Bakeru (Switch)

The islands of Japan are divided up into 47 prefectures for the sake of administrative governance, and Bakeru takes on the ambitious task of trying to turn each one into a 3D platforming level. It is an impressive commitment and one it actually delivers on fairly well, because even when it will repeat a level theme like a beach, there will still be unique features that help set it apart. It perhaps doesn’t always capture the most memorable parts of a prefecture, boiling down a region’s culture into a video game stage would be more difficult than focusing on something distinct like the orange groves of Ehime, and it definitely remains impressive because there are actually 63 levels in total meaning they even went out of their way to do things like split Tokyo into multiple stages or add some levels on the ship used to reach an island. Ambitious is definitely the best way to describe this Japanese adventure, but it can be easy to aim so high that you miss some important details elsewhere.

Bakeru is the name of the game’s hero, the player taking on the role of a tanuki whose transforming powers can give him an edge in trying to  save Japan from an unusual danger. The incredibly tiny girl Sun tells Bakeru about the Oracle Saitaro, a being who uses his dark powers to force everyone in Japan to wear themselves ragged participating in a nationwide festival. Bakeru isn’t much of a hero to begin with though, only really able to fight with a pair of drumsticks while using his drum as a shield, so initially the goal is to seek out the help of legendary heroes from famous Japanese fairy tales. With their aid and advice though Bakeru learns of the Nanakusa Girls who can reverse the Oracle’s curse should you find and free them all, the tanuki then deciding to truly take up this quest across all of Japan.

When you first begin to play Bakeru, it’s hard not to be wowed by the constant creativity on show in the the level designs. You will eventually start seeing some clearer cases of reuse, the game finding a way to justify water slides in more than just the water park level for example, but almost every level tries to introduce something new even if it’s a small element. Levels can be wide open or almost straight shots with little deviation. They can feature moving platforms you manage yourself or more maze-like arrangements. You might scale a large tower in one, run through a forest with odd angular trees in another, leap over lava as the platforms crumble with a stylish ashy effect, or you might even need to hunt down every baddie in an area to prove you’re the toughest. A dam, a misty mountaintop, a sauna, towns with rivers and towns covered in snow, conceptually and visually, Bakeru is brimming with variety. The music is also particularly excellent, also spaced out well so familiar themes don’t appear too often but are often welcome when they return because they can be quite catchy or have a good hook.

It’s just a shame the way you actually play Bakeru is so bland.

Bakeru can cook up such incredible sights because it feels like too much of the focus is on things that look impressive or unique rather than giving you strong ways to engage with them. The game has a somewhat limited range of enemy types, most of them being characters wearing masks that will exhibit different jobs but barely pose a threat. Your drum stick attacks can be mashed to clear away most enemies you encounter, and it would be inaccurate to say in most cases that these enemies are in the way. Usually if a level is large and sprawling, you only really need to attack enemies if they are either holding one of the three colorful paper lanterns needed to break the seal on the level exit or if you want coins. Cash can be used to buy additional hearts for your life meter and eventually some masks for Bakeru to wear, but mostly its other purpose is for buying temporary power-ups or healing items from a tanuki saleswoman found pretty regularly in levels. Dying will make you lose 100 coins unless you have below 1000 and then it incurs a lesser penalty, but a full heal is 80 and other bonuses like a temporary shield don’t feel too necessary unless you want to make the game’s boss fights easier. For the most part though, Bakeru can almost be labeled a good speedrun game because you can, while playing through regularly, easily notice how little you actually need to fight the enemies in your way.

