jump at me like those monkeys

39:48 later on that are really annoying it would jump at me and it would feel like I can hit him a bunch of time and that hit me but then I realized oh if I hit faster if I really go rapid fire I can hit it an extra time and kill it which makes it eventually feel like yeah the fact that like Zelda 2 has that cooldown which makes it a little more challenging and just makes it a little more like I have to think a little more even if it's like a fraction like my brain is working a little more to make it like a challenge rather than just hey just spam a as fast as I can I'm making it sound really negative but it was like that was what made me realize like why I got like a

40:28 little more tired of this combat more quickly than I did for Zelda or Zelda 2 or FX Anadu and you you kind of have to spam sometimes given uh where you are in in the caves or uh specific locations in the overworld because enemies do just continue to spawn and you know approach you pretty quickly so you kind of have to take a back seat to progress and either you know try to jump around them and just forget them all together or stand there stab stab stab move a little bit another enemy spawns in a scorpion or something and then get rid of them keep moving just a little bit

41:07 like inching your way it's almost like a game of football where you're just kind of you know nothing's really like intimidating you that much but you're just inching closer to the end zone across plays uh that's that's kind of how I had the experience with these normal enemies in the game just the ones that you'll see over and over and over again the the boss fights which we'll get into in a minute much more creative but these enemies just back to my point that I guess I was trying to make with the the first enemies too is just that they feel like they're coming at you a lot quicker in a larger number and also with you know a lot of different types that your hero adventure thing like the the idea of you being someone who's going to take down Hades

41:52 right the the little guys ruin that and then the bosses make you feel like big and cool again yeah I mean again it's it it's also I think a part of the like the patterns that these enemies with enough of them on the screen do like they're either just jumping maniacally around or they're uh they're they're just moving towards you uh at a constant rate and at maybe just like moving at random too it it's really hard to anticipate like there's no tells it it doesn't feel like you're very skilled when you take them down and yeah just again the the density of it it's it's hard to it's hard to make it feel like a uh a hand a hand-picked thing um when all this stuff is going on

42:55 the boss fights by comparison have this thing where yeah sometimes it's just hit them with uh a specific weapon or hit them only in this body part uh you see that a lot but I feel like that reward of um you know the cyclops right you know figure out that you have to not only hit him in the eye but hit him with the sword specifically to do any damage you know the cyclops

43:23 is not an impossible enemy it's more about figuring out what you have to do to take them down that feels more rewarding as a as a combat encounter than um these castlevania-like moments uh on the screen which you know this game really isn't a platformer uh for the most part it's all uh there's not many pitfalls other than in the caves and stuff like that I feel like the enemies aren't doing a good job

43:49 but the bosses redeem it because there's even ones like uh that siren uh where you have to first play the harp to um to avoid being drawn in by her and then you can you could start attacking her uh little things like that make the the boss fights feel plussed up even if their sprites aren't particularly uh grand or uh their battles you know cue in like anything extra yeah like it's just a more focused

44:15 experience when you're fighting these instead of the again randomly placed enemies it definitely felt like the boss fights were designed in a way where they were not like super hard technically like they all only took a few hits to kill but but like you're saying the the fact that there's like this other element that like is immersive in the world that you have to figure out and like it's it's some

44:42 technical gameplay thing you have to do makes like that feel like the interesting diff like challenge of the boss fight rather than like can I hit it this many times before it hits me that many times

44:53 and there's a good variety of these boss fights too it's not uh I guess like it depends on what you call a boss fight but like even that bull that guards uh the temple of zeus not a challenging thing at all right like it it's just a unique sprite that happens to uh rev up first telling you that it's going to start charging at you then it charges at you and if you time your hit right he just gets like a little knock back and then charges you again like he's a stubborn bull you know he's not supposed to be something you know an unprepared player could die from him right but for the most part it's just

45:26 supposed to be a teachable moment there's a lot of those kinds of enemies uh in this game that are just one-off fights yeah and that that adds to the world building too and I think actually most of those enemies I found easier than regular enemies but it was cool because it was like oh this is the spot where the bull guards right right I think that's what I'm trying to get at too is that this

45:50 game is at its best when it's uh when it's doing that job of telling the story through gameplay it never I think other than like when you run into um the whatever you name the princess when you run into her that's when it like finally skips to cut scene other than that all the game uh story is told in gameplay and so I feel like it it's at its best when it continues to do that not when it relies on the npcs to tell you go get this and things will change

