Tag: cons

Game Review: Ankora Lost Days (Switch)

writ­ten 6/03/2023

Released on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2022 for Steam and Nin­ten­do Switch, then lat­er on March 30, 2023 for PS4 and Xbox, Anko­ra Lost Days is the 3rd game released by CHIBIG. It stays in the same world as Sum­mer in Mara (2020) and Dei­land: Pock­et Plan­et (2021), fol­low­ing the exploits of Junior Ranger Mûn who man­aged to crash her ship on Anko­ra, the home world of the Anks. Sim­i­lar to its pre­de­ces­sors, Anko­ra Lost Days is an adven­ture game with craft­ing, lev­el­ing, cook­ing, and fight­ing ele­ments along with ter­raform­ing. Mûn works to not only find the miss­ing pieces of her ship to send a dis­tress sig­nal to her Inter­stel­lar Patrol com­rades, but to help the Anks save their world.

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5

Price: Paid $7.49 out of MSRP $14.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: Eh…yes if you’re a series fan. No, oth­er­wise

One Word Descrip­tion: Repet­i­tive

  • Pros: Part of the Mara world, Mûn is a recur­ring char­ac­ter, gar­den­ing, craft­ing, no item lim­its on bag, decent game graph­ics, many quests, caters to com­ple­tion­ists
  • Cons: Fetch quests, ran­dom drops, dif­fi­cult to find the one item nec­es­sary for every room, slow, fish­ing, annoy­ing music, hunger, sta­mi­na, and drink bars, mind-numb­ing

Game Review

The game starts with Mûn, hav­ing crash land­ed, explor­ing the world, which is grid-based both in each room and on the map. She makes her way over to the tuto­r­i­al sec­tion where a nice Ank mer­chant directs her through craft­ing some basic tools. After that, the sto­ry­line starts, and Mûn is tasked with some tasks before Koda, the Chief Ank dies. Then it’s Harvir who is her main taskmas­ter. Each room has ter­raform­ing or build­ing obsta­cles that must be over­come in order to access new rooms. Fight­ing through ene­mies, open­ing up new rooms, restor­ing Ank “vil­lages,” and ful­fill­ing every­one’s quests unlock new recipes for food, items, tools, and weapons. Find­ing and restor­ing quick jump pedestals as well as fish­ing boats all help to tra­verse the map. Now, there is NO option­al quest in this game. Every quest needs to be done in order to unlock craftable recipes. If you get stuck, it’s like­ly you need to ful­fill some­one’s task to move for­ward. The end of the game cul­mi­nates in a big 2‑boss fight that was laugh­ably easy. 100% com­ple­tion!

For a com­ple­tion­ist, this game is great. You pret­ty much can’t beat it with­out get­ting 100%! There’s no need to go back and get or do any­thing more.

Game Goods

Flow: The begin­ning is crazy frus­trat­ing with­out the nec­es­sary items and tools to tra­verse the map. How­ev­er, it flows well, and soon, mon­ey is easy to come by and every­thing can just be bought. By the mid-end of the game, bridges are a wor­ry of the past and it’s smooth sail­ing from there. Each room holds onto the revi­sions you’ve estab­lished nice­ly. Increased stats real­ly help.

Text: If you’re one to pay atten­tion, there’s a lot of read. Each Ank has its own sto­ry, prob­lems, and per­son­al­i­ty. Sad­ly, I found myself not car­ing in the least about the text even though some­one clear­ly spent a lot of time flesh­ing it out, and just but­ton mashed my way through them to get on with the game.

Addict­ing: Inex­plic­a­bly addict­ing. I spent most of the game cussing at it, but I kept want­i­ng to play. Why? I don’t know! I would have giv­en it a 2 out of 5, but I bumped it to 3 because for what­ev­er rea­son, I just could­n’t get it out of my mind when I was­n’t play­ing it!

Game Gripes

Ran­dom: Ugh. Again with the ran­dom­ness being a prob­lem with these games! Every herb, every drop, every mon­ster spawn is ran­dom! Will you get that flax you so des­per­ate­ly need for the damn bridges that are required in basi­cal­ly every room? Maybe, maybe not!