This game unfortunately just has poor judgment for placing enemies who oppose your progress in interesting and engaging ways. You are given a few additional attacks that make it even easier, a ground slam good for hitting enemies who surround you and a forward thrust that can take out a line of foes in particular trivializing some moments that might have been a little dangerous otherwise. Bakeru can eventually unlocked Henge transformations based on the heroes he meets, but these almost exacerbate the problem more. One makes Bakeru even stronger for as long as the collectible Henge energy lasts, meaning when you do run into a foe like the ones wearing kendo armor who would take a bit more dodging and attacking to eliminate, you can just switch to that mode and swiftly dispose of them instead. The other two main forms give you fishing pole attacks and little pistols for long range damage, so even if a foe is trying to be dangerous by flying in the air or moving around quickly, these usually take care of them and again in a way where you barely think about the quick activation. One Henge power almost showed promise, the first you get from your tiny pal Sun that makes you similarly minuscule. This is only really used for letting you enter tiny holes for mostly short optional areas despite the fact this form also comes with a bit of an aerial hover that could have improved the platforming were it encouraged at all. Pretty much beyond the tutorial there is almost no deliberate area made for the hover jump, and since areas often really want you to stick to the main path, trying to make little shortcuts sometimes has you face flagrantly placed invisible walls. Bakeru doesn’t even want you getting off a ramp too early despite there being safe ground to land on, making the fact it will later hide some collectibles on rooftops feel like a betrayal of how often it previously prevented you from reaching areas that looked in range.

Bakeru discourages creative platforming, but it also doesn’t make up for its unexciting combat with it either. Sometimes it will present something that looks impressive like rotating entire buildings to make bridges, but it’s spectacle with little in the way of challenge. Some parade-themed levels can feel a touch more demanding mostly because the screen scrolling means you might miss your moment to head towards a secret or you get too far ahead and run into an enemy you can’t see, but mostly speedy or clever platforming isn’t much of a must. You can take your time and get where you need to without much concern, some occasional timing challenges like avoiding runaway carts or even rolling snow-covered lodges not really applying the right degree of pressure. You often can approach them at your leisure, survive if you slip up, and continue on with usually some very basic understanding of patterns. Bakeru could work more as a game for young players to help them get acclimated to 3D movement and they might not so easily become aware of how most enemies are placed in levels almost as set dressing over threats, but even as you reach the end of the game you’re still finding levels that seem to care more about you seeing all their nifty ideas rather than obstructing your progress with challenging gameplay.

Bakeru is developed by Good-Feel though, a company that is normally very good about making games that can be played by very young audiences but older players looking to master them can instead seek out extra content for the more involved gameplay. Bakeru does feature some collectibles in every level, the more promising ones being trivia delivered to you by a little character in a golden coat named Scoop. Most levels with Scoop in them have five hiding spots to find, and the trivia is generally a good mix of general interesting information and specific details about Japan or the specific prefecture you’re in. Getting little fun facts is a nice secondary goal, but Scoop isn’t always hidden in interesting locations. Often he might just be behind a conspicuous pile of rocks or tucked into a room’s corner, but there are times where a small side path will contain a little challenge to get to him or you might need to have a good eye for something unusual like a possible false wall. Most levels also have three souvenirs to find, although unfortunately almost all of them have one of them be a pennant that usually just says the area’s name rather than having a unique design. The two other souvenirs are also not always the best because they are often presented without much of an explanation. Giving you a bundle of grapes in Nagano feels arbitrary since it is otherwise presented as a snowy slope of a level, but Nagano is actually one of Japan’s biggest grape producers, something I only learned by looking it up after. It feels like the trivia could have been tied to the souvenirs as well, but instead they feel like just another mild reward that isn’t always tied to big breaks from the adventure’s generally weak sense for laying out platforming or battle challenges.