46:29 joe did you beat the game I didn't beat the game I think I got to maybe like the second to last thing I got I think I was not in tartarus or hades which I assume is where you end um

46:42 what was it like the thea or whatever maybe that was last one or or the one across but yeah I was in like the second to last dungeon where there's like I assume it's the second to last where there's like layers of the dungeon you can go like through these different doors um like back into the background or come out into the foreground right right maybe that was tartarus I can't remember it might have been it might have been yeah uh I only asked because I didn't get to the end either but uh my understanding

47:08 is is that the the shadow fight in this game is significantly easier than the zelda 2 shadow fight which uh some consider to be you know one of the hardest boss fights in a nes game that is otherwise beatable you know uh we have nes hard games but then there's games that like you know nintendo makes like that just throw you a bone every now and again and and uh this game I feel like yeah it's it's a it's on the longer side and it does require a guide uh in my opinion sean I applaud you for trying it without it but I think with a guide and with some time uh this is a beatable game and and that also

47:49 like deserves some acknowledgement too because some of these nes games just reach a point where they you know they get too hard or they um they throw so many enemies at you that you're not supposed to like you know maybe like through luck you'll get through eventually this game never really relies on on any sense of luck or bad rng uh this is a game that's mostly about the adventure yeah and even like obviously I wasn't I didn't beat this game either but even looking at the the boss fight it like it's more so just a uh a little gimmick where you have to look at the upside down version of your fight

48:29 instead of where you're actually standing but it's still like that would be a memorable moment for me if I if I played this when it came out like wow that was so cool I had to like learn that I was playing uh that I had to look at the water like isn't that fun yeah it's like you see I'm just watching it now too for the first time but you see your character and then his shadow is below you and then there's like shadow and a shadow enemy that's also below you so like yeah it's like a mirror mirror image of the fight I'm not sure why it just kind of looks like a a ninja like is is Hades a ninja but

49:08 maybe in this version of greek mythology right where you're Orpheus that can't fit on in your name you have to spell it differently in order to fit it and if you look at like a walkthrough for the battle of olympus uh one on mike's rpg center I am not related to this mike uh on the walkthrough they just do it in bullet points and they make the game seem so basic and simple the way that they describe it because this isn't like a game faq thing where it's all like nicely formatted and everything this is just bullet points with text but just to read off like the very the first four bullet points from arcadia make your way across arcadia until you reach the white

49:49 building and enter on the other side of the passage you'll have to fight the bull hit it four times on the head when it charges at you to kill it continue on and enter zeus's palace kneel before him and speak to him now the other gods will help you in your quest speak to him or any of the other gods at any time to receive your password return to the main area of arcadia and enter the lower door in the building to the west to reach attica it's like that that makes it seem like pretty dry uh you know but that that's the difference between the actual gameplay experience of playing battle of olympus

50:20 and like talking about it now right like talking about the plot points here it's not the same you know it's the same thing with like how the story didn't quite add up to what the uh to what the gameplay was giving us i think i think they created a larger game than they uh than they could describe yeah i i mean i also think that the way that that is written like because like this game is big enough that you can get lost there is a need for a like sort of step-by-step process like that but in games that are just as uh in games that engage you just as much like doom would just be like get to end kill everything and then the next level would be get to end kill everything flip switch kill the rest

51:07 like it doesn't need to be a full paragraph i think a lot of game faqs uh walkthroughs go into a little bit too much detail so i kind of like this laconic version i do too but the issue that i not the issue but like the thing about using the guide for me with this game was i mean i used a guide for zelda 2 and for fax and i do and i and i had a great time with it that way but those games i felt so much more like i could look at the guide and say what do i do next and it's like okay next i have to get this thing put the guide down and then spend 20 minutes doing that thing where it's like even if i don't read exactly what to do beat for beat um i can i can stick with the

51:52 you know i know i know my goal and i can the game can help me figure that out with this i didn't feel like i had that option as much like i felt like i really needed to know beat for beat what to do next so like it did sort of devolve at some points into like just for my experience because i was using a guide into like a very like surgical experience where i'm like okay go through this door okay wait before i do anything else because i'll get lost look back at the guide okay next what do i do like

