Mobile Friday - Pompo: Backpack Heroes - Good Graphics And Mechanics But Wasted Story And Tutorial

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Switching Pompo: Backpack Heroes from developers Tae won Go and Dave Studios on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I checked the App store on Friday and saw this newly released game topping the Free to Play Charts on the Japanese App Store. i was really curious as to why this was doing so well so that's why i've checked out Pompo: Backpack Heroes.

The game starts strong with a story introduction that hints that this group of characters  might be accidental heroes. But the next hour or so with the game almost ignores all of that. what i played didn't match the set up at all. if the game hadn't started so strongly with it's story and characters, then this wouldn't have been much of an issue. but because it does and them seemingly ignores so much of it, it really sticks out as a waste.

A new world is introduced to us by a character who seemingly knows about it. But that's it. the game makes little to no effort in tiring the game's mechanics into the world it's introduced. For example, the game introduces miners as a way to earn extra money. but this isn't done via a story beat, it's not done via a tutorial either. it's introduced as a mission that needs to be completed, there are no explanations as to who these miners are, where they are, or how it ties into anything in the game.

Pompo: Backpack Heroes is simple a bunch of mechanics tied together with great art and ease of gameplay. The game has a character who seems to know the world, but that character never acts as our guide or even helps with a tutorial. The weirdest part of the gameplay is how we started with a group, lost the group, and then spend no time trying to find our friends. instead a summon mechanic is added. and like most things in this game, there's no reason given for it, it's not tied into the story or the game world, and there's no summon animation. 

But Pompo: Backpack Heroes is mostly easy to play at a basic level. there are menus and abilities and power ups that i never touched in this first hour and it didn't seem to matter. that's not to say they won't in the future, but for now the game's lack of a tutorial and explanations don't seem to matter much as we're able to stumble through the opening section. However, a major mechanic, that i didn't expect, was introduced near the end of the video called Rebirth.

This concept is one i know of as it used to be popular in mobile and idle games a decade or so ago. but it's not one i've seen much of nowadays. essentially put, when the game starts to plateaux and you're unable to make any more progress or level up you're meant to use the Rebirth mechanic to rest some of your stats and gain a new currency that can be used to enhance your team. But with no tutorial on how best to use it, i can only hope that the game's missions are designed well enough to force the player to do it at the appropriate moment.

Pompo: Backpack Heroes looks great, with our team looking like Pixel Art but the world having a more water color look to it and there are giant monsters that look huge and very different to our team. the music is nice to, tho the gaps between songs/loops could've been dealt with better. the screen is smartly used, too. i only noticed one small issue with the Dynamic Island and a small issue when levelling up the miners. the placement is smart and enabled me to play most of the game with just one hand.

Pompo: Backpack Heroes is a fine game but there is so much wasted potential. if you're looking for an idle game that's easy to quickly pick up and play that maybe feels a little "retro", then this would do fine. but understand that even tho it makes a fantastic first impression, that's the only time any of that matters. it's possible the game will remember it's story later on, but in this first hour it doesn't and i can't guarantee it will.

Version 1.0.4 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Pokémon Friends On iOS

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the iOS version of Pokémon Friends from The Pokémon Company.

The Pokémon Company released Pokémon Friends this week across Switch and Mobile. On Nintendo Switch, the game is released as a cheap base version with optional DLC. but on Mobile, there is a free to start TRIAL/DEMO of the game as well as the Paid DLC base game and optional Paid DLC. The free to start nature of this version of Pokémon Friends is why i included it as part of the Demo Play Thursday series and not as part of Mobile Friday.

In this free to start version, we're severely limited in what we can do. we can only do one set of puzzle per day, when the base game lets us play many. there are further limitations in the amount of Pokémon Plushes available to make, puzzles in the game, and there are no quest puzzles from the town's folk.

From what we get to play, i enjoyed this game's approach to new players. it felt modern. a key example is that the tutorial messages only appeared when they were needed instead of overloading with messages at the start. another great approach is how for each puzzle there is a gif/video showing the type of puzzle it is. we saw something similar to this in the Hogtie demo, and just like that it doesn't reveal the actual answer to the puzzle. when it came to putting our plushes on display, i greatly appreciated that the game didn't rely on the shadow of the plush and instead put an icon on screen showing exactly where it would be placed. 

As a free to start game, Pokémon Friends isn't great as it's just too limited. but as a trial/demo, this version of Pokémon Friends works great. if you're curious about Pokémon Friends, try this before you buy the base game on your platform of choice.

Backlog Conquering - Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition On PS4 - Part 8

Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.

In Part 8 i tried a few more times to complete the Mine section by doing the third Mine challenge, but again i couldn't defeat the final boss. so i gave up and decided to go after the game's final boss. this final area has some decently hard platforming but what was really evident was how much harder it was getting from place to place because of the enemies. it was full of them! Thankfully the checkpointing seems to be keeping up with this pace so whilst i died a few times i was never far from where i was. The biggest disappointment was that the video ended with a game breaking bug.

