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Castlevania Legends (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I always thought that Castlevania Legends was actually the same game as either of the Game Boy Castlevania Adventure games, just named differently in a other regions. So imagine my surprise when I discovered it wasn’t, and not only that, it’s better than either of them. How have I not played this before?

OK, I should clarify that it still isn’t great. It’s pretty short, has a really restrictive time limit on each level which pretty much guarantees at least one death, and is still a bit clunky. But! It is more fun, slicker, and more playable than the others.

Apparently, until the terrible Lament of Innocence on the PS2, this was chronologically the first game in the series, although when the PS2 game was released Legends became, well, a legend. Shame, as this is a better game than that. Hell, most games are a better game than Lament of Innocence.

There’s not much else to say here. It’s a reasonable Castlevania with nothing really new for anyone who has played any of the original non-Metroidvania style ones before. And it’s free to play if you have the Nintendo Online subscription.

Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara (Switch): COMPLETED!

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There’s a whole series of games set in the “Mara” universe, by Chibig, most of which I’ve played and completed and enjoyed. They’re not the same, although most are of the “chop chop, dig dig” genre. A couple of years ago I played Summer in Mara, which was that and also a boating, exploration game with missions and stuff. This game, takes Koa – the main character from Summer in Mara – and puts her in the same world but now it’s a platformer. And a sequel. Sort of.

There’s a plot about pirates setting you challenges, but ultimately it’s a pretty standard 3D jump and run game with a nice setting, some silly characters, and slightly clunky physics in that way that nobody who isn’t Nintendo can make a platformer that feels great like a Nintendo platformer. It doesn’t do anything new or adventurous with the genre, and isn’t outstanding in any way, but that’s OK – it’s all happy fun stuff to the end.

SteamWorld Build (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I do love the SteamWorld series of games. And the world they’re all set in. Of course I was going to get this, although my interest was slightly tempered by the fact it’s the first SteamWorld game not made by the core staff of the previous ones. Would that be OK?

I’m pleased to reveal, that yes. The style, humour and world have all come out unscathed. The references to other events in the series – particularly SteamWorld Dig 2 which this is a sort of side-story to – fit in and you wouldn’t actually know it wasn’t the same team unless you’d been told. Like I just did there.

Build is a two part game. Initially, it’s a city builder. You make houses and shops and facilities, and Steambots move in and populate the place. It’s very much SimCity 2000 only with robots and fewer things to take care of. Soon, you have to get into the second bit of the game, which is mining. Under the city are three layers of mine, each more dangerous than the last, where you send miners, engineers and guards to strip the area of resources and stop the evil creatures that lurk from destroying your robots and machinery.

The mining is further split into two sorts of game. There’s the expansion 4X-lite stuff, digging out more mine and developing new machines to gather different resources (as well as devices to shuttle those back to the surface more efficiently), but then there’s also a number of “hives”, which frequently spew out a stream of baddies and these bits are almost Tower Defence in nature. You have to make sure you’ve plenty of weapons set up to target them, and some engineers to repair the turrets (and your guard bots) if they get a bit eaten.

There’s a lot to juggle, nipping back and forth between the surface (to expand your population and unlock and develop new tools and buildings) and the mine, as well as keeping an eye on the needs of the residents and ensuring your factories don’t run out of the resources they need in order to make such mission-critical things as burgers and casinos.

The aim of the game is to build a spaceship then fill it with fuel. Parts for the ship are buried in the mine, digging them up triggers a wave of attacking baddiebots, and fuel – once you have enough scientists and the right buildings – can be refined from a resource. Complete this, and the ending of Dig 2 happens as you all escape into space.

It’s bloody great. So great, that I immediately started what is essentially New Game +, where I was rewarded with a buff from completing the game on one of the starter maps to use on another playthrough. Which I then also completed. And then, started a New Game ++. Yes, it’s that good.

Doraemon: Story of Seasons (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It’s been a while since I went cold turkey on Animal Crossing, so I thought I’d inject a bit of something similar when this came up on sale on the Switch eShop. Apparently it’s the first Doraemon game to be officially localised for the West, but it’s also a Story of Seasons (née Harvest Moon) crossover title.

How that robot cat/farming game amalgamation works is like this: The plot is about Noby, Doraemon and chums being magically sent back in time and Doraemon losing all his gadgets. In the manga and anime these gadgets are future tech from the time Doraemon comes from, and do all sorts of things like duplicate items, allow teleportation and invent other gadgets. The gameplay, however, is pure Story of Seasons – make friends, grow crops, keep farm animals, and things change with the passing of seasons. The crossover happens when you recover Doraemon’s gadgets and use them to progress both the story (which is mostly about getting home) and improve your farm. For two very disparate things, the game does a decent job of melding them.

The thing that caught my eye with this originally was the art style. It has this lovely watercolour-like look to the graphics. Some areas look better than others, but there’s a lot of pretty detail. The music is relaxing if a little forgettable, but the voices – especially Noby’s interjections and non-verbal vocalisations – grate somewhat. For example, when mining, Noby shouts “HAI!” with every swing of the pickaxe.

