Favorite Ice Levels?

[Solana]

I'll start off by saying that I loathe dealing with winter, especially with how long and cold they are in Minnesota. (The cold ramps up my pain, and the short and often cloudy days make my depression worse.) I do like playing through icy levels and watching and reading things about the Arctic and Antarctic, though.

So to try to acknowledge that even winter has its gifts, I'm wondering about your favorite videogame ice locations?


Ezo Fuji Irwak Shrine- Okami

Ice and steampunk in feudalist "Japan"? Okami did it and made it awesome. The level is very well designed and has a variety of ice puzzles from rolling snowballs to freezing spinning wheels and avoiding falling icicles. It's also divided in half for the double mountain. The music is excellent and works in ticking clocks for the steampunk and time theme with one of the demons that took it over. It's very important story-wise, but I don't want to spoil things. You also pick up the final brush technique here, Blizzard.


Ice Pyramid- Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

Ice and... ancient Egypt? Yep, it's a pyramid of ice with hidden enemies and pharaoh statues hiding switches that need to be flicked with your sword. The music, like everywhere else in this game, is very atmospheric for a cold area of puzzles to go through. Not too difficult, especially after the mirror is found to see the enemies, but a nice sized dungeon. You also get the cat claw weapons to help you climb, after Phoebe watches you fall on your ass from a wall and THEN gives them to you.


Gorilla Glacier levels- Donkey Kong Country

Okay, I'm counting the entire area because they're fun and well-designed. 'Northern Hemispheres' is the perfect track for many of these levels and was a contender for the 'Storms of Rebirth' soundtrack. I love how levels will start or end with no snow and have it gradually start or stop snowing as you play further through. 'Slipslide Ride' is probably my favorite, for the cheery, almost holiday-like music and the beautifully colored ice cavern.

[Rune Lai]

Hm... Generally I hate ice zones for having slide mechanics that pitch my characters off of ledges and things, but that said, one area immediately came to mind.

Skies of Arcadia - Purple Continent

You fly around in your ship for all overworld exploration in Skies of Arcadia and the world is divided into a number of continents. Far to the south, as one of the last places you visit, is the unnamed continent of the civilization of the Purple Moon. When you get there, you find a land mass that is just covered in a sheet of ice, but beneath it is the underground remains of the lost Purple Civilization. I just remember the area feeling hauntingly beautiful in its emptiness. There are no longer any people there and you never learn what happened to them.

[Ambrienne]

I believe I remember a nice (as in visually beautiful) ice level/area in Seiken Densetsu 3 (aka Secret of Mana 2). I have no idea how it looks in the remake, but I do know that I'm not always as impressed as they think I should be with things being converted to 3D. There were no mechanics to make it special, so you could just enjoy the show.

Stardew Valley looks pretty nice during winter, too. Even when you pull stunts like setting off a Rain totem so that it's snowing and raining at the same time. Ha, ha (Yes, I am guilty of discovering that early enough after its Steam release to actually give it as a tip to other players back in the day). Oh, yeah. There's also a section of the mines in that game that's ice themed. It's kind of cool that it has ice crystal-like objects that you can cut with a scythe that sometimes give you refined quartz as well.

Other than that, nothing's coming to mind off the top of my head. Unless... Didn't the Etrian Odyssey series also make some nice visual use of ice levels?

[Rune Lai]

There was an ice stratum in EOII (90% sure it was EOII), but haven't finished the rest of the series. I got stuck on the third stratum boss in EOIII and haven't gone back since.

EOII's ice stratum involved skating around on ice to navigate the frozen lake portions of the floors if I remember right... and had awful ambush crabs in it. Like, they would only spawn in it you were both near their location and in the middle of combat. Then you had one or two rounds to finish before something really big and powerful was going to roll in and kick your ass. Most of the FOEs in that series are visible on the map with recognizable movement patterns so you can plan a way around them, but those crabs drove me bonkers because I just never saw them unless I was in combat so I'd get to where I'd marked a FOE on my mini-map from a previous encounter and there would be nothing there. It took me a while to figure out that I wasn't getting unlucky with a pathing FOE that I just didn't see before getting stuck in combat, but that combat itself was the trigger.