Bakeru (NS) - Review

by Evan Norris , posted on 04 September 2024 / 1,853 Views

The last 30 days have been great for Spike Chunsoft and for English localization. Just last month, the publisher released an English version of Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid, almost a year after it debuted for Japanese audiences. A combination of life simulation and action-adventure elements, it's a nostalgic, immersive journey through the eyes of a child at the turn of the century. And this week, the company launched Bakeru in western territories, roughly nine months after it first appeared in Japan. Developed by Good-Feel and inspired in part by the Goemon franchise, it's another feather in the Spike Chunsoft cap.

Bakeru takes place in a fantasy version of Japan, where fairy tale heroes actually exist. On a dark, stormy night, the magical tanuki Bakeru, who can adopt a human form, rescues Sun, a diminutive sprite of the Issun clan. Sun explains that a mysterious being named Oracle Saitaro is using a bizarre festival and hundreds of troops to take over all of Japan; and that the hero Momotaro has been brainwashed. Soon, Bakeru and Sun are off to bring Momotaro back to his senses and stop the sinister festival in its tracks.

The narrative in Bakeru is perfectly fine. In-keeping with 3D platformer tradition, it's neither deep nor suspenseful, but rather reliable, safe, and silly. There are some funny one-liners, some amusing reactions here and there, and even a genuinely heartfelt moment in the final frames, but nothing out of the ordinary.

While the story is merely satisfactory, almost everything else about Bakeru is unusually good, at times even brilliant. That all starts with the Haradaiko drum, the main weapon in the game. It takes some getting used to — you use the left and right bumpers to attack instead of face buttons or triggers — but once you get over the initial hump it becomes an extension of Bakeru's body. You can alternate left and right attacks to home in on enemies and perform combos; or press the left and right bumpers together for a double hit; or charge both to strike the ground with a powerful blast and take out multiple enemies from a distance. You can also execute perfect dodges to perform stylish counter attacks anduse the base of the drum to guard and repel enemy attacks. As a result, there's a fluidly and intensity to the action that's often missing in most games from the genre.

Later on in the game, you'll discover Henge powers that transform you into different forms, which multiply the offensive abilities available to you even further. You can become a short-range bruiser, a long-range fencer, or a dancing projectile weapon artist. While these forms are a bit overpowered, they contribute substantially to what is an unexpectedly nuanced fighting framework. Now, no one would ever mistake Bakeru for Kratos, Dante, or Bayonetta, but the combat in the game is surprisingly engaging, effective, and addictive. In the end, Bakeru is as much a great brawler as it is an outstanding platformer.

And an outstanding platformer it is — one of the best in years, in fact. What makes it so effective? The level designs. Bakeru doesn't have many acrobatic tools at his disposal — he can really only jump and manipulate his environment with the Haradaiko drum — but the inventive, unexpected, diverse stages he encounters more than make up for it. Throughout his journey across Japan, he'll encounter sandy beaches, verdant mikan groves, cruise ships, undersea resorts, ancient temples, fiery furnaces, hot springs, etc. He'll move across conveyor belts, climb through shipping containers, leap across moving boats, ride a roller coaster, escape from rising lava, swim up water jets, and rotate entire buildings.

And that just covers the "traditional" stages. Interspersed among the typical platforming areas are special events, including isometric auto-scrolling stages, in the style of Super Mario 3D World; racing and shoot-'em-up episodes, and several quasi-auto-running levels, including an especially memorable one across the Eshima Ohashi Bridge.

But that's not all. There are also a handful of giant robot fights, a clear callback to Goemon. In these larger-than-life battles, you'll pilot a skyscraper-sized mech and slug it out with hulking bosses, including an onigiri with Gatling guns and a daikon radish defense system. Overall, Bakeru demonstrates platforming creativity and ingenuity approximating the Super Mario series, which is just about the highest praise a 3D platformer could hope to receive.

Because the game features so many stages and events — 63, to be precise — it takes quite a while to complete. If you rushed through everything, you could probably watch the credits roll in 10-12 hours. If, however, you hunt for all hidden goodies, you can expect to spend roughly 20 hours in the fairy-tale version of Japan. Each stage contains three secret souvenirs and five pieces of trivia, which are absolutely worth pursuing and often hidden in clever, unseen places. In addition, there are over a dozen tanuki hidden throughout the land, which will push your Where's Waldo skills to the limit.

These aren't merely collectibles, however. All the souvenirs you collect and each friendly tanuki you rescue will make their way to your ship, which doubles as a fast-travel device and a home hub world of sorts. You can retreat to this hub at any time after you unlock it (about one-third through the game) to admire your trophies, chat with your friends, and spend hard-earned coins to buy masks and upgrade the vessel. It's not something you'd expect in a stage-based 3D-platformer, and it ends up pulling everything together and making the adventure feel more tangible and real.

The game's vibrant art direction also contributes to feeling of realness. Bakeru operates in that ideal middle ground between stylized and detailed, delivering a fantasy world that's both magical and grounded in reality. It's just lovely. The models and assets have a weight and chunkiness to them. The color palette, which plays around with neon purples and yellows, is striking. And lots of little details — graffiti spray-painted on walls, ghostly wisps of mist in the mountains, the way Bakeru slides over icy surfaces — bring everything to life. The only visual problem relates to the storyboard cut-scenes that arrive between stages. These are flat, static portraits of characters which lack the energy that defines the rest of the production.

As for music, the high-tempo, bouncy themes, heavy on traditional Japanese instruments, help drive the action forward — even if some are repeated too often.

When it comes to performance, Bakeru is mostly reliable. However, in crowded areas when the action gets too busy or hectic, the frame rate will drop considerably. These events are relatively rare, but quite frustrating when they happen. Hopefully Good-Feel and Spike Chunsoft will collaborate on a patch to maintain a stable 30 FPS moving forward.

Speaking of Spike Chunsoft, it really has had an exceptional 30 days. Last month the publisher brought the world the near-great Natsu-Mon, and now it's delivered an even better experience in Bakeru. Thanks to engaging combat, impressive level variety, rewarding exploration, an immersive hub area, and vibrant art, it's one of the very best games of 2024. The story isn't anything special and frame rate issues cause some frustration here and there, but these are relatively inconsequential problems in such a joyful, entertaining, inventive adventure.