Wednesday, April 21, 2021

DK Country Tropical Freeze -- DONE!

Wow. Just wow. Honestly, someone more sane than me would have moved on from Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze when they saw the difficulty of that final boss, but I finished it up today at the beginning of my lunch break.

Celebrating with the kong clan.

So, what changed from Saturday to now? Here's the story: I went and did what any person would do when they're stuck on an old level from an older game -- go watch a video of someone beating the boss. That did a couple things for me. I was able to see that in actuality, I was really close to beating the boss already.  There wasn't any great strat or new thinking I got from the video. Zephiel810 basically flexed in that video by showing it could be done without any special powerups or anything. The real win for me was reading the comments to their video. 

It's not just me . . .

That gave me a bit of confidence just knowing that it wasn't just me that struggled with that end boss, but also it gave me a pretty interesting clue that made all the difference.  I was buying invincibility potions, I was using Dixie Kong for the heart boost, I was even using the roll-into-penguins trick to get hearts back . . . the real difference was ditching the invincibility potions in favor of extra Dixie Kong barrels.  

He was my Internet hero!

The finishing cinematic scene was pretty epic. You punch that walrus back to his fleet of ships and basically cause a huge explosion that sends them plunging to the depths and steal his magical horn.  You then use that magical horn to blow away the snow and ice and instead bring a magical slide of flowers to your island as all is restored to its natural order. Roll the credits.

After the credits roll there's a little secret cinematic that shows the Kong clan receiving a big gift box.

What could be inside?!

What's inside is apparently a "relic." So if you collect all the KONG letters in each and every level, you get a relic . . . you combine those six with the one from beating the end boss and it opens up a hidden level for you to play.  So . . . no . . . you're actually NOT done with the game, but . . . yeah . . . I am done (at least for now).  That final boss actually gave me nightmares in real life.

68 percent complete is done enough for me . . .

This has always been the beauty of the Donkey Kong Country series to be honest. If you didn't have the re-playability from finishing all the extra challenges in the game, this wouldn't feel like a true Donkey Kong Country game. 

Thanks again to Angela Shadowgarden for the great game suggestion.

Happy Dueling!

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