The Legend of Kage is one of my earliest video game memories. Specifically, the NES conversion, which, along with City Connection, was among the first non-Mario Nintendo games that I ever played. There weren't a lot of options back then, and the majority of third-party support was from arcade developers like Taito testing the waters with coin-op conversions rather than making original titles. I am certain that this port is responsible for Kage's modestly enduring fame, but I won't be replaying it.
If nothing else, Taito's developers knew the look and feel they were going for, and did well with the technology available. It's by no means cutting edge - by 1985 Sega had that sector cornered (leaving a few table scraps for a struggling Atari), but it's a noticeable upgrade from the crude sprites and backgrounds of Elevator Action and Front Line. You're a spry ninja in a cute little romper battling endless waves of the demon clan in the spooky woods and castles of feudal Japan, and the animation, colors, and FM soundtrack evoke this setting well.
Speaking of which, there exists a prototype version, available through Hamster Corporation's Arcade Archives but not yet emulated in MAME, featuring a PSG-based soundtrack, and I think I like it a little better than the final FM synth soundtrack. Or maybe I'm just sick of it.
In my best attempt before getting bored, I completed a single loop - a phrase that already feels archaic to type out - but ran out of lives halfway through the second.
Legend of Kage really wants
you to soar through the forest, leaping over the treetops in a single
bound as you duel with flying demon clan ninjas and monks in the highest branches like a scene from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Do not do this! Kage can indeed jump higher than Bomb Jack, but once you go up, you're not coming down for quite awhile,
and while Bomb Jack let you control your jumps with a graceful precision, Kage gives absolutely no control over your altitude or airborne trajectory, so if a stray shuriken comes flying in your
direction, there's no avoiding it! You can block with your swords, but
that won't help much if they hit you in the feet, or come in multiple
directions, or later on when the ninjas start throwing smoke bombs.
My strategy to survive this part - keep moving left, throw shurikens constantly, and if you see an enemy, get him off the screen ASAP. Whether that means killing him or just moving enough to scroll the screen away and deref the sprite, you just do whatever is quicker, because it only takes a second for a ninja to wander onscreen and kill you with a shuriken because you were distracted by another ninja. Be especially careful around the red ninja; he attacks more aggressively, loves to jump and throw shurikens downward at tricky angles, and can parry your strikes and catch you in a riposte if you're foolish enough to run right back into his sword after you bounce away like a pinball. Firebreathing monks will eventually start spawning, and after killing three, a fourth, red one will spawn. Killing him finishes this stage.
Next stage is the secret passage.
Not much to say here. You can hide in the moat, and Kage will breathe through a reed when you do, but you shouldn't; this just makes you a smaller, immobile, and defenseless target. Don't even go into the moat; you can't throw your shurikens, and you can't get out without jumping. Easiest way to kill the ninjas is by nailing them as they jump out.
Kill ten and you move onto the battlements.
You knew you'd have to use your super ninja jumping skills eventually. Good luck! Hope you're decent at parrying.
The castle is at the top.
Getting some real Kung-Fu Master vibes here.
Stairs are the worst - you're effectively in a dead-end against flying shurikens and you can't even jump, which is one of the few times you'd want to. And nasty things tend to wait for you at the top of them.
You can climb the pillars, but you shouldn't. Noticing a pattern?
Princess Kiri and a cinematic cutscene await at the top.
Fight the boss - he's an anticlimax who goes down in one hit - and you do it all over again with changing seasons and more difficult ninjas who now throw unblockable smoke bombs.
The all-important repo-tech bot freezes up on the final rift
One gets the impression that Koronis Rift was rushed to meet a deadline (I empathize!). The engine itself is cool stuff, featuring rolling terrain with multiple levels of elevation, multiple levels of parallax depth with dynamic shading to indicate distance, and a 3D perspective that convincingly bumps up and down as you drive through the rifts' endless peaks and valleys, but everything after that is a technical mess.
