Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (Switch)

Turnip Boy’s first adventure, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, was a cute little romp about a little vegetable man getting into mischief, and while it did escalate to a surprising degree and reveal a sort of morbid underbelly, Turnip Boy himself was mostly just an anarchic little fellow caught up in the increasing stakes. It seems that experience did have an impact on him though, mostly because as its name implies, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank involves much more direct criminal action, the veggie coming in from the start packing heat and looking to cause some violence while smiling as innocently as ever.

 

Following the surprisingly cataclysmic fallout of the first game, the normally friendly and a bit dopey residents of Veggieville find their land embroiled in war… for all of one day so far. It’s hard to tell if it is much of a war at all, characters talking like it’s been a drawn out conflict despite beginning yesterday, but despite the consequences of the previous game’s finale and Turnip Boy being an even more unrepentant lawbreaker now, the world remains silly and strange as well as having some darker bits to find between the goofy bits. Turnip Boy didn’t just decide to go rob a bank on his own though, the mafioso pickle Dillitini recruiting him to rob the Botanical Bank owned by an old onion named Stinky. Beyond just sitting on a hoard of cash, Stinky has made his bank into one of the few places with decent resources, leading to people making settlements inside it. You will find sections of the bank that aren’t just regular halls and rooms thanks to how much of the world has converged on the bank as a result, but your goal throughout will always be looking for the Mysterious Motherlode that promises to be a score beyond imagining.

Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is a top-down action game like its predecessor, but it has also decided to incorporate some rogue-like elements despite the premise feeling like it wouldn’t allow it. You aren’t just robbing the bank once, but plunging in repeatedly to try and grab as much cash and valuable objects as you can to help fund your next attempt to rob the place. The Botanical Bank isn’t exactly well-guarded, most of the early enemies sparsely placed and simple in how they attack. A rabbit that tries to hop towards you or a snail moving around won’t impede you much, but Stinky does have the cops on his side, and while some are serving as guards around the building, the reason you need to leave the bank periodically is because you trigger a countdown every time you begin an assault. When a few minutes have passed, food-based cops will start repelling in, and while a bacon strip with a police baton can be a bit dangerous because the moment you’ll get close it’ll almost always be able to swing before you do, they’re still not that great of a pressure. In fact, the game recognizes that the police are a bit of a paltry way to try and force you to flee and regroup, because after a bit longer, Stinky will instead flood the bank with gas to kill you for trying to stay past the allotted time.

 

The game begins with only 3 minutes to rob the bank and sadly even after buying upgrades it will never get past 6, but the more troubling part of its design is it feels very pointless. When you attempt an attack on the bank, only very small elements are randomized and not even in particularly noticeable ways. Turnip Boy can shake down innocents for quick money and there might be different ones present, and while enemies might be shuffled ever so slightly, you often find the same guys in the same spots. In fact, the majority of the bank is practically set in stone, the hallways, boss arenas, and side quests all found in the same spots. The main randomized element ends up being the elevators, where they’ll take you to different separate areas. You don’t know where an elevator will take you until you approach it and the amount of random rooms that they can lead to shift as you beat more bosses, but those areas the elevator takes you to often aren’t that important and also suffer from basically being the same in their layout each time you visit. Little inconsequential bits like treasure and enemy placement are slightly adjusted and later in the game some rooms get upgraded to have new tougher foes or better artifacts to grab, but there’s little reason to revisit them for a while since newer areas provide more cash and unless you have side quests to turn in, returning to places like the office room become fairly pointless. Not every elevator room is an action space though, and that’s actually to its detriment. Some are peaceful rooms with a few cute characters that provide optional objectives, all side quests only going to reward you with new hats for Turnip Boy. Some elevator rooms are borderline pointless like the locker room where you can store a weapon you don’t want to lose for later, except you’d have to randomly find the locker room again and any weapon really worth preserving comes from the late game where you can probably more quickly just find it again than find the locker room. There is at least a battle arena worth repeating for easy cash and weapons, but the elevators fail to justify why you keep running back into the bank over and over to often retread the same ground with no interesting alterations.

