Ganbare Goemon: Kuru Nara Koi! Ayashige Ikka no Kuroi Kage
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_-_01.jpg) Yep, Goemon's Great Adventure came out the same day as this shoddy game, you already know what game should buy instead.
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Ganbare Goemon: Kuru Nara Koi! Ayashige Ikka no Kuroi Kage (がんばれゴエモン～来るなら恋! 綾繁一家の黒い影～) is a Ganbare Goemon game released for the PlayStation on December 23, 1998. It was released alongside Goemon's Great Adventure for the Nintendo 64. It was the second game in the series released for the PlayStation and also the second game in 3D, following Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon.
Plot
One day, Goemon wakes up to someone calling his name, but the noise is so loud that he gets up and yells at them.
However, it is Omi-chan who has come to wake him up, and he is upset by Goemon's attitude. To appease Omi-chan, Goemon and Ebisumaru go to Heppokoyama to gather acorns, but Ebisumaru collapses after eating some mushrooms on the mountain.
A doctor who calls himself "Yabu" appears and treats Ebisumaru, and he is saved.
When he returns to town with the acorns and thanks Yabu for his help, Omi-chan is taken away by a mysterious trio who claim to be errand boys for the "Ayashige Family", and Ayashige's giant robot appears.
Thus begins Goemon and his friends' battle to rescue Omi-chan.
Bad Qualities
- To start with, this game is a massive downgrade from Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon in every ways, in which that game was a masterpiece, howewer this game is the contrary of that game since the platforming and gameplay is completely downgraded, more details will be given below.
- The graphics in comparison to the N64 games are quite poor even for a 1998 PS1 game since the textures are extremely poor and are often glitchy, and the characters models are way worse than the N64 games.
- The characters designs by the way are very poorly done, as while some of them are passable (such as Goemon and Omitsu), some others characters such as Yae are poorly translated to 3D and look very uncanny, which is weird because in the first Mystical Ninja, her model/design was perfectly translated to 3D, but for some reason here it didn't.
- The colors are also overly satured, since they doesn't look quite as colorful as in the N64 games or the SNES games and instead just look like the colors got run over by a car, in fact it is almost as bad if not worst than the satured color palette in the GBA port of Donkey Kong Country.
- The controls, while responsive, are very stiff in comparison to Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon and is a huge downgrade from that game, not to mention that it is not as fun to use as in the previous games and the controls are not tight enough, which could cause the player to get cheap deaths at times.
- The dedicated impact driver is poorly made and not well executed, and overall just feel rushed.
- This game not only features the traditional Goemon Impact, but also each of the other characters' special Impacts, but as usual, these are also very lackluster.
- The design of "Yae Impact," which is based on Yae transforming into a mermaid is not bad but it can be disturbing for some peoples.
- "Sasuke Impact" also has a monster-like face with its mouth wide open and fangs bared . It is said to be based on the nose art of a fighter jet, but Sasuke is not a character with that kind of image.
- "Ebisumaru Impact" is also a mediocre product, but since Ebisumaru himself is a comical gag character, it is still better than the other two.
- The Goemon Impact itself is set to be "an ugly design that bears no resemblance to Goemon," so if you think that the designs of each Impact follow that setting, it's not so strange.
- Also, the Ebisumaru and Sasuke Impacts are set to be "made reluctantly by the old man" and "made out of necessity," respectively, so it's possible to see them as haphazard designs, but even so, they couldn't have been made into something a little more decent-looking.
- Each special Impact also has the ability to transform and combine to become an enhanced part of the Goemon Impact, but the crucial combination scenes are also very poorly done.
- The depiction of the transformation process is extremely haphazard, with parts that are not necessary for the fusion spawning and flying off the screen.
- The sight of the heads and arms of the evil-looking Sasuke Impact and Yae Impact flying off is now completely horror-like.
- A similar depiction to this film appears in the later robot anime "Gaiking: LEGEND OF DAIKU-MARYU" during a combination scene, but in that scene there is a clear reason for the excess parts to appear, whereas in Impact there is no such setting or direction to it, so it is understandable that it would be seen as a cutting corner.
- The camera is terrible, often being placed at horrible spots and because of this, you will get a lot of cheap deaths and the camera doesn't help the fact that the controls are also poor and it can be a real nightmare to play at times because of this, thank to how poor the programming for this game is.
- In comparison to the previous games, the level design is very uninspired and bland, and sometime even had terrible level design because sometime it had cheap platforms placements or even the obstacles that are poorly placed.
- Not to mention that the levels where not adapted to the camera style of view, meaning that it can be even worse and could cause a lot of troubles for playing this well enough, thank to this bad game design.
- There's way too much backtraking even when compared to Mystical Ninja, for exemple, some of the first stages require to be played 4 times, or even at another level where you need 12 items to progress through the game but you can only had 3 at once, so you need to exit the stage, and after you did give back those items, you need to get in that stage 3 more times, which is incredibly tedious and is just padding, adding more reasons as why the level design in this game suck.
- The gameplay quickly become boring because the levels are very empty and uninspired as stated before, and the game isn't so fast-paced like the previous games, even Mystical Ninja on the N64 released one year before was more fast-paced and was way more fun to play than this game.
