Super Empire Strikes Back (SNES)

 

And this Empire strikes hard

Box art for Super Empire Strikes Back

So, I feel that LucasArts may have taken the outcome of the Empire Strikes Back a bit too literally when it came to developing this game. This game is short of merciless, but we will get into that in significantly more detail. Get ready to strap yourselves in, because this is going to be a rant. But let’s start with the positives, try to make this a nice constructive criticism sandwich.

Firstly, Super Empire Strikes Back does what every sequel game should try to do, make slight improvements on the original, and I feel it does this quite well. We have a longer game, that does a great job following the story beats of Empire and there is now a password system, meaning that if you do game over, you can continue, near enough, from where you left off. Not all levels have a password, with some passwords putting you at the start of an act of levels in some instances. I didn’t mention this in the original Super Star Wars, but in that game, you have two types of jump, a normal jump, and a super jump. The super jump requires you to also hold up on the D-Pad as you jump, and it is a higher jump. That’s thankfully been scrapped for a double jump mechanic. Better still, when playing as Luke, and using his light saber, which is a more important tool in this game, when you double jump, the light saber spins around you and functions as an attack. He did this with the super jump in the first game, but this feels more practical and this will probably be your primary attack with the light saber. You can now block and deflect certain projectiles, which is great and adds some depth and strategy to how you take on enemies.

Luke on the planet Hoth, riding a Tauntaun and defending himself against local wildlife

This provides a decent segue, enemies, my god, this game throws them at you in droves. If we were to compare the first level of this game to the predecessor, both games can be quite dense with enemies. Both have Mynocks, but the Dune Sea has scorpions that are easy blaster fodder, even the wamp rats can be bullseye’d with relative ease. But the icy wastes of Hoth, which I thought were, by and large, devoid of life has boar like enemies, snowballs, killer fauna, weird little icy sprites that leap out of the snow and instant death pits filled with spikes. This isn’t like Beggar’s Canyon back home, Hoth is out to kill you, and it will. Graciously for the overground Hoth levels, you do get a Tauntaun who you can ride, and damage boost your way to the end of the level. Don’t both trying to fight things on the back of the Tauntaun, it isn’t worth your time.

Luke fighting a Wompa Snowbeast, double jumping over it to avoid its ice breath attack

Enemies in places can be frustratingly bulky, if you don’t have an upgraded Blaster and using your light saber, it can still take upwards of 3 or 4 hits with that to kill the enemy. Chances are you’ll soak up more damage killing enemies than you’ll get as a return reward. This game is also stingier with those health pick-ups. We’ll stick to Hoth for the time being, but there are small bat like enemies, they don’t drop health, because in this game you are not allowed nice things. Enemies also seem to spawn endlessly, at least, that is how it feels. There seems to be a magic number for how many times enemies will respawn to continue harassing you, and it is between 4 to 8 times. So, there is opportunity to farm hearts at times and other power-ups but there are plenty of times where you will find yourself coming out worse for wear. Other power-ups drop based on a random percent chance, so I hope you are not counting on a thermal detonator or a shield item to help you overcome a certain point. Admittedly, I have just come off the back of playing a run on Jedi difficulty, where you take significantly more damage and start with less health. By the time this has gone live, I am hoping that I would have completed my Brave mode run for my YouTube channel, and this particularly hang up will be less prominent.

The Battle of Hoth level, in glorious Mode7!

What else do we have? Oh, yes, the awful vehicle sections in this game. The vehicle sections are designed to frustrate and feel more a dice roll than a display of skill. Firstly, we have two mode7 vehicle levels, the Battle of Hoth in the snow speeder. You fly over the rolling landscape, that repeats the terrain layout regardless of what direction you are flying in, so you will have these hills, that make it impossible to hit your targets, but they can seemingly hit you, and because you need to line yourself up with your target, it can be hard to see if they are shooting at you, whilst you try to shoot at them. Chances are you will be taking a lot of damage even taking down little speeder bikes. The lack of any real depth perception also makes it hard, so chances are you will also be colliding with things. Graciously, dying in the Battle of Hoth doesn’t reset your progress, so for the 3 “missions” you have, if you destroy 1 AT-ST and then die, the one you destroyed still counts. The Battle of Hoth is frustrating, but the Cloud City encounter as Luke in his X-Wing is just abysmal. When I did my Jedi difficulty run of this game, I came into this stage with about 40 lives, and I left with 11. Some runs on this level were over in about 30 seconds. The lack of depth perception, combined with the viewing angle you have makes this a truly miserable experience, not only that, but you can also go under the sea of clouds, which removes your HUD when you are under there. The X-Wings blasters don’t seem to do a huge amount of damage, so you can try spamming proton torpedoes, but they can be difficult to aim. All the while, Cloud Cars are flying circles around you, crashing into you or just shooting you from where you can’t see. You must destroy 15 of these sods, and unlike Hoth, it is 15 of them in one life.

The level immediately after the battle of Hoth, the entire Snowspeeder counts as Luke's hitbox in this section.

As if Mode7 vehicles weren’t your only vehicular nightmare, you also have two side scrolling sections, one on a speeder bike and one in the snow speeder. The speeder bike one isn’t so bad, as you whizz along shooting enemy bikes before they can shoot you or drop mines that box you in a little. But the snow speeder section is torture. Considering that it is where Luke is approaching the AT-AT, and is shot down (In the movie), the fact you need to survive an onslaught of enemies with a hit box that takes up way too much screen real estate, and enemies fly behind you, where you can’t hit them… I had a game over here, I burnt through about 20 lives on my first run of a 1 continue clear of this game (On Jedi, more fool me). The best part is, if you manage to get to the point where Luke bails out, you better not die, as then you must do the snow speeder section again, and this game throws its most devious enemy at you. Grenade troopers.

