Bop Louie, a humble hero. Where his Japanese counterpart takes the glory of the "Hebe"reke series, Bop relinquishes the title to the sheer joy that comes from the trusted group of four. Even within the saga itself, an experience in a genre which demands traversal, while Bop Louie may command the speediest playstyle, most relevant abilities are signature to the others. Bop Louie will never morph into the whirling machine of powers and chaos that so many other protagonists in this space delve into. He looks temptation in the eye and responds "No, I say to you. My friends are my strength, and without them I am no better than the very monsters I seek to overcome".

Shades, despite drawing on motifs associated with confident characters of the time period, lacks this sheer willpower. A fragile ego, Bop Louie sugarcoats his abilities as "you can jump very high" despite Shades' athletics being focused on travelling farther, a necessary concession to give to a friend incapable of acting without appearing the most talented in the room. Even with such insecurities, a second side to Shades shines through when using his secret attack, a cartoonish slapstick move in which he draws strength by exposing his true face to the world. This struggle to be taken seriously, even when most wouldn't mind either way, is eternally relatable, and perhaps alludes to some of Sunsoft's own catalog. For what illuminates this conflict better than Trip World's grandiose opening of two puffballs fighting over a flower, only to follow this up with a middling Kirby effigy? And yet, Shades persists in both the Japanese and European versions of the saga, a global superstar loved by all except himself.

Gil, another constant to each retelling of this experience, has remained not out of love but out of indifference. An aquatic denizen with an unflattering image, they fit in both Hebereke's esoteric cutesiness and Ufouria's cartoony coolness, but are at home in neither. Tossed around unceremoniously through rip currents, their boons of fast travel to the team will never be recognized. But Gil never loses sight of themself, even in their most lonely hour. For when there is a task to be done, shouldering the burden for the rest of the team is enough.

Freeon Leon. A name powerful enough to persist well beyond the scope of the world of Ufouria. A trailblazer who challenges frigid wastes and stormy seas without a hint of fear. Much has been said of her declaration to the world, "im freeon leon". But can you even comprehend what it means to stake ones claim in such a mighty existence? To feel every ton of weight that Freeon Leon handles during her legendary journey? Well, there is only one way to possibly perceive the breadth that legacy.

And that is to submerge yourself in true ufouria.

This is a really good game, but the usual description you'll see everywhere 'Picross meets Ace Attorney' is not true.
The detective part of the gameplay is minimal and only serves for the plot. You are going to do the usual detective work, like finding inconsistencies in alibis or searching crime scenes, but there's no challenge and only serves the plot.
The game is picross with a story all the way, so if you like picross you're gonna love it.
The story is nice, although the final case was a bit anticlimactic, but the characters are all fun. The soundtrack is amazing! Contender for best ost in recent years.
The content is also pretty rich. There are extra picross puzzles independent from the story. A 100% completion is close to 25 hours.
Lovely game if you like picross. If you don't but you only want to play it for the detective work look somewhere else.

Game with a relatable story about going back to your hometown in adulthood and it REALLY sucks, not because anything's changed with the cute old map-shop couple living across the street, or the curry special at the local diner, but because you've had cinder blocks tied to your feet causing you to walk at a glacial pace, and your good old friend Fujita hasn't gotten into conspiracy theories or MLMs, but building space-time exporation devices he insists you to check 'the vibrations out'. He breaks you into a power plant, you meet aliens, and things get worse from there.

The game itself is mainly walking (slowly) around the surprisingly detailed and realistic-feeling town with your shitty car, the fastest bus system in the world, and trains. You can check e-mails to get a sense of who to meet or when, but sometimes these people want to meet you at nighttime and you can only pass time by walking around, or sitting on a couch (for one hour at a time: and up to two hours max.)

The minimal interactions and weirdly detailed spaces with their bespoke toilet rooms and random characters stick around in your mind afterwards. I think that's the game's strong suit - all you can really do is talk to or kill people, but that combined with your relative helplessness in combat make you even wary to walk around a hospital, since some characters will just assault you based on your in-game state.

Well, I didn't stick around for more than 3-4 hours to really see what could happen or pan out beyond a few in-game days, but it's a unique game. There IS technically a goal to do (pursuing the mystery of the game,) but it feels equally valid to just barely follow the plot and wander the huge city and enjoy the wonderfully-modeled spaces. It feels Crypt Underworld-like - the game doesn't really progress the story a lot of times outside of moments you really have to hunt for, so it kinda feels like walking in and out of bizarre, city-life vignettes.

