WiiWare: The Three Musketeers: One for All Review

There are few fictional characters that inspire action and adventure more than the Three Musketeers. Legendo Entertainment was surprised by their lack of representation in video games and had done what they can to change that. The Three Musketeers: One For All is their first outing for WiiWare and the first game that uses the novels by Alexandre Dumas as inspiration.

The story takes place in France during the 1620's and centers around the mighty Porthos who avoids being captured by the villainous Count Xavier during the game's opening cinematic. The crew of the Musketeers is rounded up while relaxing in a pub, but during the brawl Porthos is knocked into an adjacent alley. He then sets off to find his mates and take down Xavier and his lackey, the hook-handed Orsini. During the adventure you will go to the cities of Paris, Normandy as well as a couple others. You'll be fighting through the woods, on rooftops and in a chapel.

The first thing you'll notice when you boot up the game is the art style. It draws inspiration from Belgian and French cartoons and has a wonderful aesthetic to it. All the environments appear hand drawn and overlap each other. You can see them moving as the camera moves along the level. Objects also appear in shadow in the foreground. This adds depth to the levels, but occasionally these elements get in the way of the action making it hard to see. Flames flickering on the walls create a small area around them that glows and the lighting is affected slightly by the flames. The main character, Porthos, oddly is the only real downside to the overall look of the game. His 3-D model looks out of place among the cartoonish style of the rest of the game. This gives him a bit more character, but he just feels wrong somehow. His representation in the life bar though gives you an idea of what he's thinking as he reacts to what you're causing the character to do on screen. If you climb ladders his head bobs back and forth; he ducks down if you make Porthos duck under objects. It would be welcome if other games would add this small feature as it gives a bit more life to your character. All of the cut scenes are presented in a cartoon style with text bubbles popping up to show what they're saying. Some elements of the cut scenes move, but most are static and give a great sense that you are reading an interactive comic book. This was changed from the PC version of the game where all the characters were animated somewhat. The environments all scroll both horizontally and vertically and will wrap around corners. The camera is used very effectively and will provide many cinematic moments that you will recall well after playing the game. Things like seeing your character from behind an enemy that is shooting arrows at you and dramatic shots from below as you jump over a pit. They sound like they would be disorienting, but the simplicity of your movements means you won't lose what you should be doing as a camera pans for a different perspective.

The audio qualities in the game are a bit of a mixed bag. The voice acting done during cut scenes is quite brilliant. Xavier and Orsini speak with very heavy French accents; The Musketeers themselves all sound to be quite British. Porthos will spout one liners throughout his adventure and while they are as good as the work in the story elements they will become repetitive because he doesn't have that many different lines. The music early on will catch you and you'll enjoy it, but as the game moves along the soundtrack became less memorable. They do revisit the early tune later on with a bit of a remixed version.

The controls are a bit of a mixed bag as well. One For All is a very precise platformer where inches in a jump mean the difference between life and death. The game has a very definite Mega Man feel in its movement. That movement is controlled with the nunchuk's analog stick and you jump with the Wii Remote's A button. You can move different objects in the environment by standing next to them and pressing the B button. Those are the only buttons used in the game and it seems a bit unnecessary to have the Nunchuk plugged in. You control Porthos' attacks by flicking the Wii Remote to the right or left. While this is not uncommon and adds a bit of depth to the game the attack really could, and should have been, mapped to a button press. The response of the Remote is not as precise as you would like and this will cause you to take damage that could have otherwise been avoided. It's a gripe that many people have, in that the motion feels tacked on and could have been taken out to give a much better overall feel to the combat. Porthos only has one attack and the enemies don't present much challenge. They simply walk toward you and if they make contact you lose a portion of your health. There is no more depth to the combat, and in a game like this would having more attack options would have greatly improved the immersion factor. Boss fights at the end of the level really stand out because they are very different from what you were doing leading up to them and they will be some of the more memorable moments of the game. The first encounter with Orsini has you walking around a giant screw raising it toward the ceiling. Orsini is on top of the screw throwing a grappling hook at you while you attempt to raise it.

There are a few flaws that have to be pointed out, because you will encounter them and they can't be thrown away. In addition to the unresponsiveness of the motion controls there is an issue with load times. The areas themselves, while expansive, are broken up into several small chunks, many of them simply one room that you walk through. When you get to the edge of these different sections you encounter a black loading screen that takes about four to six seconds to get through. This would have been much less of a problem if they didn't happen often, but you'll encounter them about once every minute or two. There are also areas, mainly in the rooftop sections of the game where if you fall off you will encounter and instant death and game over screen. There are only one or two of these places that were seen, but they don't make much sense as they are very random. One area will be an instant death where the area at the opposite end of that same rooftop will simply cause you to go back to the beginning of that area.

These flaws are also countered by quite a few good points. The art style, as mentioned is very engaging. The exploration elements will mean you have to come back to find things that you missed before. You'll soon learn that most times to advance through the level you move up or to the right. If there are places that go left or down they are there for you to explore and many times you'll have to in order to gain an item that is required to move to the next section. The platforming elements are really the strong point of The Three Musketeers. Tight jumps, interactive objects and great cinematic angles make this game stand out a bit from other platformers available on WiiWare.

The Three Musketeers: One For All is a game you'll really want to enjoy, but the few low points may hinder that. The platforming is solid and with a few tweaks the combat could have been something memorable and not seen very often in combat. The few flaws, while they're small and there aren't many, really detract from the overall presentation and feel of the game and can't be overlooked. Alongside the previously mentioned low points, the lack of variety in enemies means you'll see the same guards and spiders numerous times and the only distinguishing factor will be the color of their tunic. You'll learn how many hits an opponent takes based on the color of their tunic. The overall look of the game is quite charming and you'll find you notice small details playing through environments a second time that you missed on the first run through. The game should take about 5 hours to beat on your first time through, but there are multiple endings based on how well you perform and the amount of money that you collect during your adventure. A few tweaks to the game would make for a very well done and quality game should a sequel be warranted. If you can look past the issues that this game has you're in for a game that you may find you really like.

Final Score: 3/5