My Final Wii And Wii U Games

​As I entered 2022, one of my major gaming goals for the year was to finally finish some of the games in my deepest backlog. By the end of the year, I definitely wanted to finish both my final Wii games and my final Wii U games and maybe tackle my final Xbox 360 games as well to retire the consoles. Over the past three months, I played through both my final Wii games and my final Wii U games. For the Wii games, my two final disc games were Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love and Pandora’s Tower. I also had a digital copy of Zack and Wiki to play on my Wii U which I started promptly after finishing Pandora’s Tower. I had to plug my Wii U back into my TV that day which proved very weird when hours later it was announced the Wii U and 3DS eshops would be shutting down forever in March 2023. I mention this not just because it was a weird, disappointing coincidence, but because I scooped my final Wii U eshop purchases as a result including one of my final non-Virtual Console Wii U games, Affordable Space Adventures. The other Wii U game I still had to play was Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water which I had bought when it released and never played much of. Fatal Frame was part of my decision at the time to buy an external hard drive for the console which maybe wasn’t the best of investments considering the Wii U releases were almost entirely dried up by then, but it did free me to purchase more Virtual Console games and later Affordable Space Adventures without having to worry about the miniscule storage space the console came with. To be fair, I don’t believe we knew The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild would also head to Switch at the time, but yes thankfully it did work out.

In this blog, I want to talk about these final games I played to primarily wrap up both consoles. I still have games I want to replay on the Wii and I will continue to keep my Wii U at least connected to my power outlet so I can play my remaining Virtual Console games on the Wii U Game Pad. I mentioned this in my Top Ten Favorite Wii Games blog, but I always regretted not writing a similar blog for my final PS2 games after I had finished my Top Ten Favorite PS2 games blog. I think talking about what games I was determined to finish before I retired my consoles would be interesting, so here we are today! I’ll discuss my five final Wii and Wii U games in the order I finished them. With that said, let’s roll right into my first game then, Sakura Wars!

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love (Wii)

The game that had been holding me back from completing my final Wii games sooner was definitely Sakura Wars. I had made a few attempts to play Sakura Wars ever since I picked it up towards the end of the Wii’s lifespan, but I just wasn’t really connecting with it. When the pandemic started in early 2020, I had started a fresh playthrough of Sakura Wars and by chipping away at it here and there I managed to make it into the third chapter for the first time. Usually when I put a game down for more than a year, I typically start over from the beginning, but in January this year I actually picked up my playthrough since it still felt fresh in my mind. At the time, I still hadn’t fully figured out how the battle system worked and I really was not connecting with the characters, but picking up my playthrough and fully focusing on it proved to be a great decision. I made sure this time I had a guide handy so I could scope out which of the many, unmarked limited time events I wanted to clear most which helped cut down on some the friction of only being able to save at set checkpoints in each chapter. While I still have some complaints about the game I’ll delve into, with less friction and finally understanding how the battle system works by engaging with it more I ultimately had a fun time with the game.

So, what is Sakura Wars? Essentially, there are two halves of the game, a dating simulator and a turn-based strategy game. The characters you date in the dating sim are your mech pilot partners in the strategy game portion and by raising their affection for you by doing well in the dating sim you boost their stats/abilities in the strategy game. The premise of Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love is most definitely unique. You play as Shinjiro Taiga, a Japanese naval lieutenant in an alternate version of the 1920’s who is sent to New York to join the New York Combat Revue, a secretive military unit that uses mechs to fend off demonic forces threatening to steal the creative energy of humanity for nefarious purposes. When Shinjiro arrives in New York, he learns the New York Combat Revue was originally expecting a different, more experienced pilot, Shinjiro’s uncle, and as a result of his inexperience they want nothing to do with him. Through his perseverance, Shinjiro is eventually offered a job as an usher at the Little Lips Theater which is both a front and the day jobs of the New Combat Revue. Over the course of the story, Shinjiro does eventually get to join and ultimately lead the team. As a quick aside, I have to mention there is a truly unusual and weirdly amusing plot point for a video game at the start of the game, where the New York Combat Revue members all actively distrust and give Shinjiro grief for an extended time when they first meet him for having a baby face. This thankfully does die down as they get to know and trust him, but again it’s weirdly and amusingly unusual for a video game.

