Save me Mr Tako: Definitive Edition

It starts off well being a cute, Kirby-like gameboy platformer. The combat however you realize early on has next to no variety. You use hats to change your equipped ability, but most of them tend to be useless or actively a hindrance to your progress. Most of the stages feel fine enough, however when you get into some of the later dungeons they suddenly are *extremely* easy to get lost in. The game expects you to remember what every location is called without any indicator on the world map screens so you find yourself just wandering around until you finally stumble on the correct one again. For the kind of game it is, it goes on way too long as well. I expected to be done with it far sooner than it was and as time went on it was evident that I was not having fun anymore. Everything felt like a chore by that point. Sad this didn't quite get where I wanted it, maybe it's good for others. It's not terrible by any means, but it's also not good enough that I could recommend it in any way.

Gameplay overall is just kinda meh. Platforming is alright, stupid amount of levels so they're not that interesting, I like seeing the different hats, the colour palettes are neat but some look absolutely terrible, the story gets a bit heavy about a war and confusing, my friend and I started to get lost not knowing where to go and we just generally got tired of the game, also hard to keep track of characters due to Gameboy-style graphics.

I can't really say whats putting me off after finishing the 1st of (I assume) three acts. Maybe it's the grafics, even though I grew up with the Game Boy. Maybe it's the levels, which feel similar, even though they very in location and enemy types. Maybe it's the ever changing colour pallet, often fitting the area, but sometimes just looking weird. Maybe it's the story, which is suprisingly serious and dark for the setting (A pacifist octopus trying to same the world from a war between his kind and humans) Maybe it's the powerup system (using different hats), which feels unrewarding as most do not feel like an actual upgrade, despite having wastly varying effects. The game is not bad, unenjoyable or even unplayable. But maybe you know this feeling: You are playing a game and you wish it would be over faster so you can play something else. Every cutscene is annoying, because it stops the game from ending. That is me here. I don't regret spending 5€ on this and encourage you to try it, if you miss games like they were on the original GameBoy. I probably do less than I thought.

Essentially what if Kirby's adventure met Final Fantasy, but with an Octopus

I grew up on the old NES and gameboy. I have some fond memories of playing on the GB, though I preferred the NES, Genesis, and SNES over it as the games did not always feel complete. There were some exceptions. Save me Mr. Tako aims for those lofty heights and fails a good chunk. The story follows of Tako, a pacifist octopus who gets sucked into the octopus-human wars. He gets blessed by a fairy to walk above ground and to help stop the war. What goes on from there is a very serious look at the devastation of war on 2 different groups of people. I greatly enjoyed how emotive the characters as it gave them a lot of charm as well as cutting the tension when things were getting too serious. Graphically, this is a mixed bag. The developer was clearly going for a super game boy vibe as it stays very true to the 4 color palette of the GB. Some are rather nice, while others hurt my eyes (anything that has a sunny day or tropical vibe). Otherwise, it looks really nice as it has a Kirby-esq vibe to it. The graphics are clean and it's easy to make out what is what. The world feels a bit lived in as NPCs roam the levels. There's also no way that a GB game would have been as detailed as…

Octopus Lives Matter! Forget about those negative reviews. Time to get your tentacles dirty and save the world from War!