It's such a shame that the third Jumping Flash game never got an English localisation. It's such a treat for PS1 fans. What Tekken 3 and Ridge Racer Type 4 were to their predecessors, Robbit mon Dieu is to the first two Jumping Flashes; a real technical marvel, built with complete confidence in how to best present a PlayStation game. The in-engine cutscenes here are overflowing with charm, with fantastic character designs and even better utilisation of texture-based facial animation than Mega Man Legends. We've got your cardboard box tokusatsu squads, your mischevious frog girls, your flowerpotman gardeners, your smoking hawaiian shirt guys with full-head crocodile masks. Robbit mon Dieu is it, fellas.
To the best of my understanding, Robbit mon Dieu places Robbit on an island full of citizens, each with different requests for him. You have a big map to select different requests from before launching into a level. While Jumping Flash 1 and 2 kind of shrugged its shoulders at the concept of cohesive level design, Robbit mon Dieu actually gives it a little consideration. The different requests bring with them levels that are designed purposefully. There's obstacle courses, boss fights, traditional item-finding sandboxes, dungeons and combat-heavy gauntlets among others. This is definitely the most varied Jumping Flash game, for better and worse.
There's short, easy little levels that leave little impact. There's also full-on nineties scrambles full of impossible jumps, nightmarish obstacles and incredibly juddery controls. Thankfully, there's also a lot of middleground where you're just having fun in this gorgeous, ambitious Jumping Flash game that nobody else has even heard of.
Newcomers who have been playing the series for the first time will be thankful to hear that Robbit mon Dieu does support the Dualshock controller. They will likely be very upset to discover this only means it's got rumble now. You're still jumping around these chaotic 3D worlds entirely with the d-pad. Going from Splatoon 3 to Robbit mon Dieu is like being told your bed has been thrown out and you're going to sleep on a rock tonight. If you've got enough PS1 in your veins, you can weather through it and even find some charm in its rudimentary approach to concepts like "aiming" and "strafing", but this is NO BABY GAME.
Not being a Japanese speaker or reader, there's so much that went over my head. For all I know, there's probably an "enable gyro" option buried somewhere in the deep, dense menus. It's a real shame, because there's so much energy and care put into the cutscenes and voice acting. I'm sure that carries through to all the written epilogues after each level too. All I could follow was when someone said "tasukete" or "onee-chan". If any of those PS1 fantranslation folk are sitting around with their thumbs in their arse, I would really appreciate it if they helped out the twenty English-only idiots who cared about Jumping Flash 3.
If you're a big Jumping Flash fan, Robbit mon Dieu is a must play. That's your curse. You have to get through every agonising moment of the level where-you-have-to-shoot-the-birds-circling-the-towers-but-your-shots-don't-reach-some-of-them-from-any-point-on-the-towers-so-you-have-to-set-your-aim-and-jump-and-fire-a-couple-of-shots-for-the-two-seconds-they're-in-range-and-do-that-five-times-without-falling-off-because-then-you'll-have-to-climb-up-from-the-bottom-again. I'm very sorry.
To the best of my understanding, Robbit mon Dieu places Robbit on an island full of citizens, each with different requests for him. You have a big map to select different requests from before launching into a level. While Jumping Flash 1 and 2 kind of shrugged its shoulders at the concept of cohesive level design, Robbit mon Dieu actually gives it a little consideration. The different requests bring with them levels that are designed purposefully. There's obstacle courses, boss fights, traditional item-finding sandboxes, dungeons and combat-heavy gauntlets among others. This is definitely the most varied Jumping Flash game, for better and worse.
There's short, easy little levels that leave little impact. There's also full-on nineties scrambles full of impossible jumps, nightmarish obstacles and incredibly juddery controls. Thankfully, there's also a lot of middleground where you're just having fun in this gorgeous, ambitious Jumping Flash game that nobody else has even heard of.
Newcomers who have been playing the series for the first time will be thankful to hear that Robbit mon Dieu does support the Dualshock controller. They will likely be very upset to discover this only means it's got rumble now. You're still jumping around these chaotic 3D worlds entirely with the d-pad. Going from Splatoon 3 to Robbit mon Dieu is like being told your bed has been thrown out and you're going to sleep on a rock tonight. If you've got enough PS1 in your veins, you can weather through it and even find some charm in its rudimentary approach to concepts like "aiming" and "strafing", but this is NO BABY GAME.
Not being a Japanese speaker or reader, there's so much that went over my head. For all I know, there's probably an "enable gyro" option buried somewhere in the deep, dense menus. It's a real shame, because there's so much energy and care put into the cutscenes and voice acting. I'm sure that carries through to all the written epilogues after each level too. All I could follow was when someone said "tasukete" or "onee-chan". If any of those PS1 fantranslation folk are sitting around with their thumbs in their arse, I would really appreciate it if they helped out the twenty English-only idiots who cared about Jumping Flash 3.
If you're a big Jumping Flash fan, Robbit mon Dieu is a must play. That's your curse. You have to get through every agonising moment of the level where-you-have-to-shoot-the-birds-circling-the-towers-but-your-shots-don't-reach-some-of-them-from-any-point-on-the-towers-so-you-have-to-set-your-aim-and-jump-and-fire-a-couple-of-shots-for-the-two-seconds-they're-in-range-and-do-that-five-times-without-falling-off-because-then-you'll-have-to-climb-up-from-the-bottom-again. I'm very sorry.