I want to talk about both halves of the game ultimately, so let’s start with the dating sim. The Sakura Wars series in general puts an interesting spin on the dating sim genre with its LIPS system (Live & Interactive Picture System). Essentially, LIPS makes dialog choices more complex and stressful by introducing a time limit to your dialog decisions, sometimes asking you to adjust the intensity of your dialog delivery, and as it judges how you perform in minigames and button/stick input challenges. Letting time run out and saying nothing is sometimes a valid choice as well. This system has a lot of flexibility inherent to it as it works for not just dialog choices, but also to perform actions like cleaning a room or participating in a sword duel. To do well in the action segments, you’ll have to efficiently click the sticks in certain directions and slide them in others as fast as possible which on Wii is made awkward because the second stick is instead a D-Pad. I generally like this system, but since stat boosts are on the line, I feel like the developers made it extra unclear what the correct responses sometimes were where choosing a dumb or insensitive response was still rare, but still too often the correct one. I generally liked most of the cast in the game, but as a result of this system I never really grew to love any of them either since they were often more fickle than they probably should have been. I ultimately chose Gemini at the end of the game since she and Shinjiro had decent chemistry, but I can’t say I was invested in the decision. I did still enjoy the general story though and chapter 4 with its bizarre subplot of the citizens of New York fighting, unknown to them, possessed birds in Central Park was incredibly memorable thanks to the script and voice acting becoming as goofy as possible to sell it. (see below)

​My favorite half of Sakura Wars is definitely the turn based strategy game. Its ARMS system, Active & Realtime Machine System, predated Valkyria Chronicles’ combat system and while they are a bit different the core values of both systems and their mission designs are similarly excellent. Your robots all have different stats and abilities. For example, Cheiron’s mech can strike an extended distance in front of it to hit multiple enemies, while Subaru’s attacks with fans in a circular pattern and often has stealth activated to conceal its movement. Every attack with your mechs builds up meter that you can use for tag team attacks, super moves, and for healing. Since the enemy forces often outnumber you, you’ll take plenty of hits during combat, but by moving and attacking efficiently with your limited energy you can often wipe out multiple foes in one turn. Most of the missions sport incredible variety between them. While they often have a clear goal, like defending a position or wiping out the enemy force, each one has its own quirks to consider like fighting on multiple fronts (including mixing ground and air combat which each function differently), dealing with hazards like artillery and sinking sand, and contending with the threat of reinforcements. There are also very tough, often giant bosses to overcome that further put your skills to the test as they often target many of your allies at once which makes balancing attacking and healing very challenging. It’s important and difficult to make sure you win every fight without losing any of your allies’ mechs, because their stats will take a hit that makes even more difficult future missions even harder. Like I did in the dating sim, I often had to reload my save to attempt missions a few times to perfectly triumph. While there is an overwhelming number of options and information at your disposal that isn’t explained much, learning all of it and conquering every challenge is ultimately very satisfying and made me glad I finally played Sakura Wars.

Pandora’s Tower

I always wanted Pandora’s Tower to be my final Wii disc game as it was the final game I picked up for the console, so I had been waiting until I had finished Sakura Wars to finally play it. Pandora’s Tower was the third game in the Operation Rainfall campaign and was always the one I was least interested in even though I still wanted to play it. When I wrote a letter to Nintendo to bring the three games to America, I probably should have written that I wanted to beat all three games in my letter, not just play them, because my run of Pandora’s Tower ended in tragedy. For all of the years it sat in my collection unplayed, I was unaware that a significant portion of players of the North American version encountered a glitch that caused the game to crash when entering the final levels of the game. Ever since it came out here, there was never a surefire method discovered to avoid and escape the glitch. Even though I was mostly retiring the console after this game, I still wanted my console in good condition so after I tried various methods and suffered five hard crashes and five hard resets, I had to retire the game forever. While I never did finish the game, I did read about the various endings, which stings because I believe I was on track for either the best or second best one, but I did at least get closure.

