Pier Solar and the Great Architects is a 90's style RPG by WaterMelon. It was released in 2010 on a SEGA MegaDrive/Genesis cartridge. This was the last Genesis game ever made, and it pushed the hardware to its limits, from what I've read. An NPC in the game even makes a joke on SNES games having loading times. Recently, though, the game was given a brand-new set of graphics in HD, and released for modern home game platforms, OUYA, Android, and even the old Dreamcast. I Read about it on Wii U Daily. Until then, I had never heard of this game, but it looked cool, and I Had to have it. It's the only Wii U game of its kind not in the category of Virtual Console. The Wii U version is basically the same as the other versions, but people claim that it's best played on Wii U, for a reason I'll explain below. But if your Wii U is not your main game console, then you may rather want to get it for your PC or 8th gen console for the convenience.

The game starts it's story with Hoston and his dad, Rudy, who is dying of an illness that a certain doctor hasn't shown up to heal yet. Hoston wants get the legendary Meinshu herbs to heal him, so he treks into the forest with his friends to find them. But this triggers a chain of events leading up to the uncovering of The Society, and their desire to obtain a device that can rewrite time and space.

Each character has HP and MP, and various spells he/she can use. The Battle command system has commands like "attack" and "spell" that cycle in a wheel when a directional input is used, similar to Paper Mario 2. An Auto Fight feature is there, but how and if you use it is up to you. Each party member can "gather" on a turn, accumulating a point of gather each turn. Each member can hold up to five of these at a time, and can even "send" his gather to another party member when needed. Gather is important because it increases attack power and Magic potency, so ice blasts get colder and healing feels better. Some attacks and spells require a certain quota of gather, too, to be used at all. And if a character falls in battle, he gets 1 HP when it's over, so HP recovery can be done as normal without needing to cure unconsciousness (that's one thing I really appreciate as an EarthBound fan).

apart from fighting, the towns and dungeons are layed out in an elaborately designed mix of sprites and modern graphics. The cutscenes combine both sprites moving around and the usual RPG-style dialogue boxes, with some events being depicted with drawings of certain events, like a manga. Even on old CRT TVs and monitors (my TV), Nintendo fans like those on Digibutter must agree that the game looks gorgeous. Even if you don't like the HD graphics, or are a longtime fan of the original, the game has all the original 16-bit MegaDrive graphics included just an option away. The Story has pretty good/sassy humor, on par with EarthBound's, but has some very serious, and unusually disturbing moments for games of the genre, it had me hooked especially near the end. The Soundtrack? That's in HQ too! The music of Pier Solar HD was beautiful, went well with the story, and makes for a good YouTube listening playlist. As with the graphics, the original 16-bit soundtrack can also be chosen if you would like. On the Wii I Gamepad screen, you can put a Status screen showing your HP and MP, and a radar .

While Pier Solar is a great game, there are still several flaws and quirks. The Battle system is especially tedious and repetitive. The Animations do take some time, and I, being a somewhat attached EarthBound fan, became fidgety when I got impatient with these. (There's a spell that gives temporary amnesty from encounters, but it's MP cost isn't feasible for repeated use)Areas have like 4 enemies in them, and the random-encounter rate gets annoying when you are trying to solve a puzzle. Halfway through the game, I started running away from like a third of these fights! An sabes que? Later into the game, enemies get recolored an reused. In fact, late in the game the same sprites from earlier in the game aren't recolored at all, and though they look like oldr enemies, their stats are updated to keep up with yours. Also, you may find yourself wandering aimlessly a lot: this game is anything but linear. I consulted a walk through sundry times because there were moments that it just wasn't obvious or findable what to do next. The Save system is...weird. If auto-save is enabled, the game will automatically save at the entrance of certain buildings or caves. This makes the game lag sometimes. (Even if Auto is not enabled, you can still use manual save points. Don't fret) for these reasons people call Pier Solar mediocre, and say that its genre did not age well (it's a 90's game in 2010's)

In my own opinion, I think that this game is great. It is commendable for the developer's first game, and if you like games like Breath of Fire and Chrono Trigger, this game is perfect for you!