LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias Review: A Gust of Awesomeness Straight to Your Face

Frontier Developments follows up their debut WiiWare title with a sequel that surpasses its predecessor in every conceivable manner.

“Oh, you thought the original LostWinds was too short? No problem, we’ll make this one longer!”

“Oh, the objectives weren’t clear enough in LostWinds and you wound up wandering around with no clue what to do? Our bad. We’ll totally take care of that in the sequel.”

“You wanna walk around in a cute little snow monster suit? Fuck yes. Done!”

LostWinds: Winder of the Melodias is a bite-sized little WiiWare title that will make you remember the glory days of 2D platformers. There’s just enough challenge to tug on your brain without treating you like a complete idiot, but you’ll never feel the urge to throw the controller across the room and go light a stranger on fire.

You play the role of a little boy named Toku and you use the Wii remote to control Enril, the wind spirit. The controls are simple enough: you move Toku with the analog stick on the Nunchuck and you hold “A” while waving the Wii remote to jump and attack enemies. You can also hold the “B” button to draw a path of wind to manipulate the elements — for example, you can draw a path from a lit torch to an area blocked off by plants to burn in down and make your way through.

While the story’s not super heavy or complex, it’s sweet and does a good job of keeping you engaged and holding interest. With a colorful cast of characters, beautiful level design, and highly-imaginative puzzle-solving gameplay, LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias is easily a must-have for any Wii owner.

AWESOME
So stylish: From the characters to the level design, this game is simply gorgeous. There are even some great character animations like when a giant accompanies you on your trek up a mountain early in the game, or when you first awaken Sonté, the spirit of the seasons.

Just the right amount of challange: At its core, the gameplay of LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias is simply about finding your way to the next area. You’ll do this using the wind to move objects onto switches, to blow fire to melt down ice walls, and you can even turn falling snowflakes into a giant snowball by drawing a circle of wind and then use it to crush any weak walls blocking your path. It’s essentially a “get me the hell out of here!” game, but it never feels boring thanks to the well-crafted puzzles. They’re not impossibly difficult, but the game also does a good job of not holding the player’s hand and letting them figure things out on their own by exploring their powers and surroundings.

Powered up: The pacing is a little faster this time around thanks to the fact that you start the game with almost all of your power-ups from the first game, but there’s still some awesome new powers that you’ll come across and you can even use old powers to do new things like making the aforementioned giant snowballs. You also have the new ability to create little tornadoes that can be used to gust Toki up to higher levels, drill through weak parts in the ground, and suck water a from pool to form a movable cloud so that you can make it rain over an empty pool. Combine this with the new ability to change the weather between summer and winter, and you’ve just created yourself an ice path to access unexplored areas.

NOT AWESOME
Why can’t I lift things? Toku can lift things like seeds and fruits, but when it comes to important things, like small boulders that need to be placed on switched to open doors, he kind of sucks at it. Instead, you’re forced to clumsily control the wind using the Wiimote to flick rocks onto switches, but sometimes Toku gets in the way and you’ll accidentally crush his head.

Combat kind of isn’t fun: Aside from fighting generic blobby bad guys with generic names like “Glorbs,” your only means of offense is holding “A” and waving around the remote. The best tactic is usually to just throw the baddies into the air, then throw them down so that they splatter against the ground, but compared to the rest of the game, the combat isn’t engaging and it’s just plain ol’ not fun. The developers at Frontier have thought up so many imaginative and creative ways for a person to find their way out of a room, but it seems like they just can’t think of a fun way to kill a Glorb. While the boss battle was fun and clever, the last part of it was SO frustrating. Basically, he’s throwing things at you that you have to throw back, but I could never tell if I was actually hitting him. I was actually throwing crap at him for about a good 20 minutes until I accidentally threw something at him the right way to make him react. I eventually got the hang of it, but a 10 minute boss battle turned into about 30 minutes of me being confused.

In all honesty, any gripes against the game are very minor. If you have a Wii, you need this game. And if you haven’t played the original LostWinds, go play it before playing this one because you’ll appreciate it a little bit more. Shit, play ‘em both back to back! They’re short enough and the transition in the storyline is seamless.

LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias retails for 1000 Wii Points. A copy of the game was gifted to me from Frontier Developments for the purpose of this review.