I liked the changes to the campaign formula in this compared to the first R game, it is much longer (10 hours for me to 100%) and more robust. While the beat to beat gameplay is the typical Bomberman affair, they made the worlds interconnected in an almost open world way along with fast travel spots, but added 100 creatures per world to collect that act as the progression, allowing you to open gates. You also start each world at level 1, and by killing enemies and picking up enemies you will slowly level up gaining more bombs, faster movement speed, power ups, and more. This led to a nice sense of progression in the 3 worlds which I personally appreciated, even if there were a few questionable design choices. Bosses were cool but a bit tedious especially the ending, but I liked the direction they took this (and I still really like the cutscene art even if the story is just kind of there).

There is also a tower defense mode mixed into the campaign that’s a bit mixed, it’s cool setting up your own defenses but defending is a bit too easy with the AI being so dumb. Attacking on the other hand is annoying because you are racing against your 7 Bomber-siblings so if you mess up once it can be hard to regain your position with all the bombs going off constantly. It was an interesting wrinkle but it should have been thought out a bit more, at least it didn’t take up tons of the time.