I mentioned at the start of this section, I was always less interested in this game compared to Xenoblade and The Last Story and it was mainly due to its premise. Your girlfriend, Elena, has been cursed to slowly transform into a monster and you must enter twelve mysterious towers suspended over a huge chasm in a forbidden land to bring back beast flesh to hold off the curse. As your mysterious guide Mavda explains, by defeating the bosses of every tower and having Elena eat their flesh, you’ll ultimately be able to break the curse. From the outset, its obvious something is off about this deal and unraveling the mystery is a huge part of the game through tons of written notes and flashback sequences. The twelve towers sort of function as lite Zelda dungeons as you solve puzzles and defeat enemies along the way. There is a time limit for each trip to a tower since Elena’s curse will progress when you are inside a tower. Since I’m not a fan of body horror (the main reason I was always less excited for this game) I successfully always made sure to return just in time for the curse to never progress. While there are twelve towers to explore, I was disappointed to find there was only six actual dungeon themes as they repeat across the other six. I ultimately didn’t get to play the two final dungeons due to the glitch. They probably would have been an extra cool finale as you traverse both at once, but the other five themes are pretty good. I especially enjoyed the two water towers and the two themed after a clock tower as they involved activating and making use of various machinery.

​Beyond the story premise, the other unique idea in Pandora’s Tower is the Oraclos Chain you are equipped with in addition to your standard weapons. While your basic attacks are frustratingly fairly basic all being tied to one button (this isn’t remotely Devil May Cry), the chain offers unique actions for combat as you can bind enemies, swing them around to clear enemies away, and throw them against walls and off cliffs. By shaking the Wii Remote on bound foes, you can rip off both flesh and items from enemies using the chain as well, the latter are often used in basic crafting and unlocking upgrades for your weapons. The chain is also heavily used in traversal and puzzles as well as you use it frequently as a grappling hook to scale up the obviously very vertical towers, and to grab and throw objects around. One of my favorite uses of the chain in puzzle solving was to break a rock using the chain and then grabbing a broken part to throw and plant in a wall to then use as a ledge to grapple up with. The chain frequently sees inventive use in the boss battles against the masters of each tower. These monstrous foes come in a wide variety of forms and by maneuvering around the arena, throwing objects, and ripping off parts you can expose their weak points to actually deal damage. Perhaps more than anything else, given how fun bosses were to defeat I was disappointed I didn’t get to challenge the final boss battles after suffering the game crashing glitch. Ultimately, I’m not sure how much I liked the game overall and without seeing fully how the gameplay and story came together or not makes it hard to judge, but I did enjoy the gameplay for the most part and I’m glad I was able to play what I could.

Zack and Wiki: Quest For Barbaros’ Treasure

I had always heard Zack and Wiki was a great game, so a few years ago I ended up getting a digital version of it on the Wii U. I thought it was some kind of adventure game with puzzles, but it’s actually a very old school point and click adventure game divided into short levels. The twist is that many of the interactions in Zack and Wiki use the Wii remote in various ways such as grabbing and placing objects or using tools like a saw or an umbrella. For the most part the motion controls work very well and feel clever, but there are a few interactions that are incredibly frustrating such as the sword duels which frankly I’m still not sure what motions caused them to actually work or not. While there is an in-game hint system you can take advantage of, stumbling around each puzzle level and figuring out the solutions is the most fun part of the game. There’s a good variety in the levels as some require you to disarm ancient traps and machines, others ask you to sneak into enemy bases to sabotage and steal from them, and others present boss battle challenges to overcome. I didn’t totally vibe with the game’s Saturday morning cartoon tone (which is odd in that I usually like media like it) or really connect with the characters either except your goofy bunny airplane pilot who always wears sunglasses, Johnny Style. While I get why it was designed the way it was and think it would be worse in some ways if they changed it, I still wish there was an option to control Zack directly with the D-Pad or a control stick since it further disconnected me from the character. I still think Zack and Wiki is a pretty good game, but I wasn’t very in love with it either as some of the trial and error puzzles and one hit kill traps didn’t always feel interesting to overcome.