Frus­trat­ing: Oh man. Frus­trat­ing is the key word for much of this game. From not being able to find that one sin­gle item that’s need­ed for rope build­ing, to end­less back and forth fetch quests, to those 2 GODDAMN rooms (most­ly that one stu­pid room) that look tra­vers­a­ble only to find that you actu­al­ly can’t go through them, but you for­get every sin­gle time you look at the map, to Mûn’s insane­ly slow walk­ing speed, to her ini­tial­ly, crim­i­nal­ly low sta­mi­na bar…this game is just a bar­rel of laughs. No. It’s full of tears. TEARS. Halfway through the game, I almost quit sev­er­al times, and kept mut­ter­ing curse words under my breath as I con­tin­ued to play because I’m a com­ple­tion­ist, dammit.

Lost: Yep. True to its name­sake and plot, you’re just lost most of the time. Every room looks the same, every Ank looks the same.

Bug­gy: I fell off a few ledges when run­ning on the sides. Thank­ful­ly the game resets after a while.

Bad Menu/Interface: Switch­ing among tools was clunky even though it should have been straight for­ward. Some­times it would switch twice instead of once with one but­ton push. The menu cur­sor was very lag­gy. Giv­en how much map reliance there is in the game, there is no ded­i­cat­ed map but­ton. Instead, you have to open the menu and tab then over to the map, which would work and some­times would­n’t. Mûn should also have been giv­en a per­pet­u­al run­ning fea­ture or at least a tog­gle.

Art: It’s like sev­er­al dif­fer­ent peo­ple cre­at­ed art for this game. The Start menu art is great! Mûn is like she is por­trayed in the oth­er games. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the ani­mat­ed scene Mûn, the game­play Mûn, the sta­tus gauge Mûn, and the text char­ac­ter art Mûn are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from each oth­er. I, myself, par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­liked the por­tray­al you see most often: the text char­ac­ter art. The exces­sive emo­tions were hon­est­ly off-putting. Both that and the sta­tus gauge face make her look like a lit­tle girl and not the young woman she’s sup­posed to be. I found myself skip­ping through all the text so I would­n’t have to look at her ugly mug. Why cre­ate a char­ac­ter and then change it 2 games in?

Repetitive/Boring: When it comes down to it, the biggest bar­ri­er for this game is the game at its core: fetch quests. That’s all there is to it. The entire game is about fetch quests. I’m all for side quests, but dang, all the back­track­ing and try­ing to remem­ber the best paths…To be fair, I should have known bet­ter because all 3 games by CHIBIG so far have been fetch quest games. The sto­ry is super flim­sy. You only hear of the main bad­die towards the end, and he does­n’t real­ly seem all that bad giv­en the oth­er Anks just sit on their butts and tell Mûn what to do.

In Conclusion

I can­not, in good con­science, rec­om­mend this game to the aver­age gamer. It’s way too repet­i­tive, and the main plot is as thin as cheap toi­let paper. The only peo­ple I’d rec­om­mend it to are those who have played the oth­er 2 games and are ensconced in the lore. With that said, the pecu­liar addic­tive­ness of the game influ­enced me to fin­ish it all the way despite sev­er­al attempts to just quit. There’s just some­thing about it… You know what I find inter­est­ing is that Sum­mer in Mara came out first in 2020, and yet, of the three games, it is the most sol­id and most fun one of them all. It runs the smoothest and is much more intrigu­ing. I was appalled to see that Anko­ra Lost Days came out in 2022. I would have bet mon­ey on it going Dei­land then Anko­ra then Sum­mer in Mara. I hope that CHIBIG’s next games (their web­site shows 3 new games com­ing out this year) are bet­ter because these last two have been rather dis­ap­point­ing in my opin­ion.

Game Review: Summer in Mara (Switch)

writ­ten 07/04/2022

Sum­mer in Mara is an Adventure/Simulation game released by CHIBIG on June 16, 2020, for Nin­ten­do Switch, PS4, and Steam. You play as Koa who was res­cued from a ship­wreck by an elder­ly Qui­do named Haku and raised on her island in the sea of Mara.