Luke attempting to land a jump between two grenade troopers whilst a jetpack trooper harasses him

Grenade troopers are storm troopers with shields and they toss grenades at you, as they throw the grenade, they open themselves up for attack, unless you get behind them. Which can be tricky, as chances are, as you try to jump over them, they are throwing a grenade at you as well. These enemies are placed in some of the most obnoxious places known to man, either on small platforms they take up completely, or used in tandem with other enemies that harass you and limit your mobility. I say the grenade troopers are the worst, your biggest foe in this game is metal debris. When most mechanical things are destroyed it explodes, shedding metal debris, the shards of metal debris can hurt you and push you around. You better believe you will be pushed into pits because of this. This also impacts the grenades the troopers throw at you. The original game did this as well, but it is far less noticeable in that game.

It's not all suffering, just mostly, each character you play as has some new tools in their arsenal. Luke eventually gains force powers, which he needs to find during the Dagobah stages, admittedly, that is way after a lot of the harder Luke stages. Notable force powers include Heal, Levitation, Freeze and Mind Control. Mind Control works well against Storm Troopers, when you approach them with this power active, they conveniently face the opposite direction. A perfect tool to use against the grenade troopers. Freeze freezes everything on screen and you can defeat them in a single hit. Levitation allows you to float upwards, this force power is one of the most useful, especially during the last couple of stages. And Heal, well, that one is self-explanatory. There are a few other powers, including saber throw, deflect, slow down, invisibility. A lot of the time you’ll probably have heal prepped and ready, as that is the most useful one for boss fights and trying to get through levels.

Luke on Dagobah, learning different force powers, in his force selection menu he has levitation selected

Han and Chewbacca also get some new moves, Han can collect and throw grenades, like the ones the grenade troopers throw, and Chewbacca gets an amazing spin attack, where he double lariats everything into oblivion. During his spinning, he is also invincible to damage. Shame we only get to use Chewbacca twice in this game, and due to his abilities were much easier than the other levels around it. Unlike the first game, you don’t get to pick your characters, as the levels do their best to stick to the plot and using the plot relevant character. If I could use Chewbacca for everything, I most definitely would have, but sadly about 75% of the game is spent playing as Luke and his rubbish starting blaster and not having useful force powers until his last 3 levels. Also, I should double back quicky to talk a little about the double jump, if you fall off a ledge you can’t perform the second jump, the second jump can only be done as part of a normal jump. This is annoying at times as some platforming would probably be easier if you just rolled off the platform and jumped mid-fall.

Chewbacca delivering his double lariat special attack on some Jet troopers

Another change, that I personally do not like, is bosses no longer have a bar of health similar to your health bar with their name above it. I liked this in Super Star Wars, how else would I know that the beast in the Sandcrawler was Lava Beast Jawenko? Or that the Womp Rat at the end of Valley of Bantha was indeed mutant. Boss health bars are now displayed as balls of non-descript value. Sure, the old health bar system probably has some weirdness in values as well, but the newer style is more frustrating. For some bosses, hitting them once doesn’t remove a ball, in fact sometimes you need to hit them multiple times to reduce the balls by a half. Yeah, a half. Bosses in this game can be frustratingly tanky, and this doesn’t consider that some bosses health can’t be directly reduced until you have destroyed other parts of the boss. Super Star Wars did this with one of the Mos Eisley levels, but in that case, it wasn’t as annoying as the creatively named Habogad, the Dagobah swamp monster. Habogad is the probably the hardest boss in the game, most other difficult bosses have some relatively straight forward cheese strategies, usually involving taking a thermal detonator into the fight. I am grateful that no maverick decided that the Super Star Wars Trilogy would go for no-damage boss achievements for RetroAchievements, otherwise I would scream at some of the bosses.

Luke fighting the Wompa Snow Beast boss

Despite the game relentlessly flogging you, it does give you several opportunities to farm for lives. Lives were not as prevalent in Super Star Wars, but Empire tends to have them in groups of two or more. In fact, early on there is a secret with four lives, allowing you to farm them. Dagobah stage where you fight Habogad has about three lives hidden throughout the stage. So, you’ll probably find yourself inadvertently farming them, providing you are on a stage that would allow you to farm them. But those gaps between the chances to farm can be quite tense as you find yourself dropping lives, Empire is a game that loves to put you in death spirals, and I didn’t mention this in the Super Star Wars either, but you don’t know when and where the check points will trigger, some stages are very long, and even getting to the boss doesn’t guarantee you will restart just before the boss if you die. In some cases, this is good, as it gives you an opportunity to potential back track a little bit and nab some power-ups, but even then, that can be quite risky.

I don’t hate Super Empire Strikes Back, as that leads to suffering and we know where that takes us. In fact, I enjoy the game quite a bit when it isn’t kicking my butt. The improvements that have been from the original cannot be overstated, I would say that even the general look of the game is just much better, the visuals in this game feel like a bit of a step-up with more detailed environments. Levels can feel quite overwhelming as they are not as linear as the first game some with slightly alternative routes or dead ends that take some effort to get to. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the hardest game in the trilogy. Playing this game on Jedi difficulty is not recommended, unless you are trying to prove a point. Beating this game on easy or brave is an accomplishment enough, and even if the game is openly hostile towards the player, there is a sense of pride and relief as you beat levels. The game is not impossible, but there will be a lot of lives lost and continues used until you finally beat this game for the first time. Though, would you believe that I beat this game way before I finally beat Super Return of the Jedi?

After finishing Super Empire, the game prompts you go out and buy Super Return of the Jedi to finish the saga