Goemon was a beloved, long running, series of games that spanned across almost all consoles; it has been almost two decades since the last one was released. The titles were always known for being less serious than traditional adventure games, but still maintaining solid gameplay at its core. With the last title released in the United States being from 1998, the question remains if the title will still be able to find an audience after its rather noticeable absence.
The story has the player take control of the titular character Bakeru as he is dragged through all of Japan on a quest to stop evil festivals from occurring. Along the way he will encounter numerous other heroes who can’t be bothered to assist, so instead they loan him their power via means of transformation. Many of these mainly take the form of new movement or exploration options, but stop short of being a Metroidvania backtracking title.
You can watch our stream of Bakeru below:
While Bakeru is a spiritual successor to Goemon, the title very clearly made as a labor of love and fondness for everything that title was. The game mirrors the feel of the previous titles enough that if it was stated the title character, Bakeru, was Goemon’s son and this was just a continuation of the series that statement would just be accepted.
Bakeru is an interesting game as it starts off as a level-based 3D platformer much like Mario Odyssey. After a handful of stages, it has a habit of throwing in other kinds of levels as well; from Mario Kart type races, to an odd shoot’em up, or battling enemies while racing a boat, Bakeru isn’t afraid to throw things at the wall. The best part of all of that, is that so much sticks. At first the sudden change in genre might feel odd, but so much love was clearly put into the game that it all fits.
The game is more about the experience of playing levels instead of the difficulty of the challenges. Players are very mildly punished for deaths, only losing a handful of coins, and powerups are purchasable at the beginning of every stage and are extremely useful and inexpensive. If one is to go for the 100% of each level there is still some trials, as every stage has several collectables that are pretty well hidden throughout.
While most people might not think much of Bakeru on first glance, that is their loss. This game itself should be held in the same regard as many of the newer Mario titles that Nintendo has released—and this game has more personality as well. Bakeru is a wonderful title that anyone with a Nintendo Switch or PC able to run it should own. This game is basically a smile wrapped in an easily downloadable package.
RATING
SCORE - 9
9
SCORE
The spiritual successor to Goemon is a quality action platformer.
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