The most obvious clue are the bugs. Dear lord, the bugs. I've seen:
Modules disappear from my inventory
The rover unable to move from its landing zone
Shields not recharging, despite having ample energy
The RT Robot get stuck on terrain
Modules that don't do anything
The screen become half-filled with corrupt graphic data
Most of these bugs can put the game in an unwinnable state, but they can be prevented with a bit of care to avoid their trigger conditions, or if worse comes to worse, using the ingame save/load system.
What can't be avoided is the askew difficulty curve which is completely at odds with the game's premise.
The apparent intended gameplay loop of Koronis Rift seems to be one where you explore the rifts, fight drones, and collect upgrades for your craft so that you can move on to harder rifts and get even greater rewards, but this just doesn't work out. Drones become deadly within a few minutes of playtime, and get deadlier the longer you play. You do not even have time to clear out the first and easiest rift; the upgrade modules you find there are pretty weak, and the drones will overwhelm you before you have time to find them all.
To get anywhere, you've got to figure out which modules are worth having, you've got to know where to find them, and you've got to have a plan to extract them efficiently, because this is a perpetual arms race between you and Koronis' planetary defense system.
To that end, there are four module upgrades which you absolutely must have. In order of priority:
A shield module, so that you don't immediately die when shot at. You start with an utterly worthless one.
A generator, to recharge your shields and weapon energy. Once you have a decent shield and generator, your life expectancy improves dramatically.
A battery, for more weapon energy.
A better laser gun. The one you start with is crap but it's better than nothing. But you'll need more firepower to do any real damage against the drones once they start showing up with shields of their own. Any upgrade requires a battery, and the bigger the gun, the bigger the necessary battery.
You do okay with the basics.
That's four modules, and there's only six slots for modules, so you've only got two more to play with. The modules also come in a variety of colors which enhance or reduce effectiveness against drones of matching/opposing colors, and the manual recommends keeping a variety of colors, but I can't see how that is feasible when you're already using four out of six available modules just for the essentials!
Some other modules you might find:
Radar - Waste of a slot. Your normal radar always points toward the closest hulk, but radar modules override this by pointing toward the closest hulk containing a module with the same alien insignia as the radar. Pointless unless you already know exactly what you're looking for.
ECM - The manual claims that it makes you harder to detect, but I don't think it actually does anything.
Drive - Improves propulsion speed. I never bothered using it.
Crosshairs - Locks onto drones of certain colors. Has some usefulness but not all that great; it doesn't lock onto everything, it won't "lead" (and therefore won't let you hit) fast-moving drones, and it has a tendency to hijack your rover controls making you drive or turn when you didn't intend to.
Inertial dampener - This one's a game changer, but you definitely don't want it activated all the time. Turn it on, and enemy drones slow down, making them sitting ducks as long as they're close enough to shoot. But it's an energy hog, and using it slows down your shield and laser recharge rates. It also doesn't stop the drones from shooting back; in fact, they'll be able to concentrate fire on you until you destroy them (or they move out of range). A powerful weapon, but it can get you killed if you're not careful.
Detonator - You need to find one to win the game. You can just keep it on the scoutship until you reach the final rift, because it has no other purpose.
Map module - Displays a minimap. Very rare, very useful, because some of the later maps are quite maze-like and the Fractalus engine isn't terrific for first-person navigation.
As a side note, when you are using all six module slots, it's possible to collect and carry a seventh one
back to the ship for analysis/equipping, but this is a pretty tedious process that
requires multiple trips back and forth to shuffle your inventory around between your rover, scoutship, and RT bot. It's worth it, but it's annoying and could have been avoided with better UI design.
Through days of failed attempts and note taking on what can be found where, I eventually discovered a solution. You can't afford to waste a lot of time exploring the early rifts, but you can't just jump to the end and survive on your basic starting kit either. But you can skip a lot more of Koronis than you probably think.
Rift 1
Even in this early rift, there's not enough time to fully explore and loot its meager powerups, but the things you actually want are fairly close by.
