Empyrean's review of Otogi Katsugeki Mameda no Bakeru: Oracle Saitarou no Sainan!! [duplicate].

Demo thoughts: When I heard there was a spiritual successor to Mystical Ninja I immediately imported this from Japan, despite not being able to understand Japanese. Whilst I waited for fans to put together a translation, the devs decided to release an English version. Thanks, I guess. Interestingly, Bakeru solves the problems of Goemon 64 whilst playing to little of its strengths. Movement and combat is fast and fluid, and the open world is swapped out for individual levels more reminiscent of Goemon’s Great Adventure or the SNES era. Sadly it’s missing the core ingredient: the incredible music and surreal humour. There’s no canned laughter or villains doing musical numbers here (at least in the demo), although the Impact stand-in IS a giant teapot which I appreciated. Bakeru seems to be a pretty standard AA platformer, which makes sense if you look at Good-Feel’s track record. I’d probably pick it up in a sale but I doubt it’ll satisfy the Goemon shaped hole in my heart.