Between attempts to find the Mysterious Motherlode you will go back to the Pickle Gang’s headquarters to spend whatever cash you’ve earned. Most money comes from killing baddies or shaking down people, but treasures can be found in most areas and are redeemed after a run. A death instead of a successful run back to the getaway vehicle will halve the amount of money you bring back and lead to all treasures being lost, but treasures can end up earning you much more than your initially small money bag can naturally carry, making them the more valuable thing to go for… even if that sometimes mean a run is best spent ignoring the action to just go around busting the same displays as last time for easy rewards. When you’ve got a good amount of cash to spend though, you can start investing in increasing your abilities. You can make your melee weapons and gunfire stronger, increase your health, increase the bank robbing time, and even add a few new little features like a bag of milk that will burst when you’re hurt and harm nearby enemies. Most upgrades will just make it easier to handle the combat, bosses often a bit of a wall in that they’re slow to kill if you haven’t bought much of what you need in a game where time is a nuisance, and some of your cash unfortunately needs to go towards buying items off the Dark Web. These mostly take the form of some strange object that might as well be a key to open the way onward, although they are at least often fun and silly items that lead to a cute exchange before you can continue deeper into the bank. They’re a money sink though, and over with the weapons, your cash will not allow you to get a better arsenal.

 

You can start a bank robbery with two weapons, and when it begins, you have a simple wooden sword and a pistol. In the bank, enemies sometimes drop new weapons on death, and these can be an eccentric bunch. You can find a round cactus that fires needles like a machine gun, a venus fly trap you can bite people with, a stag beetle whose long horn is your sword, and a weed wacker… as well as just regular firearms like shotguns, AK-47s, and the like. Most regular enemies die pretty quickly to the point a firearm isn’t much of an improvement to a melee weapon, but accuracy and reach do feel like important parts of deciding which weapons to carry. Most of the attacking does boil down to just constantly slashing or aiming the gun in the right direction until the enemy is gone unfortunately. Back at the gang’s HQ though, you can turn in weapons you find for experience towards new default weapons, Turnip Boy eventually able to reliably check out things from the arsenal like a crossbow, grenade launcher, or even a chainsaw. Better tools doesn’t lead to more interesting combat since you’re often slaying quickly as you go though, but bosses can at least involve some fairly active dodging to survive and having the right tool during them can help speed up the fight drastically. There aren’t too many unique bosses, but it is nice to have a point in the adventure where you have to do more than point at a nearby enemy and attack until you’ve hit enough to wipe them out.

THE VERDICT: Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is cute, colorful, and silly, something it uses to contrast its criminal subject matter and the darker implications of its world. Sadly, while it can be a bit funny and creative in what it shows you, the action is tedious by design because of the need to keep running out of the bank with so little changing between runs. Fighting only ever gets interesting during a boss battle and exploring is mostly about scooping up money easily or doing side quests that feel like errands. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is a rogue-like with a very weak justification for segmenting itself into multiple runs, the adventure drawn out by unrewarding systems and the repetition that comes from an unengaging setting and combat system.

 

And so, I give Turnip Boy Robs a Bank for Nintendo Switch…

A BAD rating. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank includes many familiar faces from the first adventure and references its events often, checking in with the silly cast of Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion a bit of a fun but not nearly enough of a reason to suffer through the genre change. The rogue-like emphasis on repeating the bank heist feels forced, the elements that change between runs too minor to make the repetition interesting while the bank itself feels like it is designed for a more straightforward adventure. There is very little reason why the elevator randomization needs to exist because it is such a minor part of the experience and the elevator rooms are mostly action-free spaces tied to side quests for hats anyway, so most runs are spent in the bank proper which does very little to vary up the experience. Some shortcuts you open up at least mean the timer won’t hound you incessantly, but it is still this annoying element hanging over the exploration and even the dash back to escape is often an uneventful interruption. Even if the game wanted an upgrade element it’s easy to imagine it just being at set places in the bank instead of necessitating frequent extraction, and since you can leave any time after the heist starts, it’s not even like preserving your haul is going to be hard unless you deliberately push your luck very hard or have made a foolish choice like charging towards a new area’s boss before you’ve purchased more upgrades. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank does get a bit more bearable as you start getting the upgrades and weapons needed to speed things up, but beyond the humor and the brief flashes of legitimate challenge that come from the bosses, your bank heist can end up as surprisingly dull work.

 

Turnip Boy Robs a Bank tried to learn from the first game’s sort of simple gameplay by including systems that sound like they’d make it more involved and engaging, but this entry only dips its toe into rogue-like elements and as a result gets none of the benefits from such systems while what it adds are mostly detriments. It stretches out the adventure with repetition rather than letting you press on to new interesting locations, and while there is always a bit of fun in growing stronger and getting better weapons, it feels wasted when the opposition isn’t often testing you the best. Hopefully after this bank robbery Turnip Boy will either go back to adventuring or find himself in a more carefully considered rogue-like, but this almost non-committal implementation of new mechanics drags down what could have been another simple, cute, and sometimes a bit unnerving romp for the turnip who just doesn’t want to pay his taxes.