- Most of the levels of this game is spent simply progressing through a 3D space sparsely populated with enemies.
- The stage structure is too bland. All you can do is go through the plains where the enemies are, or cross the horizontally moving platforms.
- The terrain is monotonous, and there are almost no undulations on the ground. The only stage gimmick is the moving platforms. Therefore, there is almost no need for elaborate actions, and you will feel bored within an hour of starting.
- The stage structure is too bland. All you can do is go through the plains where the enemies are, or cross the horizontally moving platforms.
- Since there are stages prepared that take into account the characteristics of each character - "Ebisumaru of the Earth," "Sasuke of the Sky," and "Yae of the Sea" - it would have been possible to give them variety by giving them appropriate abilities, such as an acrobatic stage for Sasuke where he uses flying techniques to move across high platforms, and a stage for Yae where she traverses the water by transforming into a mermaid, but no they didn't.
- Most of the levels of this game is spent simply progressing through a 3D space sparsely populated with enemies.
- The enemies are incredibly annoying and much more painful to deal with than in the SNES games, as not only they had ton of healths but also they had many other flaws.
- The enemies healths are so big that you can't defeat them unless you keep hitting them for about a minute in the initial state. We're not talking about "mid-boss class enemies." We're talking about every enemies.
- Since they are weak enemies, you can defeat them without getting hurt once you get used to them. On the other hand, this means that if you try to defeat them properly, you will be forced to do tedious work.
- In this game, there are weak and strong attacks, as well as combos and special moves that make use of them, but even with strong attacks, you have to land several combos to kill a single weak enemy, although weak attacks are not so bad in this game.
- The enemies healths are so big that you can't defeat them unless you keep hitting them for about a minute in the initial state. We're not talking about "mid-boss class enemies." We're talking about every enemies.
- The cutscenes animation are also terrible even for it's time and is very rough looking, as the animation move in a robotic manner and it overall aged very poorly.
- In the scenes where the giant robot appears, there is no background, just a blank gradient.
- Other cutscenes scenes are also rather sloppy, with Ebisumaru standing straight at an unnatural angle.
- The scene in which a trio of minor characters appear has a generally poor pacing, with them deliberately flying off one by one when the robot they are riding on explodes and is blown away.
- The plot is just downright catastrophic and is almost as bad if not even worse than the plot of the Game Boy version of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, as it start with Goemon yelling because of someone who wake up him, in which it turned out being Omitsu that had wake up him, in which she hurt and scold Goemon, when the former didn't even know it was her, and he now had to offer something to her so that she pardon him, which is just out of character even when compared to the SNES games.
- Even though Yabu hasn't done anything particularly bad, Goemon suddenly starts scolding him.
- He is in a rather pitiful position, as the drug he created sells like hotcakes and ends up turning the boss of this game (his wife and child) into a miser. During the development stage, he was also a villain, so perhaps this is a remnant of that.
- The scene where one of the final bosses has a change of heart is played like a comedy scene. Moreover, that character is completely ignored until the end of the game.
- Even though Yabu hasn't done anything particularly bad, Goemon suddenly starts scolding him.
- Item specifications are very annoying znd a mixed bag.
- The recovery item "dango" does not recover when obtained as in previous games, but instead requires you to open the pause menu with the start button each time you want to use it.
- Although you can recover at any time, there is almost no benefit to choosing the timing. The advantage of this is that it can be accumulated even when your stamina is at its maximum, but when you're not, it can become extremely annoying.
- The game is very short, as it can be completed in only 4 hours, in comparison to Mystical Ninja on N64 which can be finished in 6/7 hours.
- Overall, this game had ton of good potential to be a great game but due to the poor story and the fact that the game is simply not solid enough make it one of the weakest Goemon game ever release.
Good Qualities
- The idea of a linear Goemon 3D platformer was a good idea, just not executed very well due to not having the gameplay of the first Mystical Ninja.
- The idea of having combos in a Goemon game was also a good idea and the combat is actually well executed but too bad, this game execution is not great.
- The soundtrack is still incredibly good, and had lot of catchy musics, even if it isn't as good as the previous games.
- The voice acting is still great as usual.
- While the plot isn't very good, there was at least a few good ideas.
- The story development itself - "Goemon and Impact are rendered unable to fight, the remaining three play the main roles, and then they join forces at the end to take on the final battle" - is a pattern that has never been seen before, and if it had been portrayed well, it would have been a different, more exciting development, so it's a shame that the story structure and jokes are so poor.
- The personalities of the enemy characters, such as the enemy leader who tries to buy up all of Japan using money, are also characteristic of the Goemon series.
- The final boss, while still frustrating, is actually quite epic.
- The intro is still amazing and had great animation, as well as having an amazing tune to listen to, also the characters are perfectly introduced.
Reception
Ganbare Goemon: Kuru Nara Koi! Ayashige Ikka no Kuroi Kage received mixed to negative reviews by critics and fans, and is considered to be the weakest 3D game in the franchise, it was criticized for it's graphics, it's plot and in fact this game was also said to be the downfall of the Goemon franchise, howewer thankfully it was not true because there was still a lot of good games after this one.
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