There's so much loot and the gains you get by upgrading weapons with them feel minimal to the point it's easy to just overlook it entirely. The shallowness caused by removing jumping is 'balanced' by a guard and dash move (which you always have to spam to move quickly around the gigantic maps), there's no fast travel for at least the first few hours? The feeling of being 'stuck to the ground' and my eyes glued to the minimap reminds me of the worst bits of games like Zwei 2. The weapon type system is bizarre and annoying, constantly breaking the flow of fighting. More fun than Ys 8, but you can slowly feel the series losing its identity here. Makes me pine a bit for this era of Nintendo games, where around 40 people would make a short and unique game. I wonder what she's up to now! Seems like she didn't do any games after this, unfortunately, although the studio, indieszero, did go on to make some cool games (electroplankton, sennen kazoku). In some ways, the 2nd playthrough of the game can be seen as trying to 'mix' this inaccessible world of the Monpi with that of the humans.įinally, this game was directed by Noriko Miura, older sister of famous manga artist Sakura Momoko. They're not the focus of the game, but they give this simple depth of fantasy to the game's atmosphere that's appreciated. Like a lush jungle, or a mountain range with no humans, or a desert that was once an ocean. They're quite quirky and represent maybe a relation to the lives of inanimate objects? There's some 'lore' to the world of Uki-Uki regarding these natural ecosystems outside the borders of the town you never visit. the game features a lot of "Monpi", these monster/object humanoids. finding hidden links, solving quizzes), so I'm curious about that. The 2nd playthrough involves a lot more puzzles relating to the webpages (e.g. Or to receive e-mails or BBS requests from people. in each of the 8 towns you need to answer a 5-question quiz about the town in order to get the golden star - which can be kind of cute at first but eventually feels repetitive), and there start to be a lack of any interesting item puzzles, but for the most part it's a strong game, and it's fun to just poke around and read the webpages. Some repetition does set in by the end (e.g. Dagashi stores, shoe stores, libraries, tailors, fireworks, bakeries, etc.Īnyways I love the scope of the game - the first playthrough took me about 8-10 hours, which is a reasonable length. I loved the little stores and shops - you can't buy stuff, but you get a sense of the types of places in a 70s-90s-inspired japan. Since every NPC is named and has a unique design, it's actually manageable to faintly remember each person's job or role. People even have little blogs, so you get a sense of their humor, quirks, personality in a rich but succinctly stated way.Įvery NPC in the game (about 70 in the first playthrough, and about 50 more in the 2nd) can be invited to the carnival - sometimes through just speaking to them, or by doing other things first (often bringing an item, or clearing some other condition). there's a minigame where you need to cook a dessert, so you need to do some reasoning to find a recipe for it in the game's internet).Įxploring characters' home pages is pretty fun - they link to each other's, so you can see who's friends with who. To get the stars you need to give them their desired offerings (a red hat, a laptop, etc), and finding those items is the meat of the gameplay.įinding the items involves meeting shopkeepers, doing simple minigames or tasks, and exploring the townsfolk's home pages, sometimes looking for clues on who to give what item, or how to do something (e.g. In order to have the carnival, the town needs a lot of power, so it needs 8 stars - which you have to get from the dieties at each of the 8 towns' shrines. You live in a place called Color town - which is a 3x3 grid of different villages, with separate themes: "Old Japan", "Modern Japan", "Future", Desert, Downtown, Jungle, etc. Overall this is a pretty brilliant and personable feeling children's adventure game. There's a lot of extra story stuff in the 2nd playthrough, so I want to do that at some point.
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