Yes, it's the Redial song game.

This is now Bomberman's second attempt at being a 3D platformer and he honestly did a pretty good job at it. Compared to Bomberman 64 this game feels a whole lot more similar to something like Rayman 2 or Mario 64 where it's more based on tight platforming and fast-paced combat about throwing bombs unlike how Bomberman 64 felt more like a compilation of weird diorama stages more based on a specific puzzle. It also isn't 3 hours long like Bomberman 64 and it is around 6-7 hours if you take your time making it the longest Bomberman game to date maybe with Super Bomberman 5 being close to it.

This game has a whole lot of stages, short stages, around 60 stages actually with 5 worlds in total. They are usually straightforward and just require you to get to the end of a platforming section or sometimes ask you to find key items to open a door and move on in a small area. Each stage contains multiple exits which sometimes skip some levels and I honestly can't tell if that's useful at all I don't feel any type of freedom it just makes the stage a bit more confusing for nothing.
But hey, it's a platformer right it surely has collectables and a fun 100% completion playthrough, right? Nope, it sucks! In each stage, you can collect gems to gain a total score for each stage and the goal is to get a specific score to get the best medal so if you want all score medals you'll have to kill every enemy in a stage and find all of the useless crystals, that not fun. At the end of each world, you get a global medal combining all of your scores and gives you a medal based on it, do mind that for each world medal, you can get a red, blue, bronze, silver, and gold medal but only the gold medal matters SO WHY BOTHER GIVING YOU SOMETHING THAT DOESNT DO ANYTHING! Anyway, 3 gold unlocks a shitty slider minigame, 6 gold unlocks a shitty treasure hunt quest where you go back to old stages to find treasure with a really cool reward of nothing you just wasted your time, and finally, the good reward for 5 gold a secret 6th world based on Bomberman GB3, now this is a good reward. It's based on the Owen world from Bomberman GB3 and you even fight Evil Bomber! that's really awesome, too bad it's stuck behind a wall of utter garbage. And I even forgot to mention the Adok Bomb which looks like a purple orb, you need to collect all 24 of them to access the 6th world making it even more a chore to get there.

About the stages, they are usually hit or miss, some are a chore to get through but others can be chill, I personally never bothered with the scoring system so I just rushed each stage to get to the end as quickly as possible and I thought it was the most enjoyable way to play this game.
The boss fights were ok for the most part but far from fun, especially the Nitros fights, these suck. Actually, you know what's worse? The final world is a boss refight, this is probably my least favorite trope in video game worlds, but to their credit, they changed the boss fight to make them different but making them worse wasn't what I wanted.

Other than the gameplay the game looks decent, definitely an upgrade from Bomberman 64, and especially in the soundtrack department gosh this soundtrack goes hard! But only for the first two hours because you realize there's only a total of like 4 songs that loops over and over, really good songs but they do get old over time.

But overall I thought it was a fine 3D platformer and worth a quick playthrough. I did has issue with framerate at times like the game constantly felt really slow, I can't tell if it was coming from the emulation or the game itself.

Reviewed on May 01, 2023


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