I'm sure you saw the five stars I gave this and thought to yourself, "man, this guy's either joking or super weird!". Well, I'm definitely weird, but I'm only partially joking! If we're being ~objective~, Faces of Evil is nowhere near a five star game, but get this: reviews aren't objective, they're windows into the hearts, brains, and souls of individuals, so expressing your emotions, no matter how "unusual" they may be, is where it's at! Faces of Evil is a game that has been there for me for years even though I never really got to play it until now. Many moons ago, I tried a CD-i emulator and not only did it not work well at all, it also had the audacity to try and get me to pay money! CD-i emulation is far from perfect even now, but it has come a long way, at least enough to allow me to find plenty of ways to appreciate it as much more than just the "failure" history considers it to be.

If you're familiar with YouTube Poops, I was the kind of dorky kid that chugged those things down real good. I would watch so many of them and I just couldn't get enough. Seeing these absolutely ridiculous looking takes on characters like Mario and Link that I had known for years always gave me a good laugh and it got to the point where friends and I will still break out random quotes from the poops and the actual source material alike. Even in their original poopless form, the cutscenes in the Mario and Zelda CD-i games are still hilarious! So hilarious, in fact, that a game released this year, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore (made in part by the same person who made this remaster), used them as its most compelling hook! These cutscenes are truly special, but there are actual games beyond them. Said games have long been the butt of jokes by reviewers and YouTubers, but when you actually sit down with them, are they really so beyond redemption? It turns out the answer to that is no and we have Dopply to thank for making that conclusion easier than ever to come to.

The first two Zelda games for the CD-i (this one and Wand of Gamelon) play in a way that resembles Zelda II. This is a good thing because Zelda II is my favorite one! They're certainly not as tightly designed or challenging and magic isn't a thing, but the general skeleton is there, which is still appreciated. Speaking of skeletons, this game is still very much a Zelda game once you look past its legendary presentation. You go to various areas in the world, find items that let you explore new areas and defeat new foes, and you ultimately go on to defeat Ganon. You start off very weak and end up becoming a force of nature that can spam deadly ranged attacks, so even with the different style, that form of progression the series has always done well is still here. You get so strong that all it takes to defeat Ganon is throwing a book at him!

Even if the combat is simple, the variety of items you get is as satisfying as you'd expect. Some Zelda staples like bombs and the Power Glove are here, but there are some interesting new items mixed in. A rope lets you create spots to climb upward wherever you want, which can cleverly cut down on the game's tendency to want you to take the long way around things. Snowballs and Firestones replace arrows and magic, which might sound like a downgrade, but the sheer speed at which you can toss them (if you stock up) makes short work of any enemy. The winged helmet predates the Roc's Cape by several years with its ability to let you glide across gaps. Even though I've emphasized the power you can gain, Faces of Evil still finds ways of forcing you to be careful. The number of hearts you get for this adventure are extremely limited and the canteen only lets you carry one healing item, so this isn't a game where you can come rolling in with four fairies in bottles and effectively be invincible. Instant death pits litter most stages, which when combined with enemies that love to throw huge projectiles, can make finding your footing surprisingly difficult. It's not nearly as hard as Zelda II, but it still has some of that methodical swordplay that makes it work so well.

Perhaps moreso than several other Zelda games, the land of Koridai is legitimately strange and compelling to explore. Every single person you meet is some kind of freak that's way too eager to touch Link, creepily smile at him, or go on about some nonsense that the player won't have any context for right away. Except Morshu, that is; he's not a freak, he's a national treasure! This is the only Zelda game (well, and Wand of Gamelon) where encountering NPCs is just as fun as finding new items! The environments themselves are really interesting, too. There's a unique, hard to describe "lived in" nature to each level. Loads of detail can be seen in the backgrounds, especially when you enter buildings, which have all kinds of random little items in the background. It's maybe not what you'd call ~environmental storytelling~, but it gives every single screen a handcrafted, remarkably detailed feel, as if each one was an artist's canvas for them to do with as they please. Just the act of exploring is such a joy because you're guaranteed to see something you've truly never seen before, which is more than a lot of games can say.

It's worth quickly mentioning the upgrades that come with this remaster because they really do make a difference. Aside from expected niceties like enhanced image and music quality, the remaster has an added tutorial and an optional mode that includes some modern QoL like infinite lives and better checkpointing. If you're one of the rare folks who have mastered the original game, there's even a hard mode built in the image of the "Hero modes" added to official Zelda remasters. If you can beat that, you get an entirely new playable character complete with unique animations and spritework, which is a seriously delightful level of effort!

The whole package really shows just how much respect Dopply has for the CD-i and its Zelda games. It's easy for people to take one look at the CD-i and dismiss it, but perspectives like this in which people truly take the time to examine the positives of what the platform was doing are so valuable. By being humble enough to not see it as something to "fix" from the ground up to prove a point but rather something to use as the basis for a creative experiment, Dopply has proven that there's legitimate beauty in what the CD-i was doing. Faces of Evil, whether it meant to or not (I'm sure it didn't), serves as an example of what Nintendo once was in the eyes of those who have seen them grow into the obnoxiously litigious behemoth that they are today. Nintendo used to have moments of experimentation, weirdness, and "mistakes" that they simply don't now. They're a megacorporation and megacorporations are not your friends, but they absolutely were "fun" in a way that they aren't now. Things like the live action Super Mario Bros. Movie, the Game Boy Printer, Mario Paint, ROB, the Virtual Boy, all have a raw creative energy that takes risks in ways that they wouldn't dare consider now. Faces of Evil is a way to tap back into that fun period of Nintendo history, that period where I consumed the heck out of YouTube Poops, and as short as said reminiscence may be, it's an opportunity that I find impossible to say no to.