Videos
Reviews:
-
As you move through each major world you’ll unlock new Hard and Bonus stages that step up the level of challenge substantially. While in many levels you’ll have a use limit on each skill, forcing you to carefully plan out your route and make efficient use of everything, in these tougher stages you generally don’t have those constraints. While this would seem to make things easier, it actually does quite the opposite. With limits the puzzles allow you to work your way backwards to a degree, since they don’t give you any “extras” to work with. Without limits it generally means what you’re looking to do will instead require a different level of planning and understanding of every bit of nuance the skills can offer, as mistakes will generally mean you need to start the level over since you can’t recover from them. If there’s a downside to Toki Tori it’s probably just the potential for frustration for more casual puzzle fans. It doesn’t shy away from being challenging but that also makes it satisfying when you’re able to figure out something you were stumped on. One saving grace is that there’s a Wild Card you can use in the game to skip the current level, just keep in mind there’s only 1 to use so if you then get stumped on another you’ll need to go back and figure the previous level out in order to skip the new one. It’s a nice mechanic that lets you move on to something else and give yourself a break, but you’ll likely not be able to then ignore it completely. Overall, especially when comparing the original to its sequel, Toki Tori stands very well on its own and is certainly a similar experience but very much a distinct one as well. If you’re new to the series it holds up as a challenging puzzle experience, and if you’ve played the sequel but missed the original it has plenty of its own ideas that aren’t shared to help it stand on its own. Throw in a very budget-friendly price and if you enjoy games with cute characters that will make you think it’s a worthwhile purchase.
Justin Nation, Score:Nindie Choice! [8.0]