I’m not really sure why I do these things to myself. I just found myself thinking, completely unprovoked, about this game after years of blissfully having finally shuttered it from my mind. I was one of the kids who didn’t like Zelda II much because of its toughness, change of format, incomprehensible townsfolk, and not having the innate dullness of adulthood to make level gaining tolerable. However, being still kind of a nerd, I was really into Greek mythology for a while, especially all the bizarre monsters they came up with. So, when I was looking around Blockbuster looking for something to try I hadn’t already, this game just happened to jump at me.
If the meandering intro wasn’t clue enough, basically Battle of Olympus is Zelda II: The Toga Party. Your hero wanders about ancient Greece hitting things and gathering plot advancing items to rescue his snakebite-prone lady love from Hades in Tartarus, which really kind of makes the title pointless since you’ll be doing more battling in Tartarus and Crete and basically every other part of the land. In fact, you find Zeus just kind of slumming around in your starting town. Well, let’s get this quest of epic heroism going. Out of respect for the rich tapestry that inspired the game, I must resist the urge to give the hero some kind of obscenity or slur for a name.
You begin in Arcadia, where everyone lives in tree-houses and tree leeches just can’t wait to drop on your head or lazily crawl your way before spazzing out and starting a bout of mad hopping. Everyone seems to be abuzz about old fire controlling men with fennel staves and other references to items you’re going to need to run around hoarding before the day is done. One thing you may notice is our hero FAGCLE(s) is carrying a very large shield. I assure you, unlike the game he’s ripping off, it’s purely decorative. Enemies have unrestricted access to your organs at pretty much all times. But it’s okay, you left home with the shortest, bluntest wooden sword you had in the closet to defend yourself, as is the wont of video game heroes. I’m not saying every hero is necessarily holding out an arsenal of shotguns and explosives on the player, but it just kind of makes sense that someone who’s good with a sword might own one good sword, rather than always leaving Starting Town with a hide cap, leather armor, and a wooden sword.
As you kill enemies, the horrible, endlessly respawning enemies, even in towns, which I’m pretty sure was all but illegal in the Video Game Geneva Convention, you will earn Olives, used to buy things at shops, and leaves or green beans or monarch butterfly pupas that restore your health. I’m not sure why, but for some reason using olives as money felt vaguely racist toward the Greeks, and they already have it pretty hard making it to frat parties and finding new ways to eke nutrition out of goats and bay leaves. Not to mention that I’m almost positive that Zeus is still out there trying to pick up chicks… men… livestock… appliances… intangible concepts. Basically anything he’s creative enough to stick it in. Greece isn’t a place you want to leave your drink unattended in. Especially if there’s a bearded, robed man at the bar.
Anyway. Your goal, ultimately is to gather all the Pieces of Love scattered about the land (yeah really) in order to open up the path to save your girlfriend from Hades. (You get to name her, too, but there’s not enough room to call her Snakebait, and even B-YOTCH got truncated into nonsense just like FAGCLE(s.)
With each piece of love (totally different from a piece of heart), you also get a message from your lady love, waiting patiently for you in the underworld, presumably in between reminding James Woods that No Means No. Fun fact: James Woods actually is Hades. That’s why they cast him in the Disney flick. Some of their other research into the mythos is a little less painstaking though. For example, “Gaia” is the name of a decidedly masculine boulder monster blocking a path at one point.
There’s just something… off about this entire game, that I could never put my finger on. It’s like the pieces are all there for something that should be all fun, sprawling and epic, but someone spilled a drink on it so instead of fitting into a nice jigsaw puzzle of the Parthenon, it ended up all warped and sticky. Like the floor of Dionysus’s chariot. Which I imagine is an old Charger.
