Bubble Bobble Sugar Dungeons

Begrudgingly, I'm going to have to say 'no' on this one. I really tried to enjoy it, but the irritants outweigh the positives! It ended up at a point where I ended up thinking "Ah, I really don't want to play this again, I'm just wasting my own time. Doing these same annoying level patterns over and over kinda sucks, even if they are in a random order." The core idea of the game has merit, but the way it's implemented is painful. "You can use treasure to upgrade your abilities!" - Not until you can beat 40 stages without ever getting hit in 100 seconds. The whole upgrade thing is post-game mechanic. Unless you can play 40 rounds of the original Bubble Bobble without being hit a single time, it's unlikely you'll reach this point. "Complete missions to earn things!" - You earn currencies like gems which you can't actually use. Again, it's for the post-game. "There's dungeons!" - There's two dungeons, and they're kind of annoying to play. It's based around slowly clearing out enemies with powerups you obtain before you start the dungeon. "You can take items to help you!" - The items you 'take' are limited use consumable bubbles or items that let you skip floors. The skip-floor …

The idea of a rogue-lite Bubble Bobble is, admittedly, a solid one in theory. Bubble Bobble Sugar Dungeons has cute graphics and is fun enough to play, but is unfortunately pretty much ruined by odd design choices. There are two dungeons and two castles to pick from. Castles have a set design and merely task you with navigating them before fighting a boss. You get a bunch of missions that reward you with materials and new features as you complete them, but the real meat is that the dungeons become practically endless. While this could have absolutely worked, the developers decided that the game needed to be slavishly devoted to its roots to the detriment of the entire experience. You can level up various skills, but this is moronically locked behind clearing 40 floors of the first dungeon. Doesn't sound too bad? You can only take a single hit and you have a time limit. Run out of time and, just like the classic games, an invincible enemy shows up to hound you. The majority of players won't even be able to unlock the ability to level up skills due to this. Even if you can avoid enemies indefinitely here (good f*cking luck with that), the time limit makes things a far harder sell. Yo…

Update 08/23/2026 - the developer made me aware of updates to the game and after replaying it i found that progression had been fixed to a large degree and it makes the game much more enjoyable. all of this said, i do not change my recommendation as this kind of game is not for me. --------------------- Original review - I've known of bubble bobble for quite some time and i thought the idea of a new game in the series could be fun. The game has cute characters, it's a fairly simple game loop and look and sound of games in the past is nice. this game started off kinda ok on most of those points, but very quickly showed other sides that were not very enjoyable. i'll start off with the good points. Character design is good, it keeps the same idea from past games and that's just fine. music is fine, could be more varied but it works gameplay mechanics, they are there, they are ok, but its nothing to write home about. if you have played a bubble bobble game you know how to play this.\ now the bad. first off, too much text, you spend a whole bunch of time reading the intro and tutorial boxes where it could be simplified down even further or given at least some cute vocal noise…

I can see why people might not like this game, but I am having a good time. My patience for games might be higher than most... its a solid 7 for me.

Bub kicks all the elden ring babygirls in the a$$ and shows them what real terror is. "PAYONPA" does he shout, he - bub the drill instructor, which can be roughly translated to "THERE IS NO PLACE FOR WEAKNESS - HUMAN". These are the last words you will hear, before your eyes go dark out of exhaustion... and the grind continues.

Applause to Taito for standing behind their product and fixing virtually every issue in the negative reviews ([i]mine included. The only problem that remains is the inability to set the game's resolution in Windowed Mode[/i])! The game feels great now with all the rebalancing! We start with more than 1 life now. The Baron timer is way more manageable now. We can level up Bub's stats much earlier into the game when the player needs it most, and materials are much easier to come by. The icing on cake is the inclusion of Bubble Symphony, aka Bubble Bobble 2 (Arcade), which is a rare treat for hardcore fans of the series that definitely makes this package worth the price of admission.