I happened to be lucky enough to find a physical Limited Run copy of Narita Boy at my local game store. Was it worth the $60 I paid for it? Sadly, no. BUT THAT BEING SAID…I still really enjoyed this game. When I wasn’t confused by its lackluster Metroidvania-like progression and infuriating combat system, I was awed by its insanely dope artstyle and animations, banger soundtrack, and lore that made me feel like a kid discovering an all-expansive world again. Studio Koba clearly put a lot of love into the Digital Kingdom of Narita Boy, so I hope if they get around to making a sequel, they can improve upon what they’ve made here and produce a kickass game. I truly believe that if they spruce up the combat and exploration, “Narita Boy 2” could become one of the indie greats. I almost feel bad for rating it as “low” as I did, but hey, 3 stars is above-average in my eyes.
Pros:
- I didn’t expect myself to get as immersed in the lore and world of Narita Boy as I did. The basic plot is that the Creator (a game developer) loses his memories to an evil sentient program in the game he designed, and you, as Narita Boy, must travel throughout the Digital Kingdom (the game world) to defeat the Stallions (hostile programs) and reassemble the Creator’s memories. The kicker here is that all of the NPCs that you meet in the Digital Kingdom are fully aware that they are in a simulated environment, and have taken to studying its source code in a techno-religious fashion. That’s just objectively awesome. Like, maybe I’m easily entertained, but like, c’mon.
- All the residents of the Digital Kingdom worship the ‘Trichroma’ and venerate the ‘Motherboard’ (who is your quest-giver by the way) and have little dialogue quirks like speaking in code (like, JavaScript type code) when they’re on the verge of death or referring to each other as ‘instances’. NPCs from different locations have different ways of looking at the source code and will mention areas that the player may or may not get to see. It really made me feel like this world was much larger than it actually is, in the same way that the book Ready Player One does. I ADORED it.
- The actual progression of the story is nice too. Most of it is your standard action hero journey stuff, but Narita Boy leans into it a lot so it never feels cheap. You also get to view the Creator’s memories that you find, and they tell an admittedly emotional story, though nothing super life-changing or anything. It definitely made me speculate a lot on his relation to his creation.
- The artstyle of this game is utterly fucking spectacular. It’s the artstyle of classic retro side scrollers, but what you saw in your imagination while you played them rather than what was actually on screen. It’s vibrant and has that hazy, dreamlike feel of CRT computer screens (with the rounded corners on the display to boot!). And the animation is just buttery smooth, it is genuinely so impressive.
- The clean style of the combat animations is probably one of the only good things I can say about that system. The attacks themselves look amazing; they have this weighty but smooth animation that works great with all the enemy death animations and makes you feel like you’re cutting through bamboo like a samurai. You’ve also got a shotgun that shoots laser beams and that’s just sick. Animation is what made the combat tolerable (see cons for everything else about the combat).
- And the soundtrack? Certified slapper. Salvinsky (the composer) walked into the studio and wrote nothing but Ws. Take chiptune EDM and vaporwave and put it in a blender, then add a bit of rock guitar, choral arrangements, and corny retro theme songs and you’ve got the Narita Boy soundtrack. I beg of you, PLEASE give this a listen. Stallion Threat, Techno-Sword, Narita Boy Theme, and Saving the World all go so hard.
- Now, because I really don’t like the combat of this game, I didn’t find many of the boss fights all that good. Some were just ‘fine’, and one I’ll mention in the cons section is soul-suckingly agonzing. But there were a few I actually really liked: Black Rainbow, Hex, White Noise, and the final boss fight were all very enjoyable, partly because the soundtracks of the same name were also great (listen to those too!). All the boss fights (and all the enemies for that matter) are also animated insanely well and that increases the fun as well. It’s no coincidence that these fights are also the fights where I felt like I had multiple options to approach them from.
- A minor praise here, but I liked the end credits sequence. The music was great and the art team made detailed pixel arts that (presumably) depict some of the developers and fans interacting with Narita Boy.