Bakeru does try to bring variety in through other means though, Nagano actually an example of one of the many Browsby levels. Browsby is a big red boxy dog that pops open so you can hop in and pilot him like a vehicle, and he has a few different forms. There are racer car, skiing, and aerial shoot-’em-up levels for Browsby, these also not too hard as it gives you many tools or ways to make up for lost ground if you do mess up, but they’re not overused so a brief shift into the different playstyle is usually welcome and the game thankfully doesn’t abandon trying to make race courses that embody the prefecture despite the shift in gameplay format. Less successful are the boss battles. When you fight them as Bakeru you might at least face some trouble, some of them asking for good dodging while others you barely need to think as you mash them with your drum sticks and run at obvious points. However, the fights would be mostly decent if they had stuck to on-foot fights. Sometimes you’ll instead hop into a giant tea kettle mech to box some other giant foe. Most of these enemies can be handled with unrelenting aggression and their attacks aren’t too hard to avoid if you need to. One that takes the form of a giant daikon radish does actually mix things up in a compelling way though, the player needing to break off all its metal siding, avoid attacks that punish you for being too close, and do so within a time limit that requires you to be smart about how you use the mech’s super move and how often you jeopardize your own health to land enough hits in time. Then the next boss goes back to the bland boxing format though, the game seeming to again think that the look of a level is more important than the actual substance of the activities you participate in.

THE VERDICT: So much imagination and care went into the levels of Bakeru, this fantasy tour through every prefecture of Japan impressive in its scope and well-realized if you only look at the visuals and music. Creativity goes out the window though when it comes to what you’re actually doing in those stages. Combat remains basic and your transformation powers are mostly there to make it even easier, enemy types are constantly repeated so you’re not even facing new threats, and even with new concepts being regularly added, they still can’t do much to make the platforming feel more than basic. Bakeru should be an exceptional journey through Japanese culture and myth, but instead, it becomes a repetitive trudge through areas that never live up to their visual promise.

And so, I give Bakeru for Nintendo Switch…

A BAD rating. Bakeru should have been a game I loved with a passion. The premise of making each prefecture into a gaming level already excited me, and I am a fan of myth and folklore in particular which this game pays constant tribute to. I love chances to learn more about real world locations through video game representations of them. It’s what made games like Stay! Stay! DPRK and Retro Mystery Club Vol.2: The Beppu Case so interesting after all. I am a fan of the developer Good-Feel as well, games like Yoshi’s Woolly World and Kirby’s Epic Yarn the examples I thought of where the main game is easy for anyone to enjoy but the secrets and extra content give something deeper for more experienced gamers to pursue. Most of all though, I absolutely love a game teeming with variety, and if I had just seen the levels of Bakeru instead of playing them, it would seem like it had catered to that desire for conceptual diversity to an almost absurd degree. It had so much going for it to get a good rating out of me it seemed, almost to the point I’d have to work to keep my biases in check to be honest, but instead, it dropped the ball when it comes to what you actually do in game to the point it became hard to even get excited to see what the next level would look like. It brought so much creativity to the table but it was all glamor, the colorful worlds not really packing much of interest to do as Bakeru. Sometimes it can at least lay out a little danger like with the boss battles you tackle as Bakeru himself, but a lot of other locations almost feel better to approach as a tourist than as video game levels. Enemies almost seem to work better as part of the setting, like when you see a bunch lined up at a vending machine or catch them all sitting in the crowd of a concert. The rewards for going out of your way to fight are too minimal and the fights themselves so often very basic, but the platforming often can’t compensate since it doesn’t ask too much out of you because Bakeru’s standard jump and movement don’t give him much of a range to make it exciting either.

I didn’t even mention the weird chaining issues in Bakeru where sometimes he can rhythmically hit foes in a row where other times it won’t lock on properly, but that’s because while it is used for a platforming trial here or there, it’s also again not one with much point or stakes. You do it if you can and if not, you probably missed out on a few coins is all. It’s so disappointing to see a game that does so much right to mess up on such a foundational element as the actual gameplay. So much of Bakeru’s style makes you want to like it, yet I struggle to remember any part of the action that managed to elevate itself beyond acceptable while it’s much easier to remember the stale action featured constantly throughout. Bakeru deserved to be better, it deserved level designs and enemies that made actual good use of the game’s core concepts. The game Bakeru could have been could have been amazing, but sadly so little thought was put into how you explore its imaginative levels that it’s hard to muster up the interest to see all that unfortunately misplaced effort.