Tag: Review

Game Review — Deiland: Pocket Planet (Switch)

writ­ten 7/06/2022

Dei­land: Pock­et Plan­et, released April 15, 2021, for Switch by devel­op­er CHIBIG, is an adventure/simulation/RPG remade from Dei­land which released for PS4 and Steam in 2018, which was also a remake from the orig­i­nal Dei­land: Tiny Plan­et which was released for iOS and Android in 2016. Pock­et Plan­et is a farm­ing adven­ture on plan­et Dei­land where the pro­tag­o­nist, Arco, is the sole inhab­i­tant. The young boy must care for the minor plan­et through farm­ing, craft­ing, build­ing, fish­ing, min­ing, and pro­tect its heart crys­tal from mon­sters and those who seek to use the pow­er for them­selves.

Rat­ing: 2.8 out of 5

Price: Paid $8.16 out of MSRP $19.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: No

One Word Descrip­tion: Bor­ing

  • Pros: Throw­back to Sum­mer in Mara (if you played that first), good initial/basic game­play, smooth begin­ning advance­ment
  • Cons: Time, ran­dom events, RNG mining/drops, wait­ing, lack of clar­i­ty, bor­ing, fish­ing mechan­ics, fight­ing mechan­ics, minor glitch­es, pun­ish­ing hunger meter, lack of pause fea­ture

Game Review

The begin­ning of the game shows a young boy drift­ing down to a small plan­et. All he has ini­tial­ly is a tent and you get to run around a lit­tle to see that the plan­et is a sphere that rotates (kind of like Mario Galaxy) as you move. This made my ini­tial­ly wor­ried that I might get motion sick­ness because I’m real­ly bad about that, but I found that the more I plant­ed trees, the less I noticed the move­ment. Imme­di­ate­ly, a space trav­el­er appears, intro­duc­ing her­self as Mun from the inter­stel­lar troop­ers. I was excit­ed because hav­ing played Sum­mer in Mara first, I antic­i­pat­ed see­ing char­ac­ters I rec­og­nized. She gives you recipes and quests to start you off. The begin­ning smooth­ly push­es you into the building/farming aspect. I was busy plant­i­ng trees as I saw fit, their place­ment lim­it­ed by water sup­ply which required mate­ri­als. Build­ing new con­structs unlocks fur­ther recipes. Min­ing is heav­i­ly ran­dom in what is mined. You could get rocks, or gold/silver ore, or crys­tals, or in the win­ter, ice. New characters/merchants arrive, and you have 30 sec­onds to decide where to land the space­ship before they give up and go away. Then, when they land, they only stay for about 60 sec­onds.

After the ini­tial excite­ment of plac­ing trees, build­ing, upgrad­ing tools, etc, came the frus­tra­tion that would plague the rest of the game: ran­dom chance and time.

Every­thing is ran­dom, which isn’t ini­tial­ly bad until it is.

  • The fish­ing mechan­ics are just mud­dy and plain obnox­ious and espe­cial­ly in the begin­ning I kept wast­ing the pre­cious bait from hit­ting the wrong but­tons which are com­plete­ly ran­dom.
  • The arrival of vis­it­ing char­ac­ters does­n’t seem to fol­low any par­tic­u­lar order unless it’s to sat­is­fy a dia­logue quest. Giv­en that the quests and gath­er­ing of items spe­cif­ic to each character/merchant are depen­dent upon their vis­its, this gives a sense of help­less­ness to the play­er. There are only 2 char­ac­ters able to be called to the plan­et on demand and even then, they won’t come if cer­tain vari­ables are not in line such as storms, or anoth­er char­ac­ter is there, or some­times I have no clue why they won’t come.
  • The min­ing mechan­ics are just ter­ri­ble. Com­plete­ly ran­dom rate of drops which is super frus­trat­ing if you need a par­tic­u­lar min­er­al. There is a min­ing cave in the game where Arco can mine for crys­tals and then uncov­er some­thing in the back of the cave. To do so, you are allowed 4 mines before the cart is full and now you have to wait for Goliath to ran­dom­ly come so that it can be emp­tied, and you can fur­ther mine. (*spoil­er* it’s the crys­tal heart and adds noth­ing to the game and has no pur­pose)
  • Mete­orites or items will ran­dom­ly fall on the plan­et regard­less of what you’re doing. You could be fish­ing where it strange­ly changes the view, or even sleep­ing. If it hits your plants, they will burn
  • Ene­mies ran­dom­ly spawn. The num­ber ranges from 1–3 and what appears is ran­dom, too. Their drop rates can also be ran­dom depend­ing on the ene­my. For instance, you need insect wings for a quest, but the bees can drop either hon­ey or wings.

