Kid Icarus Uprising

Kid Icarus Uprising is a third-person shooter video game developed by Project Sora and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. Released worldwide in March 2012, it is the third installment in the Kid Icarus franchise, the first to be released since Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters in 1991, and the first worldwide release since the original NES game in 1986. It is also the only video game Project Sora made before shutting down in mid-2012. Twenty-five years after the first game, the Goddess of Darkness, Medusa, resurrects and sets out to conquer the world.

In response, Palutena sends Pit on missions to destroy Medusa’s forces, and he fights her returning commanders Twinbellows, Hewdraw, Pandora, and Thanatos, as well as the new commander Dark Lord Gaol with help from a human mercenary named Magnus. In the battle with her, Pandora uses a magical mirror that spawns a doppelgänger of Pit called Dark Pit, intending to use him as a slave. However, after Pit destroys the mirror, Dark Pit turns against Pandora, steals her powers from her corpse, and vows to kill the gods to stop the conflict, as well as Pit.

After briefly tailing him, Pit eventually gains the key to the Underworld from the defeated Thanatos, then retrieves the Three Sacred Treasures from space and travels to the Underworld, where he kills Medusa with Dark Pit’s assistance. Kid Icarus: Uprising is a third-person shooter where players control of the angel Pit during his missions for Palutena, the Goddess of Light. Gameplay is divided into aerial-based rail shooter segments and ground-based segments that feature both linear paths and free-roaming areas.

The game’s difficulty, or Intensity, is determined by betting hearts in the Fiend’s Cauldron before beginning each mission. The difficulty ranges from the very easy “0.0” to the highly difficult “9.0”. Pit’s combat abilities are divided between long-range attacks using gun-like weapons, and close-quarters melee attacks. During missions, defeating enemies grants the player hearts, the game’s currency, which is used to increase difficulty by laying bets against the player’s own performance. As the game progresses, Pit gains access to weapons separated into nine types.

Each with unique advantages and disadvantages: bows, bracer-like claws, blades (a combination of a sword and a gun), clubs, orbitars (twin orbs hovering near Pit), staffs, arms (a weapon that fits around his wrist), palms (magical tattoos covering Pit’s arm), and cannons. Once equipped, weapons can be tested in the game’s Practice Range. Using the 3DS’ StreetPass network, players can share weapons with other players in the form of Weapon Gems. Other players can pay hearts to convert the gem into a weapon. Hearts can be spent to upgrade weapons or fuse Weapon Gems, and gained by dismantling unwanted weapons or converting Weapon Gems.