My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

As it was the first game available to redeem with My Nintendo points, Twilight Princess Picross gave me a lot of hope. I had already gotten hundreds of dollars of free games (and merch) from the previous rewards service, Club Nintendo, and I wasn't sure what to expect from its replacement. An exclusive game like this was definitely a good way to boost my confidence, and the expiration date it originally mentioned on the redemption page hinted that this was only the first in a line of My Nintendo branded titles. Fast forward five years and the redemption page still hasn't expired, we haven't seen even a hint of another original title, and My Nintendo lives in the shadow of its predecessor. Luckily, this was still a fantastic game for Picross fans like me, so at least we have that.

Twilight Princess Picross is a pretty standard affair for a Jupiter-developed Picross game. It's shorter, with just two sets of 45 puzzles and one enormous "Micross" puzzle, but the Twilight Princess theme is loaded with fun fan service. The backgrounds and sounds have been changed to match the Zelda game, all of the puzzles reference a recognizable character or item, and Midna herself teaches you how to play. These theme alterations don't actually affect the gameplay at all, but they are a cute nod to a great game, and they create an atmosphere unique to the series. The themed puzzles could get a little complicated, leading me to restart some of them multiple times after hopelessly screwing up. For this reason especially, I wasn't in love with the "Mega Picross" mode at first. However, after getting a little better at the series, I came back to it and had a lot of fun with the extra challenge that the mode offered. My whole experience with the game has a similar flow to that - have fun, get frustrated, put it down for a while, come back later and have fun again. This made it take a long time to finish, but I had a lot of fun, nonetheless.

Besides its theme, Twilight Princess Picross doesn't have much to offer over any other Picross title, and it is relatively short in comparison. However, it can be redeemed completely for free and is still a lot of fun to play, so I can't really argue with that. If you're looking to get into Picross, this game's price, shorter length, and small variety of puzzle types makes it a great entry point. It just makes me a little sad that we never got any follow-up titles, despite the hints. 

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