Affordable Space Adventures

When the Wii U and 3DS eshop closures were announced, there was inevitably discussion online about final essential purchases for both consoles. Affordable Space Adventures came up the most for Wii U since it took full advantage of everything the Wii U has to offer and after playing through it myself, I agree it definitely does! You pilot a little space ship that was supposed to be on a safe trip to an uncharted planet. When the game starts it’s obvious you are cut off from the company guiding your trip and most of your ship systems aren’t operating. While your ship still functions, you need to reach a functional beacon to signal the company back on Earth to come rescue you. The full functionality of your ship gradually unlocks as you progress through each level and can be controlled primarily on the Wii U gamepad. By adjusting the power of certain systems, your ship becomes hotter and colder, uses more or less electricity, and makes more or less sound. It can feel annoyingly too artificial at times, but various alien artifacts and alien life that stand in your way will react violently if your temperature, electricity, and noise gauges exceed certain values. Yet, that is the core of the game and overcoming every obstacle is often super fun! A common example for how to cut down on noise for example is to first build up speed using the electric engine and then cut all power to the engine so only the antigravity function keeps propelling you forward with your built-up momentum. In addition to adjusting gauges on the Game Pad, you often have to tilt it to angle your ship up and down to navigate tight spaces and use the buttons and sticks to maneuver your craft and engage the scanner and landing systems. While I didn’t get to experience it myself since the service has been shut down, there is a moment the game tells you in advance that will use the Miiverse and even offline it is still super cool. While I didn’t get to experience multiplayer since the pandemic is currently restricting my ability to hang out with my friends, I hope one day I can as splitting and coordinating the various piloting duties among friends and overcoming every challenge I imagine is lovable chaos. Also, I could use all the help I can get overcoming the super hard challenge levels since I couldn’t even clear the first obstacle! Even alone though, I had an awesome time with Affordable Space Adventures and loved the full journey, especially the ending. I’d definitely consider Affordable Space Adventures an essential purchase for any Wii U fan.

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water

My final Wii U game was Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water and while I ultimately did not have a good time with it, I’m still glad I played through it. I had attempted playing through Fatal Frame at least two other times, but never progressed past chapter 1 since the tutorial doesn’t make a great impression. With momentum on my side, this time I pressed forward and finally made my way into and through the proper game. There are three main characters in the game that you alternate control over between each chapter, Yuri, the main character, Miu who gets captured by ghosts during the prologue, and Ren, a man who is troubled by recurring dreams about a cult ceremony. At the start of chapter 2, the most important person in Yuri’s life who prevented her from committing suicide in the past vanishes on Mt. Hikami. Worried something has happened to her, Yuri sets off with a flashlight to investigate the mountain at night starting from the base of the mountain. I wish I had just booted up chapter 2 in my past attempts, because Mt. Hikami itself, is far and away my favorite part of the game. The graphics and sound work together to build an appropriately realized spooky atmosphere. The weather effects, like rain and fog, further help realize the mountain setting even as you are restricted to set paths to explore. All of the abandoned buildings, both modern and traditional, are interesting to explore and I often loved finding pieces of lore scattered around that help you piece together the greater mysteries of the mountain. While there are frequent hitches in the game’s performance, it doesn’t detract too much from the setting.

I wish Mt. Hikami was in a different game, because Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is ultimately a chore to get through. I think there are three main issues with the game. First, the game is not scary at all. I’m a wimp when it comes to horror so maybe that is a good thing, but the game also operates to an extent that it is supposed to be scary so it falling flat sucks any tension out of the experience. Nearly all of the ghosts you encounter on the mountain lose their impact as they reappear over and over again and since they are attached to combat with an arcade style score system which further makes them feel artificial. There is a mechanic in the game where you can touch ghosts as they fade away and see their final, tragic memories, but it displays them as black and white film footage that is blurry, lacks impact, and is often too over the top to be taken seriously. The second issue, is that while the gameplay is unique as it uses the Wii U gamepad as a camera to photograph and attack ghosts, combat is almost always incredibly drawn out as you either are waiting for a ghost to attack to score a Fatal Frame bonus or you take multiple pictures to release spirit orbs one by one that you ultimately all line up by tilting the Wii U gamepad to trigger a damage multiplier. Aside from scoring points to upgrade your cameras to increase your damage and film reload speed (which still remains slow), combat feels further pointless since ghosts deal such insignificant damage especially when you consider the mountain of healing items you are forced to enter each stage with (not to mention any you find and add to your stock pile during each mission). My final issue with the game is that while the lore is interesting, the actual story is not. It moves at a glacial pace and is vaguely infuriating as characters keep climbing up the mountain after you’ve rescued them. You’ll often enter interesting areas, like the doll house or the main shrine, but then return to it immediately in the next chapter and explore it again as a different character which obviously loses impact. I did replay the final chapter to see both the bad and good endings and while there is a ton of repeat content to work through to do that, I did ultimately enjoy the final destinations of every character’s journey in the good endings to the extent I felt the arduous journey was worth it enough.

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That concludes my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I always love hearing from my readers, so definitely feel free to reach out to me on my Twitter @JustinMikos. Now that I’m done with all of my Wii U games, I will be writing my top ten favorite Wii U games blog next so please look forward to it. Until next time!