SuperEpic: The Entertainment War (Switch)
It’s a bit disheartening to think the promise of mobile gaming was squandered as manipulative monetization and microtransanctions slowly took over their design, but if there’s one way to help soften a harsh reality, it’s satire. SuperEpic: The Entertainment War is an action game all about poking fun at a caricature of greedy smartphone games, the ridiculous villainous corporation responsible for them in its world full of fun twists on what we’ve come to expect from mobile games.
The over the top tone is pretty apparent from the start. In the year 2084 all video game companies save one are gone and the anthropomorphic animal populace is all but glued to their phones, whiling away the hours playing mobile games meant to drain their wallets before they head off to work to create the very games that their cash will feed into later. RegnantCorp, its name no doubt inspired by Candy Crush’s creator King, is the company responsible for these addictive and manipulative apps, a company run by actual pigs interested solely in profits over people. There are some who aren’t lost in their phones though, two such characters being Tan Tan the raccoon and his trusty yet very odd looking llama steed Ola, and when they get a call from a strange masked figure to enter RegnantCorp’s headquarters, they set off to take down the company and free people from the manipulative phone games. Calling smartphones and phone games bad can sometimes come off as out of touch or anti-progress in some works, but SuperEpic: The Entertainment War seems to be less about straight up condemning the games and more about presenting a ridiculously over the top distortion of the unfortunate state modern phone games find themselves in. Your journey through RegnantCorp will involve you encountering different pigs with different villainous expertise relating to these phone games. For example, the pig in charge of wringing players dry with monetization is an actual vampire in this game but with his eyes on wallets instead of veins, and another employee is essentially a bandit who steals popular game concepts and turns them into games they can strip down and overcharge players for. While there are quite a few typos to be found in the humorous dialogue and item descriptions, none of them prevent the jokes from being understood. There’s a kernel of truth to how the mobile game market is portrayed that makes these overblown villains representing it work, a lot of the fun being finding out how SuperEpic will integrate its premise in the next area or enemy you encounter.
The creativity doesn’t stop at the main bad guys though. RegnantCorp is a huge complex with around 8 distinct segments depending on how you define them. These areas form one large interconnected map with fast travel elevators and areas where future areas connect back to earlier ones, making for a large Metroidvania style world that, while mostly pretty linear in its progression, has a few treats and secrets accessible only after unlocking certain abilities. The exploration of SuperEpic feels less motivated by secrets though and more by the creativity on display whenever you uncover a new area. Beginning in an office building, you face enemies who make sense in the context of that location like cockatoo women hurling staplers and rabbit secretaries wielding a wired phone as nunchucks. Once the front office area is done you then find yourself in the building’s fitness area, pigs bouncing around out of control on exercise balls and others throwing dumbbells at the player as attacks. While the locations don’t stick fully to the corporate theme, the area after the fitness one instead being a Castlevania: Symphony of the Night inspired location to match the monetization vampire being the area’s boss, the game does continue to add new enemies in each new space that continue to try and find new and interesting attack styles that fit the role of the enemy animal or robot in the company. The music is surprisingly good as well, the two opening areas having catchy, energetic tunes with some fun rock elements to them. Again, the vampire’s area signals a shift in how these are approached as well, music becoming more about matching the area more than the general tone of an anti-corporate adventure, but there are still some good sounds to be found even later in the game.
Playing as Tan Tan and Ola comes pretty naturally, the duo controlling less like a rider on a steed and more like a single entity with the good degree of control over movement both on the ground and in the air. Tan Tan packs three weapons set to a button each, these having different purposes in making up small attack combos. A quick, decent strength attack tied to your base weapon will be the bread and butter in a fight, with the other two weapons focused instead on knocking the enemy around. One is a launcher that will put the foe in the air for juggle combos while the last weapon is more of a closer that slams the enemy hard into the ground and away from the player. The exact weapons used for these roles changes over the course of the game, the player either finding new tools as loot in safes or buying it from your masked helper, cash coming also from safes or from defeating enemies. Purchasing new weapons, accessories, upgrades, and armor is crucial to keeping up with the increased strength of the enemies in each area, although at first the game might be too generous with the cash, meaning you can get good gear and make some of the early fights, even the bosses, a bit too easy. Healing is mostly relegated to finding the somewhat rae save rooms or using rare but purchasable items, but it takes a while for the game to start upping the prices of stat upgrades and gear to keep you more on par with the foes you’re facing.
Eventually the regular enemies do start hitting hard enough and surviving for a decent time to ensure that you won’t have a cakewalk ahead of you, some even getting good at avoiding attacks, blocking, or firing their long distance shots before you have a chance to approach. Perhaps the game is just easing you in before it finds its snug difficulty level that lasts pretty much towards the end, at least in regards to the regular enemies. The foes you face while exploring can deal decent damage and encourage caution because of it, but the boss fights can sometimes be pretty plain as well. Sometimes slow or unable to deal significant damage, a few boss fights are over too soon as they ask little in the way of strategy, but there are some later foes who get the balance better, the best boss featured perhaps being a monstrous pig who is actually faced twice. Able to dominate his small boss arena and move quickly, the player has to respect his attacks and fight carefully to succeed. The difficulty of fights can certainly swing based on how you spend your cash, but the more interesting patterns and enemy tactics do help with a combat system that doesn’t really evolve much over the course of the game.
