Grapple Force Rena

holy crap now THIS is how you do a retro tribute plus it has "fairy". what's not to like

Filler arcs are good sometimes, & this is a good filler arc

I feel like the first world is a lot of fun, the second sucks, and it's a crapshoot whether any given level after that is any fun. There were times when I was just sighing as I had to work with yet another thing that is more annoying than fun to interact with. Also, there's very little enemy variety, and it there's a lot of cut scenes without much to say. This isn't terrible, but it's middling at best. If Steam let me enter a "meh" rather than a thumbs up or down, I think I would have picked that, but if a friend was saying they were considering playing this, I'd point them elsewhere, so thumbs down it is.

this game is pretty well made, it has a clunk to it thought, the clunk is the understanding and limitation to the gameplay which is designed as so to create the gameplay mechanics elements. it's a great clunk. some people like smooth games, but if you look at the speedrunning based games. they mostly have a mechanical based based clunk to them, a clunk that you have to get use to and understand/ utilize to master the games playstyle. the music is juicy, the pixel graphics is juicy. the gameplay mechanics are also juicy. this game is triple juiced. it's straight jamba juice. (never tried a jamba juice, just saw videos of people mentioning them)

There are a lot of grappling hook based platformers, but this is the first one I've seen where the hook is truly multi-purpose. You use it for movement AND combat AND puzzle-solving, since it interacts with enemies and objects as well as the environment. It's a great game!

Very fun platformer with lots of fun characters. Not very difficult either which is perfect for me lol. Highly recommend it :)

Very fun game designed around the grappling mechanics, it's a bit short and not very ambitious, but the grappling gameplay is so polished and satisfying that makes up for it.

Stunning game.

This is a fun little game based around grappling mechanics. I personally had a bit of trouble with the more swing heavy sections but I still had a good time.

[i]Grapple Force Rena[/i] hits all the gamer pleasure centers of my brain! The SEGA Genesis style FM synth music! The retro graphics! A simple story that grows as you play! A combo of fun and exciting challenges in gameplay and a cute anime style. ([b]I recommend you try the demo first[/b] - that's how I decided to buy the game. The full game has improvements that are not in the demo.) [u]Story:[/u] A tomboy named Rena finds her village invaded by hollow-looking baddies, and it's up to her to stop them! But the bad guys don’t end there. They are coming from somewhere, and she vows to stop them beyond her home village too, but it's not gonna be easy… Story I give: 8/10. I was curious to see how Rena was going to save the day. [u]Characters:[/u] Hero/cutie-pie Rena is the main protagonist, and she'll meet supporting characters and fellow heroes along the way. Being a hero won't always be easy, so she's gonna need all the help she can get. She found special bracelets that give her a grapple ability to fight and travel with. I love the writing in this game; the dialogue is fun, funny, and often simple typical "hero vs bad guy" dialogue stuff when she meets the antagonists in the game. I laughed out loud at plenty of funny lines and it's not often that a video game makes me do that. Characters I give 9/10. I enjoyed how Rena can interact with some of the bystander characters in the stages. I'd say Rena is an awesome and fun main character. I always look forward to watching dialogue scenes because I thoroughly enjoyed the writing in this game. My favorite supporting characters from this game are Captain Jette and Magus Pine. [u]Gameplay:[/u] Rena uses the Grapple Bracelets to climb or swing to the next area, grab enemies, grab items to carry, and more. No swords or guns for Rena, which is a nice change of gameplay style for me. I love that the scenes play again at the beginning and/or ends of stages, and that I have a choice to skip them. But I enjoy watching them, so I am likely to let them play before starting the mission especially if it's been a while. Gameplay I give 8.5/10. It's a nice break for me from hack-n-slash and twin-stick shooters. [u]Navigation/UI:[/u] The main menu is after the title screen, but once you select "Start Game," you can choose which stage or World you want to start. You can decide whether to advance to the next stage or revisit an older one to improve your score. When you pause the game, you have a choice to Resume, Restart the mission, or go back to the main menu. In the Main Menu you can adjust settings like the dialogue noise (tick, beep or none), the screen size, or when the dialogue shakes when there are words or phrases with high emotions like anger or disgust. You can adjust the volume of the sound FX and the music separately. Navigation I give 8/10. [u]Music/Soundtrack:[/u] OMG, I [b]love[/b] the SEGA Genesis-era music in [i]Grapple Force Rena[/i]! It makes me feel nostalgic from when I used to play the Sonic games including [i]Sonic 3D Blast[/i] as a kid. After I tried the demo for [i]Grapple Force Rena[/i] I wanted to learn more about frequency modulation synths myself! I especially fell in love with the Main Menu music - it's so catchy to my ears! There are several musicians who made music for this game, and it's pretty much all FM synth music which I love. (Even the "Start Game" button has a SEGA Genesis-shaped controller icon next to it!) And I think it's so cool that you can listen to the tracks from the Extras - Music menu. But you have to collect the tracks separately from within the game. Some have 1, others have 2 or 3 tracks that you collect by finding "audio cassette" items with notes coming from them. At this time I found about 19/30 music tracks. Having this feature makes up for not being able to buy the soundtrack separately on Steam, but in a way it is rewarding to unlock them, and I don't think any of them should be impossible to unlock. A few may be harder to find than others. It adds to the game's replayability. The music I give 11/10!! Because I love SEGA Genesis style music. ;) [u]Overall Score out of 10:[/u] 9.5/10!!! No… maybe a 10/10! I always have fun playing, even if sometimes I get frustrated with a certain stage if it's hard to improve a score. If you grew up during the SEGA Genesis video game era, or love retro video game graphics and its music in general, I think you'll enjoy this game too. [u]Want a Sequel?:[/u] Yes Yes!!! That would be great. But it seems there is no announcement of a sequel at the moment. :( [u]TL;DR:[u] I grew up playing Sonic on SEGA Genesis, so the music and graphics made me fall in love with this game with all the nostalgia it throws at me. The gameplay is a good mix of fun, challenge, and comedy. Try the demo - you might want more [i]Grapple Force Rena[/i] afterwards! And if you like it, pick up this gem, because if you loved the SEGA Genesis video game era, then you are in for a treat.