Kid Icarus - Retro Playthrough - January 2015

[MetalFRO]

IMHO 1-3 is the hardest level in the entire game. I made it through it when I got lucky enough to get offered the glass of health from the merchant and got a bottle in the treasure room. After that level, it's all downhill if you just take it slow.

This is encouraging. I never played last night after work. Did play a bit of NES Remix to help with my KI skills. Might try again tonight. Crazy that one of, if not the most difficult stage, is right at the beginning of the game.

That's mostly because Pit is still relatively weak, with low HPF and very little arrow strength. Once your health is leveled up 3 or 4 times, and you've got 2 or 3 strength arrows, it's more a matter of slow progress through the levels as you try to avoid the falling or jumping enemies as they come on screen, and maximizing your chance to grab large heart quantities from enemies you can easily defeat. When you have groups of 4 flying enemies coming, I find it's often better to wait until you've taken them all out before advancing.

[singlebanana]

And the higher your level score, the more health you get from leveling up. Good to take it slow and kill respawns

[MaterialHandlerMike]

So, is it a better strategy to try and grind before finishing the early levels? I kind of just tried to get from A to B, in one piece.

[russlyman]

Got some good play time yesterday and today. It helps on the 3ds because I can close the lid and come back to it as long as the battery is alive. It took me two days to get pass the darn vertical levels. What a pain. At first I would grind hearts to be power ups than I would try just speed running up the top. Finally beat it and got onto the horizontal levels. I was roaming around for a while. Got some power ups like the boomer rang thing  and the pencil. Found out the pencil works like a grid map. Than took about 30mins to realize the hammer is used to free the Angels in the statues. Overall having a good time with it.


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[Duke.Togo]

So, is it a better strategy to try and grind before finishing the early levels? I kind of just tried to get from A to B, in one piece.

It's useful to think of Kid Icarus as a hybrid of shooter and platformer. You are earning points by killing enemies, and losing points by taking other actions like shooting arrows. A combination of high kills and high accuracy lead to a higher score.

Score is used to determine two things:
1. At certain thresholds, you will earn more life capacity the next time you complete a level
2. In levels with an arrow power up room, you have to reach a certain score threshold in that level to activate the room

The score seems to be downplayed somewhat in the NES version. The FDS version includes a High Score list on the file select screen.

[Disposed Hero]

Spent a little time with this one earlier today, but didn't make it very far (1-2 I think?) before getting frustrated and turning the game off.  I'll take another crack at it later.

You are earning points by killing enemies, and losing points by taking other actions like shooting arrows.

Good to know, I wasn't aware that shooting arrows lowered your score.  To make matters worse, I'm really bad about just shooting randomly in these types of games when there are no enemies around, so I'll have to remember to stop doing that.

[russlyman]

Finally beat the boss of 1-4 man what a battle. Had had 20+ Angels to help me and I def needed it. Ha. Onwards


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[Silent Scythe]

I completed the first world while earning a handful of upgrades. It is better to take it slow, earn hearts and avoid damage and wasted arrows. I try to always hit up those monster nests (the rooms that just spawn the flying Groucho faces) and avoid the rooms with the ? pots. I think every pot you break counts against your upgrade score if I remember correctly. And don't forget that holding jump slows your descent a little bit, its useful if you need a little help with the platforming. 

[JerryGreenwood]

I'm glad everyone else had problems with 1-3. I've just been going through the game without grinding because I didn't know how you level up because I've always gotten my health bonuses at the end of a stage. As of now, I'm on 3-1 with the 3 specials weapons and 4 arrow strength.

After playing this game for basically the first time I have to put Kid Icarus, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid in the same family. They all came out around the same time, they're all adventure games, the graphics are all similar, most of the enemies could be interchanged between games, the musics are all similar (Kid Icarus' level 1 song or Metroid's Brinstar music could've easily be used as the Zelda overworld theme, Zelda's dungeon theme could fit in some Metroid areas, etc. etc.)

They were also among the first and few that had silver and gold boxes (Rad Racer is the only other non-Konami game off the top of my head that has a silver box). It makes me wonder if Nintendo purposely gave Zelda a gold box to push it more than Kid Icarus and Metroid.

All 3 games are very close in quality and overall fun, but Kid Icarus and Metroid suffered amongst consumers because of their difficulty. I've always thought it was a huge mistake that Nintendo didn't make a Kid Icarus on the SNES, but I guess they had their reasons.

It is better to take it slow, earn hearts and avoid damage and wasted arrows.....avoid the rooms with the ? pots. I think every pot you break counts against your upgrade score if I remember correctly.

Wasted arrows hurt you? Good to know, I fire 'em off like they're going out of style.

What if you break all the ? pots and you don't reveal the God of Poverty? That shouldn't count against your score. I've figured out the pattern of those rooms for the first three stages, but after that it seems pretty complicated or random.

[singlebanana]

I don't think wasted arrows hurt you, I think he just means "wasted" in firing off too many that miss. Could be wrong though, I don't claim to be the expert here.

[MetalFRO]

I've got a save state on 3-2, and once you get into the game quite a way, it gets pretty enjoyable.  Some nice level music later on as well, outside of the first stage's iconic music.

[MaterialHandlerMike]

I have to be the worst gamer on RF Gen. Tried 1-3 for about an hour last night. Still can't beat it. Going to start over soon and see if I can somehow improve my status to that point.

[singlebanana]

I have to be the worst gamer on RF Gen. Tried 1-3 for about an hour last night. Still can't beat it. Going to start over soon and see if I can somehow improve my status to that point.

Just don't get frustrated. This is definitely a game you'll be happy to have beaten when you're done.

[russlyman]

yeah I gave up when I bought this game on E shop months back. tried to come back to it and got fustrated. For some reason I finally got it down and beat it only a few days ago

[singlebanana]

yeah I gave up when I bought this game on E shop months back. tried to come back to it and got fustrated. For some reason I finally got it down and beat it only a few days ago

It's one of those games that when you reach that peak after 1-3, it's all pretty much downhill from there. I am going for the good ending, so I am really creeping through the levels and taking out all of the enemies I can. This is frustrating on 2 levels: (1) it takes so much time moving this slow and (2) I get even more pissed when I die because I have to keep repeating this process. So far my score is:

2 thrown controllers, 1 evil look from wife for throwing controller, which amounts to:

Kid Icarus - 3
banana - 0