Adventures of Lolo 3 Review

Another one? Noooooo!!!! Well, don’t get too upset at the outset. After the terrible disappointment of Adventures of Lolo 2, HAL hit at it again with the third and final installment for the NES. Adventures of Lolo 3 is actually a pretty fun game overall and would have gotten higher marks than I’ve given it were it not for a big problem that I’ll mention in the length section. What you find here is exactly what they should have did with the second game. Finally, for the love of god, they figured out how to do things a bit differently.

Adventures of Lolo 3 features some new graphical features that help get past the problem of repetition in the stages and in-game graphics. As you can expect, this game is going to run the same as the first two. This time around, however, the programmers spiced it up with a lot of variety. You have an overworld map to move around, the ability to pick Lala for something different while playing, new level designs, detailed cinematics, more than one boss fight and a ton of other features. Though you get more of the same while actually playing the main segments, what they’ve done really mixes things up so I’m still going to score high.

As for the sound, you find pretty much the same thing. You have some repetition and themes similar to the first two games, but also a lot more variety, again, spicing up the action and giving you something different. Some new sound effects, new tunes, just overall more variety. Yet again, I’m giving high marks because they really did a lot here to make it look and feel like a different game.

As for the gameplay, not too much has changed in the fundamentals. You’re still solving puzzles to beat it. However, as in the first two categories, things have changed. First off, they finally have a good difficulty curve. The earlier stages are easy, and the later stages are hard. Good. Early on, you have practice levels to help you learn how to complete the game, but they’re not required. Great for newer players not familiar with the first two. In addition to these you enter various castles, caves and such in your quest to save Eggerland from King Egger. The world has been arranged with a lot of interesting features including bosses and so forth. The bosses are of particular interest because in their particular realms you have to first run through levels that all are themed after them. Thus, you have a series of levels where Snakey is the main character to use to win and then you fight a giant Snakey. Excellent idea. For the most part, the bosses don’t pose much of a challenge, but they really shake things up and add a great deal of variety. Lolo doesn’t have any new skills, but this game does introduce a new character, Moby, and some different environments, not just a castle over and over. There are also some new tricks to be found here. So, great overall, a lot more fun than the first two, with only one big problem that ruined it for me that I’ll talk about in a bit.

I’d have to say that the programmers were as creative with Adventures of Lolo 3 as they possibly could have been. When you’re doing the same type of game essentially, it’s quite difficult to make things feel different at the same time, but I feel that’s been accomplished here. I only wish they perhaps put more time into making new characters and obstacles, really they only added three features to this game to make it stand out in terms of basic play.

So here’s the problem category. But wait, didn’t I say it was a good game overall, all the scores above seem to indicate this? Yes, true, it looks and plays just fine, with one problem. This game is way too freaking long. The first two titles were both 50 stages, which is long enough even with a password feature, taking perhaps a week or so to complete if you play it enough. Adventures of Lolo 3, however, has a whopping 100 stages. By the point you are finally reaching the castle, trust me, you’re burned out, you really don’t feel like playing too much more than perhaps another 20 stages, being generous. At this point they’re quite difficult, and I myself was furious by the length. Too long, there’s just too much. I don’t care if there’s a password feature, I honestly didn’t have trouble beating the stages either, I just got to the point where I said ‘screw this, I’m going straight to the end with a password, this is annoying.’ I just didn’t feel like playing anymore, and thankfully I got past my obsession with playing games in the raw. The final boss fight is hardly anything to worry about, so if you actually played through the whole dang thing you’d probably be pretty ticked. Good ending, but not a 100 levels good ending. They should have cut this down, adding 10 or 20 more would have been fine, but 50? Trust me, I won’t be playing this much again. To add further insult in this regard, later on, after being used to playing runs of five levels with something to break up the action in-between like a boss, you get to a stage with ten straight levels. You play five and then surprise you have to keep playing. I can’t even begin to explain the hatred that grew within me. Something tells me they knew this would be annoying you…

So, overall, Adventures of Lolo 3 is actually quite a good game, the programmers just went a little too far with it. 100 levels? It may not seem like much, but considering that some of the later ones may take up to an hour or two to complete alone if you’re not cheating, you’re not going to be having fun after a short while, trust me. Still, I’d say it’s worth a look for most NES fans, just have a password sheet ready so that when you get tired of it you can just say screw it like I did and jump ahead to the end.