PROs:
✅ Enjoyable art style and direction
✅ Catchy music
✅ Metroidvania-style progression with ability and upgrade unlocks
✅ NPC hint system if you get stuck
✅ Extra stories: Various challenge modes and alternative NPC-perspective stories (I only did Risky and Friends ones, as those seemed the most interesting)
✅ Extra story – Friends to the End: Puzzle/platforming sequences that were fairly enjoyable for the most part
✅ Extra story – Pirate Queen’s Quest: Gameplay feels much more fluid and dynamic, with great upgrades/power-ups that make re-running levels much better than in the base game
✅ Straightforward, light-hearted characters and story with some silly jokes
CONs:
❌ Some technical issues
❌ Single volume slider
❌ Long-winded retries (quite tedious to re-run platforming areas if you mess up, and boss fights can be ultra challenging if you enter the arena with half a heart and no food)
❌ The whole consumables + mana/ability system in a metroidvania feels unnecessary (a better core mana system would have been enough)
❌ Annoying “Flappy Bird” section
❌ Re-running levels in the base game becomes rather tedious, since every time you unlock a new ability you have to re-run all levels
❌ Extra story – Friends to the End: The mana/XP system is pretty bad
Comments:
Most of this is already covered in the pros and cons, but in short: it’s a light-hearted metroidvania-style game with cute visuals and a fairly enjoyable gameplay loop. The main issue for me is that the transformation process becomes very tedious at a certain point, especially if you go for a 100% run. Each time you unlock a new mechanic, you essentially have to re-run the whole game. With three pages of rotating transformation screens, it slows things down even more, so by the time I finished the main story I was pretty burnt out on the game.
Because of that, I decided to do only two extra campaigns. “Friends to the End” is a solid puzzle-solving story, but the mana/XP system is horrible. Shared health but individual XP that you lose when getting hit was just tedious, so at some point I gave up on trying to keep levels maxed.
The second story I played was “Pirate Queen’s Quest”, which was honestly much more enjoyable than the base game. It’s dynamic, fast-paced, and punchy, and the platforming tools/upgrades you get make re-runs feel much faster and more satisfying. The upgrades make you noticeably more powerful, which makes the final boss fights fast and fun and makes level re-runs feel great. Story-wise it’s obviously nothing special – basically a bit of pirate queen “mommy” fanservice, I guess.
The main technical issues can be fixed with this Steam guide, which explains how to get proper resolution with 60 FPS and correct game speed: STEAM GUIDE
🟢Total score: 7/10 👍
Game status:
✅ Finished
Reviewing info: How I review/rate & other info is on my website, linked through my profile (“desozone”).