52:19 i felt that specifically in the yeah in in the forest which was like what convinced me that i just don't like this form of navigation but i i know what you're feeling yeah yeah because i just i mean obviously i'm like comparing it now to these other games that were similar and i didn't have that experience so much with those games so like it it felt a little disappointing on that side for me and the story does miss every now and again too it's not um you know they're trying to tell it all through gameplay but it's not necessarily always successful i didn't find out

52:55 until uh looking at one of the guides that before you approach the final boss with hades there's a room just uh one door leading to another and there's like a statue in the middle of the room and you're just supposed to know that that's your uh that that's your like princess that you're trying to rescue but she's been turned to stone by hades it's like it's not it's never pointed out it's not like i don't know it's it's not like the most uh elegant way to describe that kind of situation like it would have been cool if we would have seen hades like other form and him casting that spell on her like first we thought we rescued her successfully got to the end and then it's like oh nope here's

53:33 this gotcha but instead you just walk into the room she's already a statue there's no interaction there's no pause also isn't that supposed to be a thing like i don't i don't quite remember who is it orfus no no like you the dude goes into haiti or goes into tartarus and talks to hades and is like yeah you can take her but you can't this is persephone i think i don't know but you can't look back behind you to see if she's still following you and then he's like he does and then she turns to stone or something like that maybe i'm mixing up my mythology but it just felt wrongly applied

54:15 i was trying to find out the answer for you shawma instead i got a much more interesting question on google can medusa turn hades to stone and i i you know that's like just an interesting question the answer is apparently not because medusa did not have the power to turn gods to stone uh that wasn't um that wasn't on the back of the box of the medusa right right

54:45 on the sequels and spinoff side uh we have a game boy version of the battle of olympus released much later in 1993 and if you're starting to ask yourself wait a minute i had a game boy i had a lot of games on the game boy why didn't i get uh battle of olympus on game boy it's because it was actually only released in europe so this is a very uh you know series of strange events but it must have been that a european developer specifically ported the game over to game boy and then nintendo or whoever was just like cool release it uh but don't bother translating it or doing whatever i

55:23 mean like surely it's in english right if it's for the uk or something maybe it's just in greek yeah maybe it was just for greek audiences interestingly enough though it's pretty much the same game it's not worth pointing out what the differences are they pretty much ported the nes game over to you know the game boy has that weird thing where uh sprites are slightly bigger so it you know in order to communicate detail so there's a lot of scrolling going on and a lot of like uh unanticipated collisions yeah uh so you know this game this version isn't perfect but nevertheless there was a way to play battle of olympus on the go well i think we have to go

56:05 i knew that was what you were gonna do i have to go to the bathroom wait wait sean sean before you go to the bathroom all right there is one other thing we have to do oh and that is yeah that the essential games list sean you first yeah i've got pretty mixed feelings about this game i i did enjoy playing it uh but a lot of the same frustrations that i felt in other similar games are still here and one of those is just like these open world uh 2d scrollers where it's not all on the same plane this is a very

56:51 specific gripe that i have and where you go in like into the back of the game and you're supposed to sort of like have your heading or just use a guide i can't do that i can't navigate games like this and that's that's a huge reason uh why i i am up two minds on this game the other being that like we've described like the combat and enemies are kind of haphazard in my opinion uh i do think it's one of the more the more clearly described like how do i get to from point to point b in terms of like what you're supposed to do maybe not how you're supposed to get there

57:37 um in terms of the npcs and uh the environment but i'm gonna have to just like settle for a play it here and not recommend this be on the essential games list uh it's it's totally like above average all right that's what we'd love to hear you might think i'm gonna go to joe next but i've thought about it and i've been going to joe second for a really long time and i'd like to go second so joe

58:04 you're gonna finish this off today you you you've earned it thank you thank you i've earned second yeah i think the battle of olympus is a great adventure game filled with mostly like the vague idea of fetch quests you know that's making it sound very boring but it is really just like go get this thing and then go get that thing there's no like we didn't talk about olives right right the

58:27 olives that you need to um go ahead and purchase like you know get 50 of these and i'll give you a a very uh an item you need uh you know that's not even my problem and fetch quest is being mean here i guess what i'm saying is like there wasn't the the triforce element right where it's like oh defeat these people to get this thing that will bring you to the boss it didn't it didn't quite

