Tag: Review

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.

Game Review: Windbound (Switch)

Windbound by Koch Media is a survival action/adventure game released on the Switch and other game platforms August 2020. You control Kara, a survivor of a calamity on her solo journey to find answers and survive her island world.

Rating: 2.25 out of 5

Price: Paid $14.72 out of MSRP $29.99

Recommended: No

One Word Description: Frustrating

  • Pros: Survival elements, Wind Waker style of playing (if you like that), crafting system, pleasing graphics, music not overbearing or annoying
  • Cons: Battle system, repetitive, slowness, several irritating elements, debilitating lack of storage, wind-dependent sailing, whole-level-repeat upon death

I was very excited about playing this game when I first bought it. Not only did the graphics look good, the survival elements were intriguing, and a female protagonist? Bring it! I chose the easiest difficulty which would allow me to keep all of my items upon death and hit Start. The game began well enough with an intro that wasn’t too long, and soon you were thrown onto an obvious tutorial-area. The tutorial popups weren’t too pushy and I went about gathering things and trying out the moves. I LOVE gathering things! Kara put together her little boat made from grass and sticks and off I went with an oar to navigate different islands. As you gather and find new materials, new recipes unlock, forming a collection element that keeps you gathering. With each new chapter, you find better materials and monsters, allowing you to, naturally, craft better quality items and upgrades including weapons, tools, and boats. In this game, there time-related degradation such as hunger bar, food spoilage, and breaking weapons. Not my favorite thing to contend with, but it is a survival game after all.

As the game progressed, I was able to outfit my boat with a sail and experience probably the most damning part of the game for me: Sailing. At first it wasn’t so bad because I’d loved the heck out of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Windbound reminded me of the beloved game. However, frustration soon became the name of the game. I don’t know if it was bad luck or what, but simply EVERY SINGLE TIME I departed one island for another, the wind was blowing the exact opposite direction. Initially not a big deal because I figure it’s just my bad luck, but it occurred without fail and even when I decided to utilize the wind direction to head back to a previously visited island, the wind changed dramatically halfway through the trek. Aaaand again with the ridiculously slow and cumbersome traverse. Some parts of Wind Waker are like that simply because you would soon find something to make life easier, but I’ve made it to Chapter 4 and there is still nothing. You can upgrade your sail with the increasingly better quality materials which does increase speed, but it doesn’t help much when the wind refuses to cooperate.

Now to address the fighting system. I found this to be extremely clunky. Kara can dodge, attack, jump, target, and run. Weapons so far include the unbreakable knife, spears, slings, and bow/arrow. Eventually, you will find abilities that allow you to parry, roll and attack, and charge-lunge. However, the only one I was able to use properly without unfailing injury was the dodge and attack. Battles with large monsters or bosses end up being boring strafe -> dodge -> attack battles. The worst part, though, is that even if you dodge and attack, the hit only lands every 3rd or 4th time as the enemy will dodge your attacks. Trying a slingshot or arrow is entirely too slow/weak and easily ends with your injury. Parry never worked for me, ever, and lunge means you will get hurt and likely miss anyways. And in the high chance that you get hit by the enemy because there’s a slowness about Kara (or is it lag?) you’ll mostly likely not just get hit once, but 2, 3, or 4 times in a row because when Kara falls over, she takes an eternity to get up but is blessed with zero invincibility in the time that you have no control over her movements. The only nice thing is that you can pause the game by opening up the food pouch and using life restoring items. That is, if you have enough room for them or you have any.

Overall, the item gathering and degradation are perfectly fine and works well. You can use the degraded food items as ingredients for different potions. The biggest gripe here, though, is the fact that there are way more items than there is space for. Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal to dump some things because the game keeps every single item in the place you dropped it no matter where you travel on the map, but remember the aggravating sailing? I definitely do not want to waste my time traveling back for sticks or thick grass, so I just did without them. You can set up either a bucket or another bag on your boat to hold excess items, but even with that, there is not enough room for the stuff you need. Do you keep materials to make a new weapon, or to make a fire, or healing items? Most of the time, I ended up having not enough healing items (the hunger bar degrades quickly, considering the time it takes the travel between islands) to make room for my weapons, necessary tools, and defense items, as well as rare animal parts. The cherry on top here, is that the meat that you need to make healing items from is only randomly dropped by enemies. You can go an entire island killing small animals and not get a single piece of meat.

