Who’s ready for an epic battle?! Let’s get ready to…uh…temple! Ugh, I suspect I’ll never write a good intro again.
There are a good number of NES and other retro games inspired by the great and innovative The Legend of Zelda, but a lot fewer take inspiration from its polarizing sequel, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. The Battle of Olympus is one of the rare examples of the latter – like in Zelda II, it has more side-scrolling, RPG-like elements that send you from city to city, talking to people, and acquiring new items and upgrades. Eventually, you’ll be extremely powerful and cool, perhaps.
The story is loosely based on the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, and depicts the former’s journey into the underworld to rescue the latter (who is named Helene in the game, for some reason). All of your favorite Greek myth figures are here – Zeus, the Nemean Lion, and this lady:
Thanks, lady! There are a lot of people to talk to who provide hints and reminders for what you should be doing, and they’re usually pretty helpful. I really enjoyed the exploring/”figuring out what to do” aspect of this game, even if the exact path wasn’t always super intuitive. The game has a handful of cool items, such as a projectile-hurling sword and boots that you let you walk on ceilings, which are bought from various gods. There are also a number of big and detailed enemies, like this rad snake thing:
The biggest issues with Battle of Olympus are tied to its difficulty, which ranges from rather challenging to outright cruel. While it makes sense to start out with relatively weak weaponry and armor, the minimal reach of the club you start out with can be super frustrating, especially since a lot of enemies have weird hit boxes or movement patterns. This can make some sequences absolutely maddening. You know Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden have bats, which can just ruin your day by knocking you into a pit or something? Well, Battle of Olympus has bats. Just so many bats. And prancing goat people. And a bunch of others. It’s rough.
See that spider web up there? I got stuck in that because I missed an item that let me jump over it, and had to watch myself get mercilessly owned by that weird thing over on the left. I kind of appreciate that this game lets you go places out of sequence, as it makes exploring a little more interesting, but this just feels mean.
Mercifully, you can continue from a recent checkpoint after dying, and there’s a password system if you need to rage quit and come back later. It’s one of those ridiculously long password systems that a bunch of 8-bit games like to use, forcing you to fill in some big, long message that no one understands:
Crazy gibberish.
If you like Zelda II, there’s a good chance you’ll find plenty to like about The Battle of Olympus. It does a lot of things decently well, and looks and sounds great. I haven’t mentioned the soundtrack to this point, but it’s excellent. If you have the patience to deal with some pretty unforgiving enemies and a good amount of exploring/trial and error, it’s a fun experience.
Next week, we’re gonna have some sports! Well, one of the sports. A good one, in fact. Stay tuned for sport(s)!