58:49 have that it was mostly like get this thing then get that thing there's some moderate i guess puzzle solving on on at least like it without a guide uh there's some of that going on that's all like that's all like good things in my opinion i actually feel like the combat is the thing that keeps the battle of olympus off the essential games list for me and not just because the enemies were

59:12 difficult it's not about their difficulty um even though maybe that's what i made it sound like i think it's just that that's a very monotonous thing that happens all the time uh when you're not like actually exploring and trying to figure out what to do next on your grand quest you're just dealing with these enemies over and over and over again it just doesn't make for a very interesting game so um it's not on my essential games list vote and i'm not going to vote for it uh but on a more interesting note this game made me kind of want to revisit zelda 2 because i have a feeling that the

59:45 combat is much better in zelda 2 and zelda 2 was kind of doing the same thing adventure wise that battle of olympus was doing so maybe that could push it over the edge and finally onto the essential games list but we need everybody else to agree as well joe every single one of you forget about yeah forget about zelda 2 forget that i even mentioned it because i know you're gonna say essential we're talking about the battle of olympus what is your vote for that game so i'm a sucker for this kind of game i i think that like this format um just does a really good job of giving you that feeling of going on an adventure uh so i really really like this game a lot and if it seems like

1:00:30 in the episode i had a lot to say that was negative about it that's because throughout the episode i have been trying to justify why i am also not going to vote at essential and that's because most of what i've already said but like the the major thing that i couldn't put my finger on about what i wasn't enjoying about this game as much as those other games is if i'm pressed to come up with the answer is that attacking element where i start to feel like i got kind of bored of it because it wasn't giving me the like challenge isn't the right word but like it wasn't giving my my like brain the challenge that i

1:01:10 want to wear like i gotta like have a little bit of thought put into like when i attack and not just attack attack attack i mean granted there are times where something swoops down at you you gotta time it right but it just got tedious to me for that that combined with like the the element that feels like a maze in which i need to really be looking back and forth between the guide and the game over and over again keeps it from the level of faxanadu or zelda 2 which i which i love so much so i also sometimes have a tough time like remembering that i don't have to decide if something is either essential or horrible i think this is a fantastic game and i think it's definitely

1:01:54 a play it it's just not quite up to the standard of those other games that i think are better i like that that's a good point especially with people who have gripes about some things that are and are not on the essential games list uh there is a whole like play it section that just isn't interesting right like we're not trying to make a play it list you can decide what uh you want to play and stuff like that we do keep that on the website yeah we'll still tell you yeah we have that if you're interested yeah if you want to live your life being told what to do by three guys like you know i guess we could put in like other columns too for just other random information could have a

1:02:28 wheel that just spins every game we've covered so far and whatever it lands on that's what you have to play that day or that week or that whole year wow uh we could do that instead what we're going to do is we're going to keep recording episodes of nostalgia next week we have the uh spiritual successor to the battle of olympus championship bowling thank you thank you for the for the one laugh sean i agree sensible chuckle it's a very sensible chuckle a bowling ball is like an olive yeah of course bowling it was probably yeah homer from the simpsons loves to bowl and homer wrote the odyssey that's true wow and if you if you only root for teams in your city you're a homer there you go

1:03:15 now um if you if championship bowling is like yeah i'll take it or leave it you know i i could use better games why don't you check out our other um uh podcast nostalgia bites which is exclusive to our patreon patreon.com slash nostalgia to join and we are doing the portopia serial murder case which is a a game that only was ever released in japan but got a fun english translation and is kind of like one of the first text-based adventure games ever in japan uh that i think came out first on computers but then eventually on famicom so it has again a non-linear storytelling with detective elements and you can interrogate people and you can pick up evidence and you can take notes and ask people

1:04:04 questions and visit locations uh you go into a building with a toilet can you flush the toilet you can use a payphone all right well we'll we'll see i'll play it okay yeah i think you'll have to for the episode uh because the the patrons you know that's what that's we're giving them what they pay for that's true they do pay for this yeah we lock champ we lock a portopia serial murder case because it's a good game we lock that behind nostalgia bites but if you want the free content we'll keep making episodes like championship bowling yeah that's how this whole podcast works we decide for you know arbitrarily what nintendo releases in chronological order and then just uh put that on the free feed you