Rat­ing: 3.9 out of 5

Price: Paid $9.49 out of MSRP $24.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: Yes

One Word Descrip­tion: Relax­ing

  • Pros: Decent graph­ics, good music, relaxed game­play, farm­ing, craft­ing, fish­ing, cook­ing, build­ing, sail­ing not annoy­ing, sto­ry­line, many side quests, east­er eggs, quick jumps avail­able
  • Cons: Back forth fetch quests, no vehi­cle to make main town island eas­i­er to nav­i­gate, hunger and pow­er meter, anti­cli­mac­tic end­ing, bug­gy game­play, some quests unclear, unsat­is­fac­to­ry end­ing

Game Review — The game starts off with young Koa run­ning around the island and Yaya Haku being the stern but lov­ing grand­ma. The tuto­r­i­al turns out to be a flash­back and all of the sud­den, Koa is old­er, the island is in dis­re­pair, and the only reminder that Haku exist­ed is a lit­tle shrine dec­o­rat­ed with shells near the mys­te­ri­ous stone gate. She’s been bare­ly sur­viv­ing on her own and con­tin­ues to sub­sist off oranges, black­ber­ries, and fish until one day a strange crea­ture she names Napopo hap­pens by. With sud­den inspi­ra­tion, Koa fix­es the island, makes new tools, and even­tu­al­ly repairs the boat to explore Mara!

First stop is Qalis, the main city of Mara, which is the main island in the game. There Koa meets with many new char­ac­ters and thus starts the game. Sum­mer in Mara is a quest-cen­tric game. Fin­ish­ing tasks for the inhab­i­tants of the sea unlocks new quests, items, tools, char­ac­ters, and most impor­tant­ly: the map. There is a good rhythm to the flow, offer­ing many choic­es to the play­er. The time ele­ment gov­ern­ing night and day has no bear­ing upon things aside from shop times and forc­ing Koa to rest. The lat­er it becomes, the faster the sta­mi­na depletes, and no amount food will ful­ly sus­tain her until she either sleeps at her house, at the inn of Qalis, on the boat or in a sleep­ing bag/tent.

As a gen­er­al rule, when new things are avail­able to be built, build it! Often­times, the act of build­ing on Koa’s island will unlock new recipes allow­ing the play­er a sigh of relief and the fun of dec­o­rat­ing the island. Cut down, burn, replant trees as you like. The game impos­es lim­its on num­ber of trees, but build­ing wells increas­es that amount. Col­lect­ing ani­mals who then pro­duce items when fed, encour­ages farm­ing of crops. Ini­tial­ly, the one-time-use items and lim­it­ed mate­ri­als can be anx­i­ety-induc­ing, but most items can be bought if you have enough mon­ey. How­ev­er, the game is extreme­ly gen­er­ous with ran­dom free items so long as the play­er spends time sail­ing and speak­ing to mail crabs. Speak­ing of mon­ey, it’s easy to sell items for cash, AND the nice thing is that aside from a 99 item cap, there is no inven­to­ry lim­it.

The main sto­ry quest can be…frustrating. There’s a lot of back and forth and fetch­ing this and that, and deal­ing with irri­tat­ing, stub­born old peo­ple. While that is eas­i­ly for­giv­en of side quests, main sto­ry quests are bet­ter off being more straight for­ward in my opin­ion. Thank­ful­ly, I spent so much time gath­er­ing items that most quests were quick­ly and eas­i­ly dealt with. The sto­ry is most­ly told through char­ac­ter dia­logue, but some­times there are ani­mat­ed sequences. Try­ing to pro­tect Mara from enter­pris­ing aliens was sur­pris­ing­ly mak­ing me angry for the inhab­i­tants, and I was excit­ed­ly look­ing for­ward to the big end­ing as the events were reach­ing a cli­max when–

–an error occurred, and I got back into the game only to have missed it all. It had thrown me direct­ly into post-game con­di­tions. I had to go dig­ging around on YouTube for the cutscene only to find that I missed almost noth­ing. The ani­mat­ed scene was short, a lit­tle con­fus­ing, and not all that sat­is­fy­ing.