Cons:
- While I did praise the story, I will admit that a good portion of the lore is told to the player via large text boxes. There certainly is some environmental storytelling but it’s hard to discern with the pixel graphics at times. The dense dialogue in this game is made worse by the fact that most NPCs can only be spoken to once, meaning if you forgot what they said you’re out of luck. Naturally this can have dire consequences on your ability to progress.
- Exploration can also use some work. While I found a lot of the environments really aesthetically pleasing to walk through, Narita Boy is very linear and has a lot of areas that amount to little more than pretty loading screens while you walk to the next area. There is also no ability to backtrack into a House (kind of like levels) once you’ve left, meaning if you miss one of the four floppy disc collectibles to unlock a bonus Creator’s memory—oops, time to play the whole game again.
- Conceptually, I like that the game put you in a lot of situations where you would be wise to start picking up a pen and paper and writing down tips. I think it’s meant to invoke an era before online guides, where the rumors you heard on the playground at school meant getting an edge in your game. That’s being said, it just does not work here. Writing down codes for portals is fine I guess, but not having reference tools like an enemy bestiary or even a map is brutal. I constantly forgot the strategy to beat certain enemies and just had to rely on trial and error to defeat them, which with this game’s combat, made the experience a lot worse.
- Okay, I’m not going to hold back on the combat system. It is just not good. First, while all the abilities look really nice, a lot of them are really useless. The shoulder bash is just a dash with pitiful damage, and there’s no reason to use it over actually dashing and attacking. The downstab (a ground pound) is also basically useless and is more likely to get you killed since you lose all forward momentum when you do it.
- The summons and wildfires are a different breed of redundant. ONE summon is useful and a good game mechanic. THREE of them that ALL DO THE SAME THING just from different sides of the screen is pointless. There were exactly ZERO situations where the side of the screen the attack came from mattered.
- Wildfires (buffs that increase damage to enemies that match the wildfire color you have) are even more useless. Not only do they take time to activate (which can get you killed), but all three do the exact same thing. See an enemy with a yellow fire animation over their head, you use yellow wildfire. See one with blue fire? Blue wildfire. Red? You guessed it. This truthfully isn’t that bad until later in the game. This square-peg-square-hole-ass combat system gets even worse when there are multiple enemies with different wildfire types, and you need to dedicate a whole button press (that FREEZES YOU IN PLACE DAMMIT) to “un-wildfire”. Why you can’t just immediately switch from one type to the other is beyond me.
- What I’m about to say next might be a skill issue, but I’ll die on this hill. While enemies in this game get stronger, and encounters get longer, I never felt like I as a player got stronger. You never get a longer health bar, you never get a higher shotgun ammo capacity, and you never get more Trichroma energy (used for summons and health regen). Most of the abilities you get like the aforementioned shoulder bash, summons, downstab, and wildfire didn’t have much application in combat, save for the enemies where shoulder bashing their guard is literally the only way to defeat them.
- Mini-rant time but the train segment and the Glove bossfight can go to hell. That part of the game is so hard for absolutely no reason. Clown me all you want but that was just way too brutal. Like five different encounters before you got to an autosave point, meaning if you died you had to do it all again. That brute enemy with the big shield you can only bait into a vulnerable stance by dodging through him sent me back too many times. And the Glove is actually harder than the final boss. I’m really glad that the final boss fight was really enjoyable, because if the Glove was the final boss I would have rated this game even lower.
- One final thing about the combat: I think it would have been a better idea to allow players to use the D-pad (on console at least, I don’t know what PC controls are like) to control movement and combat. Directional controls aren’t as enjoyable using a stick since it's easier to mess them up.
- Okay, now I’m done with the combat. Sorry if that sounded a little toxic; I tried my best to stay objective while still being entertaining. One small nitpick left: I wish the button prompts were in pixel art style instead of being rendered as vector graphics. It would have fit the atmosphere better. Also, this isn’t really a con but when this game warns you about photosensitive epilepsy, heed its warning because DAMN there are a lot of flashing lights.
