Umihara Kawase Fresh! Review

This is one of those times where I have to disclaim that, due to time constraints, this game was not played to completion. That being said, the lack of any real story outside of the occasional scene makes playing this game for the story rather pointless. And as far as gameplay, after playing through about half the games available quests, it's pretty easy to understand the gameplay loop going on here.

You play as a young girl who comes across a town she has dreamed about since her youth, and now has decided to stay there for a while and help a local cook deliver things. That is pretty much all there is to the story, and all you get from the dialogue scenes is learning a little bit about the people who live in the area, but nothing really deep. The game is pretty much pure gameplay, so it comes down to how good that is.

From a purely technical standpoint, the game is pretty solid. It's a sidescrolling platformer with an interesting mechanic tied to your fishing pole (No, you don't actually fish in this game.) While you have basic movement and a jump button, the real mobility comes from hooking things with your lure and being able to pull yourself towards walls and platforms you hook. You can swing from ceilings, scale down cliff sides, use your fishing pole to slingshot yourself a good distance, and a few other tricks you can learn to move around.

While fun on paper, the game very quickly becomes dull as you realize every quest takes place on the same map. In theory, any quest you can run around the entire map on, since there is no time limit unless you replay a quest under Time Attack. If you are looking to make it through levels quickly, however, there is little point unless you want to explore for the fun of it. Even getting through only half the quests though see you going over areas you've already done several times, meaning you are going to be seeing a lot of the same areas over and over again.

And once you start understanding how the controls work, which I found to be a bit more frustrating than it probably should have been as nothing felt quite right in regards to timing (Though I'm thinking that had more to do with me than the game itself). Most of the game's platforming becomes a bit dull. Even if I found the controls nicer, it wouldn't too much to get much more enjoyment out of it.

You can make meals with the food you find along the way, including enemies, which can heal you and restore your hunger (Which drops slowly as the level progresses) and also gain buffs like reduced damage, increased jump ability, or increased lure range, but doesn't do anything to alleviate the tedium of the game.

The music is appropriately relaxing considering the mood the game is going for, but that's pretty much the best you can say about the games aesthetics. The visuals not only become repetitive very quickly, but nothing about the game is at all striking. It's just a visually dull experience.

I could almost recommend this game, however, since it is well made overall and there does exist some decent challenge here and there. But the problem comes down to the games forty dollar price point. That is way too much to ask for a game that has almost nothing to it in terms of game-play, story, or visuals. If the game ever sees itself at twenty dollars, and you really like platforming and replaying levels just to improve your time, it's a game worth picking up, but at the price, I just don't see the justification.