Most of your new abilities in SuperEpic: The Entertainment War tie directly to navigation of the world. Bombs are meant for blowing apart barriers and roadblocks, double jumps can help in combat but are mainly meant to help you reach higher places, and swimming simply opens up aquatic areas for exploration. Because the skill focus chooses exploration over fighting, most combat hinges on how you mix up your three attack types, but its mostly about finding the most efficient and consistent pattern for juggling and damaging an enemy. Keeping the foe airborne and hitting them as much as possible is the best way of dealing with many foes, although there are some who can break out early or can’t even be caught up in the juggling to ensure the tactic isn’t too universal. Its efficacy is likely why later enemies start getting smarter about how they attack and avoid your attacks, but your skill expansions never really change the way these battles will be fought. Collecting gems throughout RegnantCorp will allow you to buy new skills, these including things like Ola firing a fireball from its mouth, using its tongue to pull in enemies, or executing dive kicks, but these are too situational and often not strong enough to see common use. They are also tied to the Rage meter to prevent their overuse, this having to be built up through regular combat but not paying off with the flashy or strong moves you’d hope to get as a reward for such an investment. They’re more a way to occasionally spice up the fighting, but it seems the more enjoyable fights will come less from what you can do and more from having to work around an enemy with a more interesting design. Overall, the fighting isn’t dull or anything, mostly being decent yet functional while sometimes getting tested by interesting enemies, but the combos feel very linear and the special moves aren’t often worth using unfortunately.
There are still more fun touches to be found in SuperEpic: The Entertainment War though. To further its parodies of phone game practices, you can actually play some of RegnantCorp’s games on a smart device. By finding special rooms in the game with a QR Code on the wall, you’ll be taken to a site with twists on famous mobile games. With its own takes on match-3 games and endless runners as well as more overt parodies like ones based on Flappy Bird and Crossy Road, optional loot can be acquired by playing through bite-sized mobile games that are perhaps the most concentrated jab at the state of phone games. The non-functioning in-game stores contain the expected boosts and cosmetics at exorbitant prices, but you only need to play these to get the code to grab some booty, the diversions fun for a laugh without being crucial to completion. There are plenty of nooks and crannies to explore in the game’s world and little tasks to complete to get a better ending, although it does feel like some later areas in the game get a bit too big and try to cram in a lot of the extra treasures instead of spacing things out across the whole adventure better. A few sidequests don’t have their pertinent areas marked on an otherwise pretty helpful map, but it is at least always easy to tell where there might be more room to explore. There is an additional mode to be unlocked as well, one focused on introducing Rogue-like mechanics to SuperEpic. Drawing some clear inspiration from Rogue Legacy in its design, this mode involves plunging into a RegnantCorp where the rooms are rearranged randomly, the player building up cash and making progress until they meet their unfortunate end. Upon revival, that cash can be spent on upgrades and items before they set off into a newly generated map, although the old map can be retained for a price if you wish to focus on progress instead of earning the upgrades needed to succeed. Rooms in SuperEpic can be left without beating enemies or completing any objectives though so this randomization does feel a little less exciting than it would be in a dedicated Rogue-like, but as an amusement after completing the curated world design of the main story, it’s an interesting way to get a bit more out of a pretty solid title.
THE VERDICT: The creativity on show in SuperEpic: The Entertainment War keeps you playing just so you can see what wild and weird idea will crop up next. Whether it’s the design of the corporate critters you fight, the parody mobile games, or how the next boss and area make fun of the worse parts of the mobile game industry, SuperEpic is packed with imagination and a fairly good soundtrack to back it up. A bit less thought went into the fundamental game mechanics though, the combat, difficulty, and world design feeling like they don’t evolve as much as they should. The satire and aesthetics are very strong though, ensuring that the adventure remains fresh through the strength of its wacky ideas that tie into the gameplay well.
And so, I give SuperEpic: The Entertainment War for Switch…
A GOOD rating. While its gameplay mechanics are simple in execution despite the illusion of depth, the game still manages to be an exciting adventure almost entirely on the back of how its integrates its concept into the world and its gameplay. The actual dialogue jokes about the mobile game industry mostly crop up only when you first meet a boss character and then later when you fight them, but the areas between represent some aspect of the company, feature enemies who fit into that part of RegnantCorp, and diversions like the mobile games continue to evolve the joke of this mobile game company being incredibly evil. A weak enemy is still fun because they’ll be something silly like a pig riding around on a segway while the tougher enemies like the sharks who can dive into the floor and spring at you still maintain the theme by dressing in suits and carrying briefcases. The boss woman who works her employees like a literal slave driver may not be the hardest boss fight, but her character design and personality still makes facing off with her fun. RegnantCorp itself has the similar balance where something that’s not as strong in design can still play into the theming well to keep it fun, and the game does tighten its spaces and enemy placements to be more difficult later on so that it doesn’t have to solely rely on its style to carry it. However, it does feel like the fighting system wanted more depth than it got in practice and the emphasis on increasing stats through purchases likely contributes to the power imbalance featured at points of your adventure. Some tinkering and tidying up to those systems would give more usefulness to the Rage attacks or shifting up your combo strings, but the baseline combat does its job still and it at least allows the elements it engages with to shine.
Playing as a raccoon on a llama who is fighting evil phone game developers is a ridiculous idea, and SuperEpic: The Entertainment War focuses on the strength of its silly ideas to make the experience enjoyable. It most importantly doesn’t overdo it, the game not feeling the need to rub its wacky enemy concepts or mobile game jokes in your face when they crop up so you can just laugh when you find them and then keep moving through a pretty solid Metroidvania. While it didn’t nail every gameplay system it tried to integrate, the complete commitment to theme ensures SuperEpic is still super entertaining.