Then there were little things that annoyed the heck out of me, like the stupid little movement Kara does whenever she stands up: brushing off her knees. It was kind of endearing at first, but then it just got plain obnoxious because she does it, every single time. It’s a major time waster when you’ve got 8 monsters to mine for meat (hopefully), a declining hunger meter, and a large monster lurking nearby. Then, there was trying to put protective cladding on the boat to prevent damage. If I placed a deck on the boat, I’d have to dismantle that and the mast FIRST, and then place the cladding and then redo the deck and mast. It’s a completely unnecessary action and a major time waster. Yet another is the boat deck itself: it adds a large square space on the boat and one would naturally assume that, yessss, the extra space will now allow placement of more than one boat extra (fire, bag, bucket, chest), but nope. No expansion. Completely useless. That lone element of adding more storage space would have encouraged me continue to play the game despite the obnoxious sailing.

For whatever reason (I’m going to assume you learn this at the end of the game), each chapter is completely randomly generated. When you die, no matter where you are in the chapter, you must repeat it. Yes. Stupid winds, unexplained purple blobs, and all. Again. Without any clue as to where anything is on the map anymore. It also SAVES the game automatically, too, which then begs the question, why give a manual “save game” function to begin with? Randomly generated is not that big a deal aside from the do-over frustration, but here’s where the quality control people didn’t do a good job: some of the items you can find on each map (stat upgrades, sea shards. Optional, though highly encouraged) can only be accessed via certain tools or abilities that you might not even have yet and wouldn’t get until later, after that chapter. In my very first randomly generated map, I found some upgrade that I could not access because I didn’t have a glider. That glider wasn’t able to be crafted as I needed monster parts that belonged to something only found in the next chapter. What? Then why put it in there?! After some online searching, the steam forum members found some underwater item that you get indicators for on the map when you sail (just like Wind Waker), but, again, you can’t access it until you get some ability that apparently some people never even were offered in the course of their games.

The repetition. In each chapter, you must figure out how to climb 3 towers on 3 different islands somewhere on the map. Then you sail to the northernmost part of the map where each of those lit up towers opens stairs to a boss. You beat the boss, step through the portal, and then you have to ride your boat through the exact same tunnel sequence, though each time you have to avoid different obstacles before reaching the portal to the next chapter. It’s too long. It’s extremely boring. You already have to sail too much during each chapter and then they make you do it again. Ugh. The first go round was fine, but…yeah. Sigh.

I did not finish it. I finished level 3 and started into 4 and that was it for me. No more. The good news is that 1 year after release the game developers made the Chapter 3 boss fight a ton easier. Reading through the Steam forum was enough to make me want to stop even before reaching that boss fight (apparently it was not only impossible, but you’d have to start the entire chapter again when you inevitably died), but I wanted to give it a try out of pure curiosity. The fight ended up being laughably easy and boosted my hopes for a better experience in the next portion of the game since they did fix that part. Unfortunately, Chapter 4’s first island was not only surrounded by rocks and only had one entrance (meaning more dumb sailing against wind), but the lack of storage space made it 100% impossible for me to continue. Not only were the new monsters too difficult given the equipment available up until that point, but there were just too many new materials and…INSUFFICIENT SPACE. My tools broke and I had nothing with me to make new ones. I required the new materials PLUS the old ones which weren’t readily available, and even if there were, then the monsters were too hard and I was already almost dead. Hopeless. Done. No more, thanks.

Overall: It almost seemed like someone enjoyed Wind Waker and wanted to create a similar game but with survival elements. The beginning was fun, enjoying the simple premise of survival, sailing, and a vague, mysterious storyline. Then it just got frustrating. VERY frustrating. I would not recommend it and feel like I wasted a good chunk of my life and money. It’s saddening, because I feel like a little polish or quality game testing would have uncovered the little issues and made it more playable. Like, add a wind control element, or a motor, or just make the wind nicer. Oh you’re trying to go north? Let me change the wind a little to help you. Thank you, game! And definitely add more storage space on the boat. Fixing those 2 game-breaking components alone would have made up for all the other annoyances of the game. It’s a shame, really.