| Egg Monster Hero review |
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Hanjuku (soft-boiled) Hero has been around since the days of the NES. It's a comedy wargame title that has remained under the radar of most western players for a good long while, and it would have remained under mine too given that when people say "Obscure and underrated Squaresoft game" I think "Bahamut Lagoon" or "The 3D Battles of World Runner," and start looking for the quickest escape route. This time around, however, Square intend things to be big. BIG big. As big as the giant poster for Hanjuku Hero 4 covering the floor at Akihabara Station, the posters of the Katrine from the game dressed as Cloud and Yuna plastering the walls of the game stores, and as far-reaching as the inescapable (well, inescapable if you watch Sunday morning cartoons) TV commercials of crazily dressed comedians bellowing the game's catchphrase, "TOUCH AND SCRATCH! TOUCH AND SCRATCH!" It's working, too - I work with kids for a living and my seven year olds have been shouting "TACCHI ANDO SKURACHI!" at me for a wearying amount of time now.
What I'm trying to say is that I didn't want to buy this game. It was either this or a small but significant nervous breakdown.
Even without the above prejudices though, it's not the kind of game you'd normally consider. Egg Monster Hero is a side story to Hanjuku Hero (Square's monster summoning wargame series for the NES, SNES and PS2) in which the world and game system are reimagined in RPG style and massively simplified to appeal to a younger audience. RPG spinoffs are dodgy ground regardless (barring a few masterpieces like Sailor Moon Another Story or the One Piece game where everyone loses their memory and has to rely on Mister Two for information), but kiddiefied spinoffs are generally about as good an idea as a really long pie. Egg Monster Hero is saved, however, by the strong identity of the series - which basically translates as a really stupid sense of humour and approximately eighteen and a half metric loads of the worst jokes known to humanity.
The game setup is simple. The Soft Boiled Army fights the Hard Boiled Army, and that's pretty much all there ever has been to the series. Rather than co-ordinating the battle, this time round the Soft Boiled Hero has to go out adventuring with a cadre of 100 troops, find the Hard Boiled generals and fight them in their lairs. Battles take two forms - firstly one can effect a summoning battle by selecting an egg from the inventory screen and choosing how many magic points to spend on it. At this point a Shinto priest with a pumpkin for a head co-ordinates your troops in a big dance, and they all sing:
"HON-dara HEN-dara doga-biga FOON-da!
HON-dara HEN-dara doga-biga- FOON!"
...at the egg, which hatches into a monster with power proportionate to the power spent on the ceremony. The Colourful Egg hatches into silly monsters like Moogles, giant fishcakes and so forth. The Pink Egg hatches into female monsters such as amazons and gorgons. One egg hatches undeads, one hatches robots, so on, so on. The one thing all monsters share is that they are nicely designed and in many cases quite beautifully animated using Rumble Fish style sprite rotation.
Once the egg is hatched, you must use the touch screen to choose where on your monster's body (hands, legs, head) you wish the attack to come from, and in the case of a monster vs monster fight you must touch the area of your opponent you will be attacking. Some areas are defenceless, some impregnable and some harbour counter-attacks. Once a combination has been tried it is recorded in your egg data menu for you to study for future reference.
If you wish to save your power, you can instead opt for a scratch battle. These do not cost any magic points, but do not reward you with any experience either. They involve frantically hurling your force of troops repeatedly towards the enemy by repeatedly scratching the screen in much the same manner as Pokemon Dash. The overall gameplay thus comes off as a cross between a simple and appealing monster summoning battle game and a hyper-charged slapstick version of Dragon Force.
As mentioned before, the real star of the show is the comedy. Or, depending on how sophisticated your sense of humour is, the lack of it. One character, for example, asks if he can borrow an axe (which, in Japanese, is "Ono"). You can respond affirmatively, or say "O-no!" In another scene the hero comes across a recovery spring, the kind of which are a staple of RPGs. You can choose to drink, leave or "look for Nessie." Choosing the latter causes the famous silhouette of the Loch Ness Monster to rise above the water briefly before disappearing.
(Hang on, what was I thinking? A really long pie would be a great idea. You could carry it around and eat it like a chocolate bar. I'm going to make one.)
Egg Monster Hero's big draw is the double screen effect, though. The game is set out like a theatre with the top screen representing the screen and the bottom screen the auditorium. As you play, random NPCs come and sit and watch you playing, and heckle the game CONSTANTLY like some kind of idiot child of NiGHTS' A-life system and Mystery Science Theatre. This gets even funnier when the bosses you beat are forced to go and sit the game out in the lower screen, occasionally throwing their own lines in. A particularly funny scene is the defeat of the Hard Boiled Prince, in which the Queen calls out to him from the audience. "Ah... Queen! Where are you?" "Here!" "WHERE?" "OVER HERE!" "Oh, you were there all along! I'm so glad the DS has two screens."
Of course all this points to one thing, and that's a fairly impressive language barrier. Even if you like the game enough to play it through, missing all the jokes (HIGHLY unlikely), you'll still need to carry out an infuriating amount of wandering around talking to NPCs, examining everything and trying to figure out why you haven't tripped the flag for the next dungeon. The puzzles are surprisingly tough for a kids' game at times, and often include well hidden items which must be found using clues given in Japanese. For this reason, Egg Monster Hero really isn't a good investment unless you've got enough of the lingo to fully appreciate it. If you do and you're in the market for a fun, lightweight RPG to eat up the bus journeys then by all means go for it - it's more than likely that the game will win you over with its surreal humour and fresh little touches. Perhaps it's best to leave the last words to the Hero's mentor, Sebastian: "Don't give up! Select Load! Select New Game! You must clear the game! You must see the ending! Be aggressive! TOUCH... AND... SCRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATCH!" |
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System: Nintendo DS
Genre: Action
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Players: 1
Version: Japan
Reviewed: Jul 2005
Writer: Simon Dominguez
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Pros:
- Genuinely funny
- Lightweight gameplay
- Fairly original
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Cons:
- Too much Japanese for the average player
- Lightweight gameplay
- A sausage roll is technically already a really long pie, so I haven't thought this one through properly
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