Master...

We're in a tight spot!

Like the start of Army of Darkness!

It's the new games, see.

They're too boring.

They try and try to be movies but forget to be games.

Like this one. No skipping through this text with A.

It's slow as dough. -_-

Actual gameplay isn't all that great either.

But I've got to keep doing it.

For her, you see. She watches me play.

She's not stupid, she's a smartie.

Though she's not in the Nazi party.

She likes the plot. It's marginally interesting.

Actual gameplay is a chore she leaves to me.

Like wanting a fire and leaving me to chop wood.

Astounding how much time it takes to chop.

Not just loading or cutscenes though those are lengthy.

Running across an empty hall. Backtracking to save.

Going through a segment once, twice, three times if you die.

The enemies are not the smiling ones.

The enemy is wasting time.

Wasting time wasting time.

What percent of gaming is spent waiting for the game to load?

Or running down empty hallways?

2/10 - Unsatisfying.

But necessary for SO's.

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SUPER SPECIAL BONUS DIS BY A CROTCHETY GAMER!

Dear God, will someone at Nintendo stop AlphaDream from making final boss battles? I spent an hour and a half (not an exaggeration in the least!) trying to defeat the multi-formed final boss and still didn't succeed. Every other battle in M&L:PiT was a fun challege - but this one is a grueling nightmare using every cliche in RPG history!

Right-o - it starts off with a completely unrelated UFO shootout where failure to complete a game mechanic you've used *once* before results in untimely death. See also: Final Boss Battle in Gradius May Cry.

Round two comes when you shoot down the Evil Princess's saucer. Most unfortunately, instead of dying horribly like you do should your saucer be shot down and crash into a castle, she goes into her evil final battle mode! She also has a super shield that takes several hits to break and regenerates every two turns (Read: Four attacks max - and probably less since you've got to heal and stuff.) Wow, nothing says 'fun' like desprately trying to do any damage at all to an invincible enemy. Special bonus fun comes when you find out that one of her attacks will infinitely rebound on you, something no other enemy in the game can do. Let us leave the feeling of jumping over a purple star ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY NINE TIMES and then getting hit by it anyway as an exercise to the reader. (Yes, I know now you can jump *on* it to disarm it. This was the very first time she used that on me. Should've just taken the hit, huh?)

Ho-kay, so you finally beat the Evil Princess who was your nemesis for the entire game and complete the Cobalt Star (construction of such also being your goal for the entire game.) Lo and behold, it turns out that by completing the Cobalt Star you've really only freed the Evil Twin Sister of the Evil Princess, meaning that you really should've just NOT DONE ANYTHING AT ALL FOR THE ENTIRE GAME!

I'm reminded of the first level of Bloodrayne, where you're tasked with helping a bunch of inbred hicks to a barn for safety by an operative for a secret organization. Why? Well, if you do this, then you're in like Flynn to whatever this operative's representing. So you go through the vapid, pointless, fetch quest - getting universal scorn from the villagers for taking them out of their homes. But it's all worth it when you finally free the last one...then some horrible monster breaks into the barn and eats everyone, including the operative. Now I'm not saying that M&L was as bad as Bloodrayne, but on the other hand Princess Peach wasn't topless in a snippet from Super Mario Bros. Perhaps if we just got a topless interlude in between these battles it wouldn't be so bad.

Long story short, you're fighting another Evil Princess. Peach helps here, though unfortunately only about as much as Solid Snake helped when Raiden was trying to shoot down that Harrier. In the grand scheme of things, this battle really wasn't too bad - it would've made a great game ender. Sure, you're running low on items by now, but she doesn't have too much defense and her attacks can be countered to damage her.

Given I'm still on the mic though, she exercises RPG previlege and turns into the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Now, let's go down the points one by one. First, she has four tentacles and tentacle feet - which give her seven to ten attacks per round to your two (which is often cut to one if you need to heal.) Second, she doesn't just have a shield around her (the crown), she's got a shield around her shield (you have to KO her feet to get to the crown)! Finally, any part of her you KO will grow back in two turns, and to add injury to insult, attack you the turn it does grow back!

I'm not exaggerating in the least here - I spent a solid hour fighting this form alone. In doing so, I used up more items than I had used in the ENTIRE REST OF THE GAME COMBINED. Unless you've got some sort of Infinite Items badge (which, incidentally, is the most expensive thing in the game hands down), you're completely hosed.

So, yeah. This isn't an engaging final battle - this is a soul-defiling affront to God that makes me abhor what was otherwise a pretty nice game. Developers, your game should not create this kind of bitterness.