You can watch other parts:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/y20ZZ5IllmY

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/OxoUuZ8dYno

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/aSABHs1VrF4

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/RkrZPlBT1f4

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/WZHkHZEaD0Q

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/VMNT2XpjDhE

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/RX5hM88wIyM

Stories on Tuesday - Visual Novel: I.B. - Part 5 - Chapter 5

The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the iOS version of Visual Novel: I.B. from Entabridge. 

This is Part 5 and it covers the game's fifth chapter titled The Past.

You can check out the previous parts at these links:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/yclMfGCp1Uo

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/pKZdQNymjhk

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/I0W5ejOVq6I

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/TenlvcJHmDk

Cloud Monday - Battlefield 2042 - Part 2 - Go To "Portal" And "Browse" For Online Matches

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing Battlefield 2042 on PS4, via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

In Part 1, i was unable to find an online match. so my goal in this Part was to try every online game mode and give said mode 5 minutes to find a game. Because i did this, i found where the Battlefield 2042 community is, they're in the Portal Section, so use the Browse option to pick the best game near you.

The video i got from PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming service wasn't as good as in Part 1, nor was the audio. with how short you're alive for in this game, the visual issues weren't much of a problem. but the audio was a little frustrating. it sounded either low quality or like it was too loud for the speaker but then that sound is played back to me at a normal sound. 

What was frustrating about Battlefield 2042 in Part 1 continued here. if the community is all in one place, why haven't the developers changed the UI to send us straight there. there was a Conquest 64 mode being highlighted instead. it baffles me why the developers chose to copy the poor Call of Duty UI and then have no tutorial for how it plays. i still don't know how to lay on the ground.

But with how bad the game is, streaming it does become an option. there's not much of a community behind it so installing the game onto your PS4 could be seen as a waste of space. but now we can stream it from the cloud, well you can check which, if any, modes are populated without having it take up space on your PS4.

Mobile Friday - Switching Heroes: Action RPG - A Good Looking Simple Action RPG With Poor Widescreen

For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Switching Heroes: Action RPG from developers ZillionGames on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I've had Switching Heroes: Action RPG on my phone for a while and had seen that it's been regularly updated by it's developers. the only reason why i hadn't played it earlier is simply that i forgot it came out this year.

The screenshots in the app store made it look like the game had good graphics and decent action and after playing for nearly an hour i would agree. i wasn't disappointed by the artstyle either. i thought the monsters looked good and the different places we went to also looked distinct from each other. it would actually be the music and sound effects that stand out as being particularly poor in comparison.

There is a story, but it really didn't add anything to the experience and is very rarely mentioned again. every now and then on screen an image of the tower would appear and we'd overtake someone. but i didn't really know what was happening. Switching Heroes: Action RPG does have a tutorial and at times it's great. but they fail to have a consistent level of quality throughout the experience and the tutorial never talks about the icons on the top right or top left.

i didn't know that the game had both a vertical and horizontal mode. unfortunately, it's hard to recommend the horizontal landscape mode. it feels more like the game can do it, like a check box could be ticked, rather than being designed to use it. it's weirdly zoomed in, the UI doesn't cover the whole screen, and all the text is tiny on the screen. switching to vertical makes things much clearer. 

The core gameplay to Switching Heroes: Action RPG is good. as i've played a few of these before i know what to do. it took about 35 minutes before the grind kicked in. it was only brief as i was able to continue to make progress fairly quickly. it's easy to play Switching Heroes: Action RPG one handed and in short bursts, which makes it a good choice for those who commute. i would say that Switching Heroes: Action RPG is a good one of these, but it's probably not making it into my top 5 free to play mobile games of the year.

Version 2.70 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - BUSTAFELLOWS season2 On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of BUSTAFELLOWS season2 from Nippon Cultural Broadcasting Extend and PQube.

I haven't played the original game that came out back in 2019 so going into this, and any continuation of a story, i'm interested to see if that lack of knowledge would be a hinderance. 

This demo is the prologue of BUSTAFELLOWS season2 but it is also different from the start of the game. this means that the save data from this Prologue will NOT work with the main game. for spoiler reasons, it's not made clear what the differences are between this version and the final retail version. I did like that the demo makes this clear before it starts. there's a memo from the developers about this prologue. unfortunately, it's only on screen for less than 2 seconds so for this upload i have extended the time it's on screen so you can read their note.

Personally, i'm not a huge fan of how this prologue told it's story. i admit that i didn't get to the end of it, but with this video already over an hour 15 and my enthusiasm for the story dropping, i thought this was long enough. we start with an introduction to a lot of people who know each other, in a way that didn't quite feel as natural as i'd hope. there's a shocking development, and then the story goes back in time a little. we're introduced to more people who seem to know each other, but then we do get introduced to two new people who seem like they're going to be important to the story.  then i ended the demo.