Tag: pros

Game Review: Hokko Life (Switch)

writ­ten 7/16/23, updat­ed 7/22/23

Devel­oped by Won­der­scope Games and pub­lished by Team 17, Hokko Life is an adven­ture sim­u­la­tion released ful­ly on Sep­tem­ber 27, 2022 for Steam, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. It cen­ters around the play­er who comes off the train into a dusty, slow town inhab­it­ed by bipedal, artic­u­late ani­mals, and then works to make it more hab­it­able.

Rat­ing: 2.5 out of 5

ESRB Rating/PEGI: E (Everyone)/3

Price: Paid $9.99 out of MSRP $19.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: Only if you are des­per­ate for more games like Ani­mal Cross­ing

One Word Descrip­tion: Copy­cat

Time Rewind Buy Again? No

  • Pros: Cute, sim­ple, easy, design flex­i­bil­i­ty, pleas­ant graph­ics, lulling music
  • Cons: Very long title load­ing, unre­fined, unclear, unal­lur­ing, small, game pro­gres­sion

Review

To be fair, I have not fin­ished the game. In fact, I have only been play­ing “for a lit­tle while” accord­ing to my Switch. Also, appar­ent­ly, the game plays hor­ri­bly on the Switch as com­pared to oth­er plat­forms. Admit­ted­ly, if there was a sto­ry of any sort for the char­ac­ter, then I’ve already for­got­ten. I think it might have been that your char­ac­ter over­slept on the train and the small ani­mal town you arrive in is the last stop. You arrive at night and come across a cafe (that looks eeri­ly sim­i­lar to Brew­ster’s The Roost) where some walk­ing, talk­ing ani­mals are con­vers­ing. The ele­phant (effec­tive­ly Brew­ster) offers you a room. Then the next morn­ing, they say more words and send you out to run around the very small vil­lage, except you were sup­posed to talk to the Tom Nook char­ac­ter, a giraffe name Moss. Pre­dictably, they offer you a house, you have to talk to all the vil­lagers, and then they give you some tools.

Sim­i­lar to oth­er social sim­u­la­tion games, you restore the vil­lage back to vig­or by ren­o­vat­ing, craft­ing, dec­o­rat­ing, fin­ish­ing small quests for vil­lagers, land­scap­ing, com­plet­ing larg­er quests for the town, etc. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, you are able to redec­o­rate neigh­bors’ homes as you please, by mov­ing stuff around.

Although I haven’t spent much time in the game, I feel like I already have beat­en it and don’t need to fin­ish it, because all of it is extreme­ly pre­dictable… And why is that? Because unfor­tu­nate­ly, I sim­ply can­not get over the fact that this game is bla­tant­ly an Ani­mal Cross­ing knock­off. A mediocre knock­off. If you’re going to knock off a game, it needs to either be on par, bet­ter, or offer some­thing vast­ly unique com­pared to the orig­i­nal game. This (so far) does NONE of that. I think I was about one hour in before my brain shut down so hard that it was a chal­lenge to keep my eyes open.

After the ini­tial play, I tried again with gus­to, deter­mined to give it a chance. Some ele­ments don’t make sense, like: the town’s may­or Rosa, a pink, suit-wear­ing pig, tells you that she (he?) does­n’t have a build­ing in town and you can’t talk to her until the build­ing is fin­ished being made. So…she just became may­or? Or just was nev­er there? Was the vil­lage cre­at­ed a few days pri­or? After wait­ing a day or two, you can vis­it her, and effec­tive­ly the may­or just allows you to either alter hous­es or build new ones for new inhab­i­tants, except you talk to the ele­phant in the cafe for new res­i­dents? Play­ing on, the slow pace of the game even­tu­al­ly takes you to the res­i­dent ento­mol­o­gist who likes bugs and gives you a net. Cool. I love col­lect­ing things. Every time you catch a new but­ter­fly, it takes an eter­ni­ty to auto­mat­i­cal­ly load the ency­clo­pe­dia list­ing for it, only to see a ter­ri­ble graph­ic of a gener­ic but­ter­fly with dif­fer­ent col­ors. I soon quit again after real­iz­ing that the game wants you to plant your own for­est in order to col­lect enough wood to make planks to progress fur­ther in the game. I’d already been skip­ping days by sleep­ing so often, that it took any sort of fun away from the game. It has bad flow.

