Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom Review -Fixed-

Everyone's heard of the Legend of Lunatic Kingdom, but few except the so inclined have played it, or, at least, taken the trouble to to watch gameplays. I brought away a copy from The Bay. The game is a curiosity to me, it is such a tedious affair, and yet so "dull," so lulling; such an infuriating mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in game. If ZUN made this game, the act was a miracle—keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to common sense, merely scripted it from the already-made engine, which he made subsequent to and including Ten Desires, the work of scripting was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The game seems to be merely a lengthy mess of retries, with I Want to be the Guy for a model; followed by a tedious effigy of the like. The creator labored to give his bullet curtain designs and phrases the quaint, nostalgic sound and structure of I Want to be the Guy; and the result is a mongrel—half modern glibness, and half nostalgic simplicity and gravity. The latter is only reminiscent in part to checkpoints; the former natural, but maddening by the contrast. Whenever he found his game growing too bland—which was about every bullet pattern or two—he ladled in a few such tedious patterns as lazers constraining movement, and fast patterns with high bullet density, etc., and made things satisfactory again. Lazers were his pet. If he had left that out, his game would have been only a demo.

It seems a pity he did not continue the story through, for after all his dreary former stages of tedium, he stopped just as he was in danger of becoming engaging. Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom is rather stupid and tiresome to play, but there is nothing pernicious in the playing of it. It's otherwise unobjectionable—it is "inspired" by I Want to be the Guy—without any of the witty jest, engagement, or commentary.

Originally from: Roughing It, Mark Twain; Chapter 16