Hmm. I decid­ed that I would actu­al­ly fin­ish the rest of the quests out and spent sev­er­al more hours dig­ging up chests (appar­ent­ly, I nev­er knew about the shov­el the entire game!) and mak­ing mon­ey. I kept hit­ting more and more game bugs as it went on until I thought I hit the biggest bug of all: an unfin­ish­able quest! How­ev­er, as is turns out, it’s not a bug. You lit­er­al­ly can­not fin­ish all of the quests because accord­ing to the devel­op­ers it sym­bol­izes the idea that quests nev­er end in Mara :). Buh. While I under­stand where they’re com­ing from, that does­n’t sit well with me… does­n’t give me clo­sure. Ugh. I wish they’d come up with a dif­fer­ent way.

So, basi­cal­ly, I qui­et­ly fin­ished the game and…I guess…that’s it…?

Gripes

  • Some things are unclear. Like some of the quests sent me to the search engines because I sim­ply could not fig­ure out where to get some things. I kind of wish they’d men­tioned some­where that build­ing items on the island would help unlock new recipes. If they did, I def­i­nite­ly missed it as did many oth­er play­ers accord­ing to the forums.
  • Run­ning around on Qalis was hel­la annoy­ing!!! It’s nice that the island is well laid out, but geez, run­ning lit­er­al­ly back and forth to oppo­site ends of the place over and over again was get­ting seri­ous­ly tir­ing. Plus, I think the ZR but­ton on my Switch is per­ma­nent­ly affect­ed by con­stant depres­sion. I wish more devel­op­ers allowed con­stant run­ning tog­gles. Rune Fac­to­ry 5 did a great job of that.
  • A horse, or roller skates, or a bike would have helped tremen­dous­ly on Qalis
  • BUGS. GLITCHES. From ran­dom tele­por­ta­tion, to get­ting stuck on things, to menu lim­i­ta­tions. Admit­ted­ly, it was­n’t game-break­ing and only one sig­nif­i­cant glitch (though I think that might be Switch and not soft­ware?) that pre­vent­ed me from see­ing the end cutscene.
  • It would have been nice to have more access to workshops/kitchen/tool mak­ing out­side of the home island. The con­stant need to go back because I need­ed to make ONE item was irri­tat­ing. Maybe make it a boat upgrade?
  • There are 3 types of trees that need to be plant­ed on high­er ele­va­tion. That’s kind of cool to have that con­sid­er­a­tion, except that the only place on the island to grow the 3 fruits was so super tiny! Why!?
  • I real­ly wish there was more post-game con­tent. Some­thing like restor­ing the old Navy Acad­e­my would have been neat or estab­lish­ing a new Navy alto­geth­er. Per­haps as a reward for com­plet­ing all of the quests, it unlocks that! Or maybe com­plet­ing the colos­sus. All in all, too short.
  • Some of the islands seemed use­less. Like the GIANT island in the north that became a waste­land because of the Elits and hous­es a giant bun­ny. Or the two map squares that are com­plete­ly emp­ty. Even the weird Hal­loween Island.

Over­all, a cute game! A lit­tle bug­gy, but very sol­id. I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend it to any­one who enjoys fetch-quests, farm­ing, cook­ing, craft­ing, fish­ing, div­ing, and sail­ing. It is extreme­ly relax­ing with no time lim­it (aside from parts of the main sto­ry that requires you to sail and there­fore can’t quick jump), so you can explore, or craft, or build, or what­ev­er at your leisure. The mechan­ics work well, the hunger and sta­mi­na meters are fair. There’s a col­lec­tion ele­ment, and there aren’t too many lim­its on build­ing. Devel­op­ers crammed lots of lit­tle details into the game and got many things right! Very enjoy­able and I will always have fond mem­o­ries of it. The 4ish stars out of 5 are for annoy­ing back and forth run­ning, lack of sat­is­fac­to­ry end­ing, and all the glitch-bugs I kept run­ning into even if they’re not game-break­ing.