In a game that is supposedly about player choices influencing the direction of the story, not being allowed to stop your teammate from continually abusing the literal cutest Digimon in the franchise made me genuinely upset, and the only thing I could find solace in was the fact that the gameplay and writing in the game weren't great anyways, so at the very least it wasn't souring an actually good game. There is a NG+ exclusive "true" route that you are expected to play after going through the initial routes, but I have zero interest in skipping through the game again 3 more times just to see what other non-choices I am allowed to make when I would much rather just do another route of Devil Survivor Overclocked instead.

(2/15/24 update: My thoughts are about the same, I just reworded a bit and added a lot more now that I've sunk a bunch of time into this game.)

What a nice game! I finally played this recently after being curious about it for quite a while. It's a "definitive" version of a Super Famicom game under the same title. I can't comment on differences as I haven't played the original, but the core gameplay seems to be the same. It's hard to find info on either, as almost every mention of these games is by Mother fans due to the fact it's Shigesato Itoi's game.

This game is surprisingly complex for what it is! You got your usual lures, time of day/weather, et cetera. but the game also goes into detail on hard lures vs soft lures (worms), the two main types of rods, types of lines, bass migration and spawning patterns...too much to list out here. The manual included an extremely wordy fishing terms dictionary as well. If you pause while on the field, there's a little help section with an octopus explaining the basics while the titular man himself goes more in depth. You can catch fish besides bass, but they're just referred to as outliers and you don't seem to actually get anything for them.

Visaully, the game is about your usual N64 3D, but every character is in 2D. Simple designs, but very cute! The character designs are by Norio Hikone and his wife, and most are redesigns of the various animals used for the SFC's promotional material/boxart. (Kuma-san, the bear, is the same.)

SFC boxart vs N64 boxart

You get to talk to the various animals meet throughout the game. Before you head out for the day, you get to choose who'll join you as company. There's a little icon at the top of whoever you bring, and they'll have both visual and audio cues based on whatever is going on, such as if your line tension is too high. If nothing bites your line for a bit, they'll give you some pointers on how to try and attract more fish. They also make comments on the size of your catch, or if you fumbled a fish.

Some of the animals will also give you challenges you can take on, asking you to catch a certain amount of specific sizes of bass. You can get special lures, such as the old promotional ones for the first game, to different locations if you win a challenge. If you don't take on a challenge for the day, you can challenge whoever's out and about to a fishing contest. If you win, they'll give you info on how to obtain a treasure.
Each character has their own unique way of talking and are fairly fleshed out personality wise, considering this is a silly fishing game. They all also have unique sprites based on how well you're doing in a challenge/contest.

The music of the game is nice! I'm not sure how exactly to describe it, but it's very cozy. You get a few various themes depending on the day and where you're fishing. The music stops when you throw out a line, which makes sense but is a little sad. There's nature noises throughout your entire day as well.

I think the only real flaw this game has is the difficulty system. You get your usual easy (labeled "beginner"), standard, hard difficulties. The easiest means you can cast farther + fish bite your line more often, but the sizes of your fish are typically smaller, making some of the later challenges frustratingly difficult. So much for making things easy! While it's not impossible to catch bigger fish, it's noticably less often. Beginner also makes some mechanics null, such as not needing to worry about appeal vs natural color.


Overall, I think the game is fantastic and very cozy. It reminds me a lot of going fishing with my dad as a kid. :) I hope it gets a playable fan translation one day! It's a bit too wordy to go in without any Japanese knowledge. The only reason this rating isn't a solid 5 stars is because of the difficulty thing.

Thanks for reading!

~~~

Unrelated to the actual review: There was a special controller released for this game known as the Tsurikon 64! (lit. fishing + controller) Mother Forever did a nice, short write-up on it.
There was also a self-interview with Itoi and some of the devs at both DICE and HAL Laboratory which goes into the making of the game, competing with other fishing games, and making the game's mechanics. whowasphone404 on Gamefaqs translated the entire thing alongside the game's manual.

There was also an animated commercial for the first game.

Haven't been playing games lately (reading books.. and to some extent still recovering from the sprint of IGF judging) but I didn't have anything written down for Golden Sun. I was looking over the guidebook to Golden Sun at my parents' place last year and I was reminded of what an approachable JRPG series this was for kids! But that aside, what I want to draw attention to is more how much I like (and still like) the field psynergy mechanics. The puzzles are only lightly challenging, but they lend a richness to the world: dungeons aren't just defined by treasure boxes and monsters, but they're physical places with rules and ways to manipulate the environment. Sure, the ways this is expressed is through simple puzzles, but it's still a neat idea that I thought was tied together really well and exciting to discover. The small plant? You can grow it! A secret passage might be there if you cast reveal! Move things around to hop over passages. I would love to see more of this kind of inventiveness on the field in narrative-focused RPGs.