Loot the hulk immediately in front of you for a 15% power shield (better than nothing) and keep going for a 12% power generator. Ahead of you is a radar - do not collect it yet! Keep moving, going around the crest, and you'll discover a battery.
Turn back, grab and ignore the radar, and your compass will now point to the last thing on the rift worth taking - a 6% power laser.
Lift off and fly to Rift 16. Yes, that's right, rift 16.
Rift 16
Shields are indicated in the upper-right; each bar absorbs the corresponding laser color
I said it before - your upgrade priorities are shields, generators, batteries, and lasers, in that order, and you find all of them on Rift 1, they're just weak.
You'll find all of these on Rift 16 too, only here, they're far more powerful. And you'll find them in almost the same order. The tricky part is surviving long enough.
The shield, rated at 62% power, is right behind you, and if you're fast you can grab and equip it before Koronis scrambles its first drone.
The generator, at 81% power, is the next closest, but you'll need to go around a ridge to get it. Try not to get distracted by the other hulks who may take priority on your radar - you really need this generator to survive long here, but with a bit of luck you can locate it and fight off the drones before your shields run out of juice.
Once you get it, you're safe for awhile, even with an underpowered gun. Fights will take longer, but it will be some time before the drones can penetrate your shields. Still, you don't want to dawdle. There's a crosshair module by the inner ridge too, which I don't bother with, but the rift also has a 70% power battery, and 79% power laser, both of which which you absolutely want, and an inertial dampener which I find more useful than the crosshairs.
The inertial dampener should always be turned off when you are not engaging drones. Turn it off whenever you make planetfall, prepare to turn it on when you need to fight, and turn it on when one flies onscreen. Don't be afraid to turn if off in the middle of a fight, especially if your shields start to run low.
Leave once you have it all. The only other things found here are two out-of-the-way radars which are incapable of finding anything in subsequent rifts.
Rift 17
Turn right here, not left.
You start tucked in a crevasse, but if you can find your way out of it, you'll soon locate the critical detonator module. Stash this on the ship for sure.
Other good things here include a 70% power shield, 91% power generator, 85% power battery, and mapper. It's a pretty open map, so it's not that hard to find them.
Rift 18
The mapper comes in real handy here, thanks to the maze-like ridges. But there are only a few things worth keeping; a 95% power generator, 77% power laser (the efficiency is much higher than the 79% power laser found earlier), and 95% power battery. Everything else can be dismantled.
Rift 19
The most maze-like rift, but it's not worth exploring.
This one's a quick snatch-and-grab. The only worthwhile thing here is a 67% power shield (also rated much more efficient than then 70% power shield found earlier; I'm guessing that means faster recharge). And it's directly ahead of where you start.
Rift 20
Sell the inertial dampener - by now it's a liability. Equip the detonator. In retrospect, you don't really need the mapper here; the rift layout is pretty open, but I brought it anyway. A drive module might have been better here, but oh well.
There are no upgrade modules to be found here, only drones and bases that shoot back, but if you got here quickly enough and equipped properly, your shields should protect you. Bases can be destroyed with your own laser, or by the RT bot, but it has a tendency to get stuck after destroying them - you can fix this by blowing away your own bot and returning to the scoutship for a replacement.
Eventually your radar will lead you to the main defense base. Once the skies are clear, send the RT bot in with the detonator, and Koronis is yours.
GAB rating: Bad
Funnily enough, Koronis Rift's biggest issue is poor difficulty balance, just like in Sinistar, only this time it's seemingly thanks to being rushed rather than executive-level demands for greater coin returns. More time spent playtesting would have improved this game immensely.
The technology here is impressive, the concept is novel, there are some interesting ideas on display, and I had a modicum of fun once I figured out an optimal path to Koronis Rift's conclusion, but the vast majority of my playtime was tedious trial and error, frustrated further by bugs and UI hiccups, and that part of it wasn't fun at all.