Of which there are many swings because another downer in the game is the grinding. In the early game, it’s mostly grinding for money which means a lot of fishing and foraging, but soon you need ore and gems, and you can only realistically get them from the mine. Problem is, each swing of the pickaxe drains one point of stamina and you only have 100 to begin with. If you’re like me, by the time you’ve watered your crops first thing in the morning, you’re already exhausted so need to go back to bed for a few hours at 8am in order to regain the energy to go off and mine for a bit, and then have another nap (or two, or three) in the afternoon to refill it again.

Eventually, that grind winds down a bit as you get items that increase your maximum stamina and improved tools that drain it less quickly, and then you (or rather, I, in case you play it differently) have to grind for likes. You see, in order to progress the story, you have to make events trigger. In order to do that, specific people need to like you a certain amount, although who and certainly how much isn’t always clear. You become more chummy with them by giving them stuff (items, crops, food, fish, etc.) they like, and in standard Farm/Life Sim fashion, everyone likes different stuff different amounts. Just getting them to like you isn’t always enough to trigger the events – you also need to be in the right place (there’s no way of finding out where this might be) and the right time (you’re rarely given any clues on this either). It’s a bit frustrating and after spending many in-game days wandering every location at all times of day and night in the hope I’d be lucky, I resorted to a guide. Which turned out to be wrong. Sigh.

But these are frustrations with trying to complete the damn game. If you just want that to happen naturally and you don’t care how long it takes, then you can relax into it and just tend your farm, animals and chat with people without time limits, death or negative consequences. For me, though, I wanted to get on and play something else (I’ve played little else for a month!) so I hit the grind. If you like Stardew Valley or previous Seasons games, you’ll like this, and if you’ve no idea who Doraemon and his friends are, then that doesn’t matter as it’s still enjoyable.

Doraemon: Story of Seasons (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

It’s been a while since I went cold turkey on Animal Crossing, so I thought I’d inject a bit of something similar when this came up on sale on the Switch eShop. Apparently it’s the first Doraemon game to be officially localised for the West, but it’s also a Story of Seasons (née Harvest Moon) crossover title.

How that robot cat/farming game amalgamation works is like this: The plot is about Noby, Doraemon and chums being magically sent back in time and Doraemon losing all his gadgets. In the manga and anime these gadgets are future tech from the time Doraemon comes from, and do all sorts of things like duplicate items, allow teleportation and invent other gadgets. The gameplay, however, is pure Story of Seasons – make friends, grow crops, keep farm animals, and things change with the passing of seasons. The crossover happens when you recover Doraemon’s gadgets and use them to progress both the story (which is mostly about getting home) and improve your farm. For two very disparate things, the game does a decent job of melding them.

The thing that caught my eye with this originally was the art style. It has this lovely watercolour-like look to the graphics. Some areas look better than others, but there’s a lot of pretty detail. The music is relaxing if a little forgettable, but the voices – especially Noby’s interjections and non-verbal vocalisations – grate somewhat. For example, when mining, Noby shouts “HAI!” with every swing of the pickaxe.

Of which there are many swings because another downer in the game is the grinding. In the early game, it’s mostly grinding for money which means a lot of fishing and foraging, but soon you need ore and gems, and you can only realistically get them from the mine. Problem is, each swing of the pickaxe drains one point of stamina and you only have 100 to begin with. If you’re like me, by the time you’ve watered your crops first thing in the morning, you’re already exhausted so need to go back to bed for a few hours at 8am in order to regain the energy to go off and mine for a bit, and then have another nap (or two, or three) in the afternoon to refill it again.

Eventually, that grind winds down a bit as you get items that increase your maximum stamina and improved tools that drain it less quickly, and then you (or rather, I, in case you play it differently) have to grind for likes. You see, in order to progress the story, you have to make events trigger. In order to do that, specific people need to like you a certain amount, although who and certainly how much isn’t always clear. You become more chummy with them by giving them stuff (items, crops, food, fish, etc.) they like, and in standard Farm/Life Sim fashion, everyone likes different stuff different amounts. Just getting them to like you isn’t always enough to trigger the events – you also need to be in the right place (there’s no way of finding out where this might be) and the right time (you’re rarely given any clues on this either). It’s a bit frustrating and after spending many in-game days wandering every location at all times of day and night in the hope I’d be lucky, I resorted to a guide. Which turned out to be wrong. Sigh.

But these are frustrations with trying to complete the damn game. If you just want that to happen naturally and you don’t care how long it takes, then you can relax into it and just tend your farm, animals and chat with people without time limits, death or negative consequences. For me, though, I wanted to get on and play something else (I’ve played little else for a month!) so I hit the grind. If you like Stardew Valley or previous Seasons games, you’ll like this, and if you’ve no idea who Doraemon and his friends are, then that doesn’t matter as it’s still enjoyable.