Time’s flow was an issue for me. It is unclear how the game tells time because there’s no clock show­ing, just the sky will change col­ors sort of. Each sea­son lasts for 7 days with win­ter being the worst because very few things grow and it’s just bor­ing to wait it out. Sleep­ing only advances time some­what and even stand­ing still did­n’t seem to advance time much, either. Oth­er times, time appears to move too quick­ly, and I’ve lost the oppor­tu­ni­ty to plant a par­tic­u­lar crop that is nec­es­sary for a quest, or that character/merchant has already left the plan­et. Towards the end of the game, there’s noth­ing left to do except wait for time to advance and it became unbe­liev­ably bor­ing. Also, time nev­er stopped. There was no pause fea­ture at all. I’d have to hit the Switch’s Home but­ton to pause.

The sto­ry advances via the main quest line through Mun. Sim­i­lar to Sum­mer in Mara the game is heav­i­ly quest depen­dent. Each com­plet­ed quest will unlock new items to buy from the mer­chants. It was real­ly nice to see Brram from Sum­mer in Mara and see his sto­ry when he’s clear­ly old­er (even at one point try­ing to woo females on his plan­et). Not only was his music nice, but he had the fish bait and food nec­es­sary to sat­is­fy the hunger meter. Even­tu­al­ly, the sto­ry allows move­ment to Anko­ra which was nice because final­ly, some oth­er place than the tiny lit­tle Dei­land. Final­ly, the end boss bat­tle shows up and the game is over unless the play­er wish­es to com­plete­ly fin­ish out the side quests.

The RPG ele­ment — the lev­el up sys­tem — seems com­plete­ly use­less with some­what appre­cia­ble upgrades to sta­mi­na, strength, intel­li­gence, and agili­ty. How­ev­er, the illus­tra­tions are eye-pleas­ing.

That brings me to the fight­ing mechan­ics. Well, it’s prim­i­tive, and many times phys­i­cal attacks would miss the ene­my alto­geth­er if Arco was juu­u­ust turned the wrong direc­tion. There seemed to be a best weapon to use against each ene­my, but I end­ed up either just whack­ing them to death or using mag­ic. Fire mag­ic would burn all of my plants or chick­ens, the light­ning did­n’t seem to work well on the mon­sters I tried, the ice spell seemed use­less because it encased the ene­my in ice but then made them impos­si­ble to hit. The frog spell was prob­a­bly the fun­ni­est one, but I received that too late in the game to real­ly take advan­tage of it. Heal­ing was hard because the heal­ing potions are set all the way at the bot­tom of the item list and since paus­ing is not an option, I was killed a few times try­ing to use a heal­ing potion. The game is by no means, hard, though. Heal­ing was only nec­es­sary for the last boss and the demon mon­ster that dropped horns. Speak­ing of the last boss, that bat­tle was plain obnox­ious. There was lit­er­al­ly no way to get out unscathed and you had to direct Mun to fire oth­er­wise she would­n’t.

The lack of clar­i­ty was frus­trat­ing. I turned to the inter­net a LOT in this game. How does the mine cart get emp­tied? How to get sheep­’s wool? Where is the plant­mu­tate seed? How does one get dan­de­lions? Who the hell is Bom and why do I keep hav­ing food stolen? How to get chick­en for Goliath (OMG you have to BURN the wild chick­ens????)? There’s just too much that’s not obvi­ous or explained. I can’t imag­ine try­ing to play this game before the inter­net made it easy to look things up.

Over­all — I, unfor­tu­nate­ly, do not rec­om­mend it. If you played Sum­mer in Mara it could go either way, but I’d still like­ly tell you to skip it. The game does flesh out Mun and Brram a bit, and does men­tion the pirate races and Ereti, so if that’s what you’re look­ing for, go for it, but def­i­nite­ly don’t pay full price. Ulti­mate­ly, its flaws out­weigh the sim­plis­tic charm of the game (name­ly, time pro­gres­sion and ran­dom chance) and it’s almost like the devel­op­ers want­ed to make a game that has a lit­tle bit of every­thing. I under­stand that it’s 6 years old and was orig­i­nal­ly a mobile game. I mean, it cer­tain­ly plays like a mobile game hop­ing to push micro­trans­ac­tions. Regard­less, I felt like I wast­ed my life play­ing this (took me 2 full days) game that left the taste of BOOOOORING (I even texted that I was bored out of my mind to my broth­er while wait­ing for the rest of the char­ac­ters to vis­it so I could 100% the side quests) in my mouth, which is not how I feel about Sum­mer in Mara, and don’t wish that on some­one else.

Glitch­es

Thank­ful­ly, there weren’t too many glitch­es in this game, but here are 2 that I found, both late in the game.

When try­ing to land in Anko­ra

Attempt­ing to put a track­er on Goliath’s ship. Mun, who isn’t there at all would appear. Lat­er, when she was on the plan­et and tried to talk to her, the dia­logue that Goliath would have spo­ken pops up instead.

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.