The Wonderful 101 (Wii U) Review

Three years after Bayonetta, Hideki Kamiya returned to a director role at PlatinumGames for The Wonderful 101. This review will judge The Wonderful 101 on its own merits.

 

As one should expect from PlatinumGames, the main focus of The Wonderful 101‘s development was clearly on the gameplay. Attacking and moving around is basic, but the various abilities that are unlocked over time and switching between them on the fly isn’t. The Wonderful 101 mostly involves following linear paths with a top down camera angle on the action. On these paths there are often puzzle roadblocks or enemies that prevent the player from continuing to travel the path. These puzzles are usually simple enough to be satisfying to complete and not take so much time that the player has forgotten how to play the rest of the game. The player must use different Unite moves by drawing them either with the Wii U gamepad or with the right stick on whatever controller the player is using to change what their attacks do. When drawing these moves time is almost stopped so the player has plenty of time to draw the Unite move they are trying to use. These moves can be made more powerful by drawing them using more of your team which can be grown by saving people on the battlefield. Stringing together these moves in different orders allows for a large variety of possible play styles that give the game a lot of replay value. Overall the combat system in The Wonderful 101 is very well thought out and easily one of the best combat systems in a video game ever.

 

The Wonderful 101 features a few other gameplay styles that break up the action. There are a lot of them but it is safe to say they are essentially all well executed. The most notable one by far is the use of the Quick Time Event. QTEs in The Wonderful 101 are unique because they usually ask for the player to use a Unite move rather than a button press. They are not overly abused or really difficult at all and feel like some sort of self parody more than anything. Overall PlatinumGames does a good job at breaking up the action with sections from completely different and sometimes unexpected genres.

 

The sounds in The Wonderful 101 are only about average. The soundtrack is a bit above average but there aren’t any songs that stand out as being particularly great. Voice acting and sound effects are about what one would expect. Overall this is far from a highlight of the game.

 

Technically The Wonderful 101 is far from mind-blowing but far from bad as well. The visuals are stylized and never look particularly bad, though they are never particularly impressive either. High amounts of characters on screen is far from visually appealing compared to PlatinumGames’ own Bayonetta 2 that was able to do much more visually by not having to work around so many characters always being on screen. The frame rate is unlocked but unfortunately very infrequently ever sticks to 60 FPS, which is arguably acceptable because it doesn’t significantly effect gameplay. The Wii U’s features are not used particularly cleverly and the game probably would have been better off not using them at all or at least making their use optional. Overall The Wonderful 101 isn’t particularly impressive technically but this aspect of the game essentially does no harm to the product overall.

 

The story in The Wonderful 101 obviously wasn’t a particularly big focus. The game is mostly filled with jokes and nods at Kamiya’s older games than any kind of meaningful plot. These jokes and references are often very well executed though, which makes the game more enjoyable overall.

 

The Wonderful 101 is a good value overall. The campaign is only about as long as one could possibly ask for considering the type of game that The Wonderful 101 is. Replay value is very high though, as is the case with all games of this style.

 

Overall the reviewer would give the game a 9.0 out of 10.

 

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