Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion is a Platformer released on Nintendo 3DS in 2012. This is a game that is partially a sequel in two different franchises. On the one hand, this follows 2010’s Disney Epic Mickey, and is released alongside its direct sequel on consoles. However, this game also clearly intends to be a successor to the classic Illusion series of Sega-developed Mickey Mouse games, starting with Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse in 1990 on the Genesis, with the last game in that series being Legend of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse in 1995 on the Game Gear. As such, it seems reasonable to say that Epic Mickey: The Power of Illusion has quite a long lineage, as well as some big shoes to fill.

The presentation in this game is very nice, making use of pixel art 2D visuals with some fantastic animation, joined by occasional voice clips of various Disney characters as they speak with each other and backed by a very nice orchestral soundtrack. All told, this game does a good job channeling the retro charm of the classic Illusion games while still modernizing the visuals and maintaining the “Disney Magic”.

The gameplay here is a pretty standard Platformer fare, although the game does set things apart a little by having moments where you can interact with the environment using the touchscreen – either by drawing on on-screen objects to make them appear or disappear, or by drag-and-dropping helpful items into the environment.

Unfortunately, while the game has plenty of charm, it also has an abundance of issues. This is a fairly short game, and players delighted by the way the game has you hopping into three distinct worlds from Disney movies will be disappointed to find that you’re mostly only heading into three of them (each split into a handful of levels). However, what bothered me more than this was just how darn slow everything in this game is.

Mickey moves slowly, has a frustrating wind-up and recovery for his melee attack, and players will be stopped in the middle of the action with aggravating frequency to take a moment to draw an object on the touchscreen for the umpteenth time just to create a platform the games designers designated as missing until you do so. Worse than this, you’ll frequently be stopped from doing anything seemingly every two steps in the game as you have another inane conversation with one of the game’s “rescued” Disney characters, who have little to say that is actually helpful, but will gab on for a seemingly interminable amount of time regardless.

This short game length padded by slow, poorly-paced gameplay really hurts what could have otherwise been a delightful Platformer. I can’t say whether Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion could have been a worthy successor to the classic Illusion series if it didn’t have these flaws, but as-is it makes for an unnecessarily frustrating Platformer that has some very nice presentation elements and some interesting gameplay ideas, but the aforementioned problems keep these positive qualities from coalescing into anything especially fun. If you’re a big fan of Disney’s mouse, this may be worth a look, but most players are better off skipping it.

tl;dr – Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion is a Platformer that aims to be a sequel both to Disney Epic Mickey and to the classic Sega Illusion series. The presentation here is good, and there is some decent potential here, but that potential is outweighed by this game’s atrociously bad pacing that makes everything feel like a slog. This isn’t a terrible game, but it definitely feels like it could have been a better one.

Grade: C

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