Umihara Kawase Fresh!

海腹川背新作！あと大好きなコットンがガッツリコラボ！ いや～楽しませてもらいました、さよなら海腹川背を昔100時間以上やってたから大丈夫かなと思いましたが、 大丈夫でした。覚えてるもんですね、ご覧のクリア時間です(チャレンジは5つくらいしかクリアしてないけど) 本編は血の涙を流しながらのトライ＆エラーでしたが、最近いろんな所に出てくる最強のコットンちゃんで 最強プレイが出来たので満足。ストーリーは良かったと思う。面白かった。 確かに今まではユーザーの妄想に委ねてる部分はあったが、これはこれで非常にあり。 料理で回復＆バフがかけられるからボス戦でゴリ押し出来ることも多く。 さよならを死にそうになりながら100時間やった自分としては、今回ちょうどいい難易度で最高でした。 あとコットン最強！！！

Fan of the series. Not a well made game, a terrible port. Only positive thing I can say is that they didn't ruin the physics, but you're better off playing other games. Horribly overpriced for quality of content, not even worth it on sale.

既存の曲もいいけど今作の新曲もいいゾ。

Quick Score: 3/5 Notes: The main thing holding this game back is that the entire main quest/story is a massive slog. It's incredibly tedious. Rather than have traditional platformer levels. All they did was create an open world, and then have 82 different point a to point b quests. Doesn't sound bad on paper, the issue though is that the world is just not very tightly designed. Vast majority of the gameplay is not threatening and just kind of bland. And you will be constantly retreading the same paths over and over and over across all 82 quests. The entire food and hunger system also just kind of gets in the way of the gameplay and doesn't really add anything. The primary saving grace of the game is the challenge levels. These are 23 more traditional platforming stages that are actually very difficult. Unfortunately you are forced to still go through the main story grind to even unlock them all. If not for these levels existing the game would not be a recommend. Just be warned it will take about 4 hours of fairly tedious gameplay before you finally unlock the ability to play all the challenge levels. Your experience may differ if this is your first game in the series, but having this as my last game in the series, the entire main quest felt incredibly boring and easy.

PC移植を考えて無さ過ぎ。 操作がデフォだとNS向けとPS向けが混在し、PC標準とも言えるX-inputが全く考慮されていない。 表示もNSなので、NS用コントローラーじゃないと常に脳内変換していないと混乱する。 また、ゲーム進行もこれまでのゴールへ到達以外の要素が邪魔で、一応、クリアしたステージはそれだけ目的のタイムアタックがプレイ出来るが、手間がかかり過ぎるし、今までの様な楽しみ方は出来ない。 更にいくつかの動作が以前より遅くなっており、微妙に色々な感覚が違う。 ショートカットルートなどは健在だが、以前の作品のプレイヤーは期待すると失望の方が大きいだろう。

I'm not saying this game is BAD, but it's very underwhelming. First off, it says it's the first Umihara Kawase game with an "open world" and a "story". These are both half-truths. For the "open world", the game actually has you choosing "quests" from the main menu, and while you can often choose from multiple quests at any given time, each quest is a stage that must be completed, meaning you can't accept multiple quests at once. On top of that, many quests have you going to the exact same location. The game tries to give this a spin by telling you to take a different route, but there's nothing stopping you from taking the same path every single time. A huge portion of the map is wasted and the game frequently punishes you for going off the intended path. Later in the game you unlock another playable character, the protagonist from the shoot 'em up series Cotton. She can use her broom to float in the air for a while after jumping, making the game more accessible. She has her own quests too, and the first one contains a jump that, if you fail (and you probably will fail considering the huge loach constantly firing acorns at you), the game sends you to another map that you have no way of leaving other than a secret teleporter that you're likely to never find on your own, meaning that failing that jump equals to resetting the quest. The game also has two secret boss fights accessible through the main overworld area. You're likely to stumble upon one by accident seeing that it's right next to the objective of a few quests and you can see enemies walking into a wall, but if you make the mistake of going into that same wall then you're suddenly fighting a secret boss that dumps you into the same area as the one you go into if you fail the jump mentioned above. Again, no way out of that area aside from the secret teleporter or restarting the quest. The other secret boss is borderline impossible to find on your own (and if you happen to find it early, guess where you end up in after defeating it!). And then the "story". It starts out very inoffensive, goes on to foreshadow some things and set up others, and at the end it throws a bunch of twists that are all disconnected from each other and then the game just ends without explaining anything or having any of those set ups pay off! At the end of one of the last quests the game does something permanent to a recurring character, tricking the player into thinking there's something bigger behind all of it, but it goes nowhere. The hidden diaries that you can find scattered across the world tie into something the game frames as an important plot point, but it had zero relevance to anything that happened during the story. The translation is also really bad but that might fall into "so bad it's good" territory (for example, a female character often gets referred to with the wrong pronouns, and sometimes both pronouns are used within the same cutscene). Also, another important plot point is that Kawase has a map that updates itself every time she visits a new area, yet the player is never able to actually view said map, leading to more moments of frustration in case you actually make the mistake of wanting to explore the world instead of just heading straight to each objective. The challenges are mostly good, though. "Sky Canine" was one level I genuinely loved. There's some levels from the previous games too, but since this has similar physics to Sayonara Umihara Kawase (although the physics here are better than those in Sayonara) those don't play as well (especially Shun's Field 42, which was already the hardest level in the original release, and it's even harder here). One of the challenge levels is arguably the hardest level in the whole franchise, so fans of the series looking for that will find it here, although I can't justify purchasing this just for that either (and you also have to finish the game to unlock that). You can also cook items to give you boosts, but I never did this during the main story as I felt no need to. The story stages weren't all that difficult to justify it, but the option is there for those that want to experiment. Because of Kawase having an HP bar now, the backpacks from the previous games are now used to activate checkpoints in levels. Checkpoints can be infinitely reused, but the level's timer does not reset when you respawn. The timer ticks up instead of down, so there's no time limit. This is probably the reason as to why you can no longer save replays, which had been a staple of the series since the start. One story quest takes over 10 minutes to complete as it's a trip from about the center of the game's world to the absolute highest point. Bosses are also fun and challenging compared to the other installments. For once, they actually took the crab boss from the original game and made it good, so that deserves credit. I can also appreciate the effort in trying to bring back as many enemies as possible from the past games, including the scallops from the original (which are universally hated, but they're fine here since you don't die in one hit and they don't respawn when captured). There are still a few enemies missing, like the octopus or that big fish you couldn't capture, but almost everything's here, and the new enemies are cool too. And special mention to the soundtrack. While I didn't care too much about the underground layers, the overworld and sky area themes are both really good, and the title screen and main menu songs are also very memorable.