Objective rating: 3 stars
Subjective rating: 4 stars
Pros:
- I didn’t expect myself to get as immersed in the lore and world of Narita Boy as I did. The basic plot is that the Creator (a game developer) loses his memories to an evil sentient program in the game he designed, and you, as Narita Boy, must travel throughout the Digital Kingdom (the game world) to defeat the Stallions (hostile programs) and reassemble the Creator’s memories. The kicker here is that all of the NPCs that you meet in the Digital Kingdom are fully aware that they are in a simulated environment, and have taken to studying its source code in a techno-religious fashion. That’s just objectively awesome. Like, maybe I’m easily entertained, but like, c’mon.
- All the residents of the Digital Kingdom worship the ‘Trichroma’ and venerate the ‘Motherboard’ (who is your quest-giver by the way) and have little dialogue quirks like speaking in code (like, JavaScript type code) when they’re on the verge of death or referring to each other as ‘instances’. NPCs from different locations have different ways of looking at the source code and will mention areas that the player may or may not get to see. It really made me feel like this world was much larger than it actually is, in the same way that the book Ready Player One does. I ADORED it.
- The actual progression of the story is nice too. Most of it is your standard action hero journey stuff, but Narita Boy leans into it a lot so it never feels cheap. You also get to view the Creator’s memories that you find, and they tell an admittedly emotional story, though nothing super life-changing or anything. It definitely made me speculate a lot on his relation to his creation.
- The artstyle of this game is utterly fucking spectacular. It’s the artstyle of classic retro side scrollers, but what you saw in your imagination while you played them rather than what was actually on screen. It’s vibrant and has that hazy, dreamlike feel of CRT computer screens (with the rounded corners on the display to boot!). And the animation is just buttery smooth, it is genuinely so impressive.
- The clean style of the combat animations is probably one of the only good things I can say about that system. The attacks themselves look amazing; they have this weighty but smooth animation that works great with all the enemy death animations and makes you feel like you’re cutting through bamboo like a samurai. You’ve also got a shotgun that shoots laser beams and that’s just sick. Animation is what made the combat tolerable (see cons for everything else about the combat).
- And the soundtrack? Certified slapper. Salvinsky (the composer) walked into the studio and wrote nothing but Ws. Take chiptune EDM and vaporwave and put it in a blender, then add a bit of rock guitar, choral arrangements, and corny retro theme songs and you’ve got the Narita Boy soundtrack. I beg of you, PLEASE give this a listen. Stallion Threat, Techno-Sword, Narita Boy Theme, and Saving the World all go so hard.
- Now, because I really don’t like the combat of this game, I didn’t find many of the boss fights all that good. Some were just ‘fine’, and one I’ll mention in the cons section is soul-suckingly agonzing. But there were a few I actually really liked: Black Rainbow, Hex, White Noise, and the final boss fight were all very enjoyable, partly because the soundtracks of the same name were also great (listen to those too!). All the boss fights (and all the enemies for that matter) are also animated insanely well and that increases the fun as well. It’s no coincidence that these fights are also the fights where I felt like I had multiple options to approach them from.
- A minor praise here, but I liked the end credits sequence. The music was great and the art team made detailed pixel arts that (presumably) depict some of the developers and fans interacting with Narita Boy.
Cons:
- While I did praise the story, I will admit that a good portion of the lore is told to the player via large text boxes. There certainly is some environmental storytelling but it’s hard to discern with the pixel graphics at times. The dense dialogue in this game is made worse by the fact that most NPCs can only be spoken to once, meaning if you forgot what they said you’re out of luck. Naturally this can have dire consequences on your ability to progress.
- Exploration can also use some work. While I found a lot of the environments really aesthetically pleasing to walk through, Narita Boy is very linear and has a lot of areas that amount to little more than pretty loading screens while you walk to the next area. There is also no ability to backtrack into a House (kind of like levels) once you’ve left, meaning if you miss one of the four floppy disc collectibles to unlock a bonus Creator’s memory—oops, time to play the whole game again.
- Conceptually, I like that the game put you in a lot of situations where you would be wise to start picking up a pen and paper and writing down tips. I think it’s meant to invoke an era before online guides, where the rumors you heard on the playground at school meant getting an edge in your game. That’s being said, it just does not work here. Writing down codes for portals is fine I guess, but not having reference tools like an enemy bestiary or even a map is brutal. I constantly forgot the strategy to beat certain enemies and just had to rely on trial and error to defeat them, which with this game’s combat, made the experience a lot worse.