Delv­ing into the past of the game, Robert Tat­nell (accord­ing to Wikipedia), the game’s devel­op­er, orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed the game to be much more like old-school Sim City type of games before mor­ph­ing it into some­thing akin to Ani­mal Cross­ing. Devel­op­ment start­ed in 2017, an ear­ly access released June of 2021 for Steam, and then the full ver­sion released Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Bot­tom Line: So, no, even only 2 hours into the game (I tried to pick it up again today a month after I bought it), I can­not rec­om­mend it unless you’re sim­ply dying for anoth­er game just like Ani­mal Cross­ing or have nev­er played Ani­mal Cross­ing before, or per­haps you have extra time and mon­ey to spare. If I could go back, I would not have bought it.

Game Goods

Cute, Relax­ing: There’s no deny­ing the mind numb­ing sooth­ing qual­i­ty of the game. It’s sim­ple, there are ani­mals, the graph­ics are pleas­ing, there is no killing, maim­ing, guns, or destruc­tion (unless you count felling trees or pluck­ing flow­ers). Sim­i­lar­ly, the music is lulling and not grat­ing. After a long, nasty day at work, this is a great way to just let the mind flow away, con­tent with groom­ing a small town how­ev­er you like.

Detailed: The inte­ri­ors are detailed. You can tell the hard­wood from the wood pan­el walls. There are but­ter­flies, flow­ers to be picked, earth­worms to gath­er. Time and effort cer­tain­ly went into the game.

Famil­iar Game­play: Craft­ing, build­ing, plan­ning, plant­i­ng, chop­ping, dig­ging, fish­ing, buy­ing, col­lect­ing, talk­ing, side quests… This game has every­thing a social sim­u­la­tion game fan wants.

Improve­ments: So far there are some improve­ments to Ani­mal Cross­ing itself, such as small­er grids dur­ing house dec­o­rat­ing allow­ing for fin­er fur­ni­ture place­ment

Game Gripes

Load­ing: I don’t know about oth­er game plat­forms, but the Switch’s game load­ing screen is painful. I actu­al­ly timed it. The main load­ing screen takes an abysmal 1 minute and 13 sec­onds to fin­ish, and then anoth­er 8 sec­onds to final­ly make it to the menu screen. I prob­a­bly could floss my whole mouth in that same time. Then, the auto­mat­ic load­ing screen for new­ly cap­tured bugs is also inter­rupt­ing­ly long.

The dread­ed start­up load­ing bar

Char­ac­ter Design: The graph­ics as a whole are pleas­ant. The ani­mal inhab­i­tants are cute (there’s an inex­plic­a­ble dis­dain that I have for them, though… Maybe it’s the copy­cat thing). The char­ac­ter you play, how­ev­er, is, well, ugly, imo. Some­thing about the eyes, maybe? The col­or? There isn’t much cus­tomiza­tion avail­able at all. And I have to look at them the whole time. Ugh.

Small Things: You can’t run, there’s only 1 speed. There’s no quick way to put away the tools. The game isn’t clear about whether or when it autosaves, and there’s no set Save but­ton. It’s hard to tell which house is whose… Espe­cial­ly mine which is the only one with a mail­box. The cur­sor speed for redec­o­rat­ing or plac­ing features/furniture is too fast, mak­ing it hard­er than nec­es­sary to accu­rate­ly posi­tion items. Lack of refine­ment in areas. For exam­ple: I was chas­ing a but­ter­fly and could­n’t catch it because it flew through a build­ing.

Unal­lur­ing: As I men­tioned in the review sec­tion above, I found it extreme­ly dull. I would not have bought the game if I thought I’d be wast­ing my time. It had already looked like an Ani­mal Cross­ing knock­off, and I still bought it with high hopes. Despite the decent graph­ics, some­thing about the game is sim­ply unap­peal­ing. My brain shuts off com­plete­ly. Like, go-to-sleep shut­off. It extends beyond bor­ing to an irra­tional loathing for a rea­son I can’t seem to com­pre­hend. I don’t care what the char­ac­ters are say­ing (and I total­ly under­stand how long it took some­one to come up with and write the dia­logue!) and I don’t care about them or the main char­ac­ter, at all.

Game Pro­gres­sion: The flow of the game is not smooth. Some parts work fine, but oth­ers are sim­ply too slow and mun­dane. Oth­ers feel forced. Most­ly, it was slow. Each piece of equip­ment takes too long to be unlocked. I see fish that beg to be caught, but I don’t even have a shov­el yet, kind of deal. It takes days before the next piece of equip­ment or new craft­ing recipe becomes avail­able.

Conclusion

Not gonna beat a dead horse here: I don’t like this game, and I don’t rec­om­mend it. I will, how­ev­er, because I paid for it, and also for the sake of the person(s) who like­ly poured their heart and soul into it, TRY to progress fur­ther. I will update if my thoughts change.

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.