作为系列死忠，看到开放世界的海腹川背，自然闻风而来。 然而，开放世界并不开放，只是所有的任务都在同一张地图上而已。 实际上还是得像选关那样，一关一关选任务，然后跟着指示箭头去完成。 探索感不增反降，过去那种找隐藏门开新关卡的味道都没了。 （不过我只玩了开头不确定后面有没有隐藏分支） 除开新内容不谈，也不知道是不是我软硬件配置问题，本作手感有一个改动让我完完全全不能接受： 这代吊着绳子的时候，斜向的方向是失效的，全部会被默认当做横向来输入。 这就意味着，你不能在空中同时按横向和收放线，让荡的力道小了不少； 而在地面上你也不能斜向收线，拉起自己时第一时间横荡了。 我试过手柄和键盘，全都有这个问题（不吊着绳子斜向就是正常的），真不知道到底是BUG还是就是把操作改成了这个样子。 现在就因为这个操作问题，让我一个系列每一代都玩过的老粉寸步难行，实在是窝气得不行。

That game is really not that great It's just fine, gameplay isn't offensively bad The game is quest based, but not the good kind; there's a menu where you select a quest, and then the game will start you at point A and you'll have to go to point B The game isn't an open world, it's a big level where all the quests take place in, which means that you'll very often go through the same areas, which gets old very fast since the level design is really nothing that insane (As separated individual levels they'd be just fine at best) Going through the same levels is something you do in the older games, but not for the same reasons Here it's just because there's a limited amount of points A and B The hunger system is pointless; it's a glorified timer. The food gives you more time and sometimes buffs, which is nice to have if you're having a hard time with the game Cotton (from the shmup series of the same name) is playable in this game, I'm not sure how or why but sure why not, I'm part of the 5 people who bought that game and recognize and like Cotton so that was nice to see That said, the game is still CRAZY expensive for what there is (I think I got it on sale for something like 5€ if I remember correctly), and the thing is, it's the inferior version of the game That game is also available on Switch, and published by Nicalis, who, on top of adding Curly (from Cave Story) as a playable character, has a real localization Oh, yeah, what made me decide to give this game a negative review is the localization, its machine translation, and I'm sure the base story is fine, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it's just so damn stupid here At some point I just started skipping around, when I tried to get back into it there was stupid stuff happening like that cat girl that for some reason was now called "owner" (or something like that, I finished the game a month ago so I don't remember exactly but yeah I'm 100% certain than that character had a name before for no reason the game forgot about it) and there was stuff going on with Buddha and ♥♥♥♥...? It sucks, because the intro and the ending make me think that the whole thing, if it wasn't machine translated, could have been fun But the "just alright" gameplay with that 0 effort localization just makes me want to not recommend this game despite really enjoying the other games I've played from that series I'm sure it's fine but yeah get it on console if you REALLY want to play it, not here You can get the first 3 games for like 10€ on sale, get those, those are awesome games

yeah, it's good but personally i didn't like it as much as the first three games in terms of physics and pacing. nice graphics and music though. its a lot of fun to just gorge on food and tank damage from the bosses too.

I sadly absolutely cannot recommend this version of the game. Well, I'd be hesitant about recommending this one in general over any other entry in the series, but Fresh's PC port really just feels like a mediocre, cut down emulated version of the Switch original. There is basically no reason to bother with it, especially if you don't read Japanese because uh, you are not getting a better english translation on this version.