- Okay, I’m not going to hold back on the combat system. It is just not good. First, while all the abilities look really nice, a lot of them are really useless. The shoulder bash is just a dash with pitiful damage, and there’s no reason to use it over actually dashing and attacking. The downstab (a ground pound) is also basically useless and is more likely to get you killed since you lose all forward momentum when you do it.
- The summons and wildfires are a different breed of redundant. ONE summon is useful and a good game mechanic. THREE of them that ALL DO THE SAME THING just from different sides of the screen is pointless. There were exactly ZERO situations where the side of the screen the attack came from mattered.
- Wildfires (buffs that increase damage to enemies that match the wildfire color you have) are even more useless. Not only do they take time to activate (which can get you killed), but all three do the exact same thing. See an enemy with a yellow fire animation over their head, you use yellow wildfire. See one with blue fire? Blue wildfire. Red? You guessed it. This truthfully isn’t that bad until later in the game. This square-peg-square-hole-ass combat system gets even worse when there are multiple enemies with different wildfire types, and you need to dedicate a whole button press (that FREEZES YOU IN PLACE DAMMIT) to “un-wildfire”. Why you can’t just immediately switch from one type to the other is beyond me.
- What I’m about to say next might be a skill issue, but I’ll die on this hill. While enemies in this game get stronger, and encounters get longer, I never felt like I as a player got stronger. You never get a longer health bar, you never get a higher shotgun ammo capacity, and you never get more Trichroma energy (used for summons and health regen). Most of the abilities you get like the aforementioned shoulder bash, summons, downstab, and wildfire didn’t have much application in combat, save for the enemies where shoulder bashing their guard is literally the only way to defeat them.
- Mini-rant time but the train segment and the Glove bossfight can go to hell. That part of the game is so hard for absolutely no reason. Clown me all you want but that was just way too brutal. Like five different encounters before you got to an autosave point, meaning if you died you had to do it all again. That brute enemy with the big shield you can only bait into a vulnerable stance by dodging through him sent me back too many times. And the Glove is actually harder than the final boss. I’m really glad that the final boss fight was really enjoyable, because if the Glove was the final boss I would have rated this game even lower.
- One final thing about the combat: I think it would have been a better idea to allow players to use the D-pad (on console at least, I don’t know what PC controls are like) to control movement and combat. Directional controls aren’t as enjoyable using a stick since it's easier to mess them up.
- Okay, now I’m done with the combat. Sorry if that sounded a little toxic; I tried my best to stay objective while still being entertaining. One small nitpick left: I wish the button prompts were in pixel art style instead of being rendered as vector graphics. It would have fit the atmosphere better. Also, this isn’t really a con but when this game warns you about photosensitive epilepsy, heed its warning because DAMN there are a lot of flashing lights.
Objective rating: 3 stars
Subjective rating: 4 stars
3 Comments
Two things!
First of all, I saw the game on sale on the Switch eShop and it sounded familiar so I decided to read up on reviews and I think this was super helpful in informing my choice! (basically, "if there's nothing else i feel like getting then sure")
Secondly, I also got curious on where I first heard the game from and after doing some digging using keywords on my watch history, would chromerot's 15 Underrated Indie Games video by chance be the one you're looking for?
First of all, I saw the game on sale on the Switch eShop and it sounded familiar so I decided to read up on reviews and I think this was super helpful in informing my choice! (basically, "if there's nothing else i feel like getting then sure")
Secondly, I also got curious on where I first heard the game from and after doing some digging using keywords on my watch history, would chromerot's 15 Underrated Indie Games video by chance be the one you're looking for?
@bluverrii I'm glad you found my review helpful! As for the video, I think you might be right with chromerot's video. I don't remember watching this (though it's been in my watch later for a while), but I did have the video liked already when I looked at it, so I might have just watched part of it and forgot about it. I appreciate you giving me a little closure lol
MeisterPear
8 months ago