The map is a bit small and it gets kinda monotonous after a while but I'd say this is a good learning tool for beginners. Especially features like the collocations you can find by flipping cards in your album are awesome. That being said, I've been learning Japanese for almost 5 months now, and there weren't really a lot of words I didn't already know. Also, the game only teaches you nouns, and only those broadly applicable in a city setting in Japan. I'd say play this after about one month of learning and you'll get the most out of it. Finally, apart from the educational aspect, the atmosphere is really cozy and I love the implementation of irasutoya art.

Beautiful looking metroidvania, that really falls apart in the combat and movement sections.

Movement is often quite limited and clunky, but it does have the usual metroidvania abilities - dash, wall jump, etc. Your character is painfully slow, until you get one of those abilities, which helps you move about 15% faster. The decision to not re-enable double jump after wall jumping also limits whatever platforming options you have.

Combat has A LOT of variety, regarding secondary weapons, but you probably won't get to utilize them, due to the limited amount of times you can use them. And it's not like ammo shards regen after resting at a dragon statue, no no no, you need to either buy them for dirt cheap from the shop or find them in chests/enemies.

Speaking of chests, it's like a 50/50 split if you're gonna get something useful from a wooden chest (coins, area items) or something completely useless (potions that you don't use or aforementioned ammo shards). The big boy red chests are less of a gamble, but you can still get ass warts from them (secondary weapons you're never going to use).

The world is beautifully constructed and animated, there's virtually never a place where it feels empty (by metroidvania standards). However, the dungeons are a bit too large. They all have their separate unique gimmicks and that's fine, but boy is it tiring trying to re-visit those areas to get all of the chests, bugs and crystals.

On the topic of those green flying shits, I wish the map marked them (as it does with every other collectible on the map), because doing 100% exploration without a third party map is impossible. You can absolutely find them, but it's going to take hours upon hours of wall hugging, jumping down random cliffs, straining your eyes to see the littlest crumb of differing texture on a wall (which would indicate it's bombable, very nice). This is like a joint point on map clearing, but it does blow at times. I have no clue how people even found some of those secrets, they're sometimes hidden at absolute random locations, with no indicators that something is there to be blown up or passed through.

If you're going to 100% this game, the game requires you to complete it 4 separate times (for the 3 classes available and 1 NG+ mode). Complete insult of anyone's time. Speaking of that, everytime you collect a health crystal (forgot what they're called in-game, it doesn't matter), the game plays the collection animation (ala Legend of Zelda) and then plays a separate animation of the crystal going into the collection slot. Waste of time, every time. Also all of the cutscenes are unskippable. At least you could skip the credits.

The game gets the general idea of metroidvanias, but really falls apart trying to execute everything. I'd still recommend playing it, but do beware ofthe scare of being lost in the humongous dungeons.

One of the nicer benefits of writing my thoughts on Umihara Kawase is that I don't feel obligated to repeat myself when reviewing its sequels, seeing as the core gameplay usually stays the same. If you wanna know what the deal with Umihara Kawase is, then skim my review of the Super Famicom title. The review below is focused on what's unique/different in this specific entry.

The PS1 helps give this title a more defined style, and it's right up my alley. Yumi, enemies, and foreground elements look like they were sketched out in colored pencil, which gives the surreal environments the feeling of being in a high school notebook's doodles. The stages themselves take place on platforms rendered in 3D, and the gameplay has been improved just enough for me to prefer this game over the SFC one. Enemies do still randomly spawn, but it happens significantly less frequently, almost intentionally. The physics have been tweaked so that your backpack is heavier, which leads to much more reliable manipulation of the physics overall. In the SFC game, Yumi felt like a yo-yo at times. Here, she feels like a bungee cord, which I find preferable. The music exchanges the upbeat tunes of the SFC game for chill beats that make me feel like I've gone fishing. I do somewhat miss the more upbeat music from the original game though.

I just vibe completely with this game, there's no other way for me to say it. The Steam version is inexpensive and very welcoming to newcomers, thanks to how you unlock an extra continue for every 10 unique stages you clear. I didn't officially reach one of the game's ending doors until I had 30 chances to throw myself at a single level. Trust me, it's a learning experience. That being said, there's a bit of stuff that the original PS1 versions had that was gutted in future releases. Shun has legitimate advertisements for branded tea and fishing equipment. It's nothing as egregious as what we have in current day, I'm assuming that their small independent studio just did what they had to in order to keep the lights on. Shun also has vocal tracks that play at the ranking screen. It may be worth checking out those versions if you're a purist. If nothing else, do me a favor and listen to the wonderful vocal tracks, seen here and here. I've played plenty of both the PS1 and PC versions, and will certainly be back for more in the future.